Winnie Lim

I had a lot of self-hatred when I was younger. But over the past few years it gradually eased up as I embarked on a journey of self-understanding. This journey wasn’t voluntary, it was forced upon me after a physical and emotional breakdown. I guess that is what happens when our bodies are encased in a shell for too long. I feel like breakdowns are not necessarily bad – inevitable as we grow out of our old selves. An outcome of growth, despite the suffering. We suffer because we are conditioned to favour stability over change.

I am lucky in the sense that I tend to go to books as my source of comfort during trying times. The internet has been very helpful, as somehow there are always people going through similar experiences, sharing resources that have helped them. This is something I will always be grateful for despite all the negativity that comes with living on the internet. There is a spirit of sharing and access to that spirit. People sharing their experiences and resources online are how I started reading some books that I wouldn’t have picked up on my own.

Through these books I started to understand myself better. Why do I always seem to be in pain, why are some things extremely difficult for me, why I keep burning out, etc. This is why I get touchy when people talk about choices, free will, personal responsibility, determination, grit, resilience etc. I learnt that there is so much that is out of our personal control. Some factors are simply an outcome of our history, some are embedded within the systems we live in, some are impacted by our ancestors, some are determined at the stage when we’re incepted and in the womb, so much is also influenced by what goes on in our early childhood years, etc. And all of them are interconnected, feeding into each other, creating feedback loops that entrench us negatively in our lives.

I gradually stopped being so hard on myself. But I still am. After years and years on this journey, I still feel like being trapped by invisible tentacles every day. Each day is a struggle, a constant battle with my mind. My mind is so me but not me at the same time. It generates these thoughts, these responses, these bodily sensations. I am on a roller coaster with no on/off switch. Sometimes something really innocuous will start a flood of very unpleasant sensations. I struggle to make healthy choices for myself, because half the time I am just too fatigued, the other half I just want to compensate myself for everything I’ve been through.

Because of my growing knowledge of why I am the way I am, why society is the way it is, I am able to develop some compassion with myself. Since I can truly see how things affect me on such a deep unchangeable level, that so much of what I “choose” aren’t really choices but they are a cascading effect of events out of my personal control, it became inevitable that I saw that other people too, are deeply impacted by so many factors out of their control.

We seem to believe every act is a contemplated choice, but so much of our behaviour is being driven by unconscious forces. The word “unconscious” seem new agey or freudian, but we are not conscious over how our neurotransmitters and hormones function. They have a life of their own.

If we truly had conscious choices over ourselves, wouldn’t most people be exercising every day, sleeping early, eating well, making enlightened choices for themselves, their relationships, their politics? Why would we be actively destroying a planet we are living on? Why would we compromise our precious health in various ways? We know alcohol is very harmful for our bodies, but we drink anyway. Some of us smoke even though it is one of the worst carcinogens. Some of us are addicted to sugar. Others are addicted to poor relationships, busyness, social media, etc. Do we really believe that all of these people including our selves included are actively choosing to harm ourselves? 

I know I can’t. I know for a scientific fact that we can’t. It is just neuroscience. We can’t control how our brains developed, how they are wired, how our neurotransmitters and hormones work or don’t work. If we can, people with brain damage or tumours would not have dramatic personality changes. If a tumour can change our personalities, how free are we to be who we want to be?

And if we cannot be free to be who we want to be, how much can we blame others for not being able to be who we want them to be?

When the buddha preached compassion, I just couldn’t relate to it. I am not a person who believes it is just good to be good (this is complex to explain, but tldr is that I believe the push to make humans being “good” has caused more harm than being net positive). But if I look at it systematically, compassion is not just an altruistic value. We see it as altruistic because of the way we are conditioned to feel about the word. But now I see it as a developed understanding towards how interconnected systems affect us as people, and how this understanding can lead us to hold other people in a different light.

I realised compassion works in tandem with mindfulness – which is probably why the buddha taught what he taught. When someone acts in a way we cannot understand, we can have the capacity to conjure that pause – being mindful – and with that pause we develop the capacity to look at the systemic factors behind why this person may be acting the way they are. Sometimes this person is our selves. Sometimes it could be someone who has hurt us directly. Other times it could be a stranger on the internet. The hardest is probably trying to understand someone like Trump. 

The reason why mindfulness and compassion eases suffering is not because they are woo-woo or simply “good”. It is because we tend to suffer less when we truly understand something. It is not a cure and doesn’t make our suffering go away, but it does lead to some form of acceptance.

When everything is simply grouped into good or evil like we all have total free will over our selves, there is no room to manoeuvre. There is no space for understanding, no width to learn to see how everything has its cause and effect. Hence we blame, we resign, we become upset when people continue not to make choices we want them to make. If we don’t see the systemic factors and how they feed into each other, we are not addressing the root causes. If we don’t address the root causes, we continue to be trapped in vicious cycles.

This is simply my current intellectual understanding. I am not claiming I have developed the capacity to be compassionate, in fact it is as far from being true as it can be. I am also not saying everyone should learn to be compassionate, because this is asking too much of people who are already subject to everyday suffering in various forms. But perhaps what I ask of myself is to be doubtful and curious. Be doubtful of my own harsh inner interpretations of situations, and be curious about why the circumstances are the way they are. Learn to see the tentacles that are trapping us, beyond the current moment.

It is easier to point fingers. But resentment is a form of suffering. Having a hardened view of situations is also a form of suffering. Unlike some other people, I do think resentment is a valid response towards many situations. However, it is up to the individual whether they prefer to seek psychological freedom instead. I think learning to see the tentacles that trap us may not remove the tentacles, but it may free us in other ways. It also allows us to know what we’re working with – then we can decide (if we can) whether we want to accept the situation or attempt to rebel. It may free us to know that what is trapping us is not our hopeless selves, but deep entrenched systemic forces. It may also free us to know that the person who is choosing to hurt us is not doing it out of sheer callousness, but they too, are limited in ways we may not be able to empathise with. 

Understanding may free us. Or it may not. I don’t see it as a solution or an answer. But I see it as creating room for our minds to expand our awareness.

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