One of the things about getting older is that you accumulate baggage, both physically and mentally. This happens from birth to death without slowing down, without being noticed. It’s easy as you grow up to pretend to be an adult, indeed that’s how people learn to be an adult. What’s harder, is to leave behind the feeling that you’re just pretending, that inside it’s still the same small little girl or boy that was always there.

One of the things about watching is that you notice themes in people. Every face tells a story writ large. Happy faces naturally look happy when at rest, sad faces naturally look sad.

A long time ago I was watching a show on TV. It was a big ideas show, written by a guy with a degree in psychology. It contained the idea that once you go to sleep, your true face is revealed for all to see. He was more right than he realised when he wrote it. If all you choose to see of the world is sadness, you will be sad. And vice versa.

I digress.

So when you feel alone even though you are not alone, this is sum of all the things that have happened to you up to now.

So when you feel scared if someone confronts you, this is sum of all the things that have happened to you up to now.

When you see beauty on the street, the same deal.

A thing in front of you lights a spark in your mind and that spark blossoms. Ripples through your memory, throwing up items from your past. Sometimes good, sometimes bad.

Pretending to be a grownup is your first conscious act. The first filter you consciously build. It’s layered on top of whatever was underneath. If your childhood was traumatic, then you have a load of stuff under it around fear and seeing fear or conflict.

That stuff is mental filters. We all have them, we all use them to process the world around us. Because there’s so damn much of it, if we saw *everything* we’d likely go mad. Our brains filter out the bits we won’t care about and only feed us the stuff we notice.

So, back to you as a child. You start trying to process the world as an adult. You see a thing. Your mind interprets that thing according to the filter you built, the “what would a grownup do?” response and you adjust the thing in your mind accordingly, attaching what you think are grownup emotions and values to it. It then goes through the filters you built unconsciously, attaching base emotions, fear, guilt, love, happiness, until it reaches the piece of you that is self.

Some mistake the filters for self. They see that as the person, and in some degree they’re right. As I said earlier, we are sum of all that has ever happened to us. The world around us and within us makes us who we are. What we often fail to see is that we make the world as much as it makes us.

When Mahatma Ghandi said “be the change you want to see in the world” he meant this, not an abstract or glib throwaway line. I have another one for you:

Being free means understanding that you can do anything, not knowing that you can do anything.

So we perceive objects. A knife wielded by a man is an object. We ascribe fear and flight to that object if we perceive it to be threatening according to our experience. Often that experience isn’t authentic, it is imagined or comes from media. Extreme example, but you get the idea.

Simpler example. I see an orange. I ascribe summer afternoons to it, I feel the stickiness, I remember the frustration of trying to get it open when I was younger, the bitterness of the pips and I move on and find a banana instead. I could say “I don’t like oranges” but I do. My perception colours my view of them.

Your mind is your own. The filters you built inside of it shape your perception of the world. If negative things have happened to you then you choose to either only see the negative or only see the positive. You don’t have to.

Imagine what would happen if you could see, truly see, everything around you. A sense of alertness, of mindfullness. You simply skip the filters. You choose not to attach emotion or memory to things, you see them for what they are. Because your mind’s not jumping through hoops whenever you see a thing, you can see more, notice more.

Some people call this “being in the moment”, some “mindfulness”.

It’s necessary. The natural progression of the person as they get older is to feel hurt and withdraw, until ultimately the person withdraws from life. Be in the world, be of it. But be aware that you create the world as much as it creates you, understanding that will liberate you, for no-one can be truly free unless they know the ties that bind them.

Example: “I was so nervous in that interview”. You were nervous because of everything that has happened to you up until that point. You were nervous because of your hopes and dreams. You were nervous because of your fears. You were not nervous because of that interview. If you can learn to detatch your baggage from objects, they become lighter. Imagine how much better you would be in that interview if you weren’t thinking about all of the other stuff you brought with you, but instead were thinking about the questions asked of you.

Example: “When she broke up with me, I was devastated”. Were you devastated because of your love for her and the connection you shared that had now been broken, or were you reliving past losses, thinking “how can I cope with this again?”.

I say these words because I recognise that eventually the filters don’t need input. They work all on their own, a cycle of self doubt or hate or love that appears to be self sustaining. Reliving the past whilst the future slips through your present unnoticed. This is how too many people end. Stay young, stay hungry and stay eager, the world is a huge and enormous thing, filled with enough joy, sadness, love and hate for a lifetime without needing you to invent more. Your choices gave you physical scars. They also gave you mental ones, but you can choose to undo the mental ones, your mind is your own.