I was watching the new ‘Daredevil’ today. The protagonist of the series struggles with his identity and the past. In the last episode of the series the main character, Matt Murdock, said a monologue that made me forget all about the action unfolding on the screen:
‘I realized that had my life turned out any differently, I would never have become Daredevil… Maybe my life had been exactly as it had to be.’
Sounds familiar?
This is a short summary of the article on this blog – If you had a different past, it wouldn’t have been you.
While in this case I strongly suspect that the show creaters took the idea from my blog ;), I find that the world around us is full with ideas. Sometimes we are presented with complete ideas, and sometimes pieces that need to be brought together, or triggers that start the thought process. Psychology is the study of human mind – and human mind left its mark on everything around us.
Do you remember the phrase Leo Tolstoy used as a catchy opening of a new chapter of Anna Karenina – “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” This phrase is now called the Anna Karenina Principle and has its own Wikipedia entry, listing its uses in statistics, anthropology and ecology.
In fact, I am pretty sure if we try hard enough we can describe every concept of the modern psychology with a catchy quote from some classic.
But the phenomenon of ‘Psychology in the air’ goes further’.
It’s well know that the same book or article may leave a very different impression on you, depending on when you read them.
Triggering works in such misterious ways, that the thoughts that come to your head may have very little in common with the book or the movie you are actually watching. These thoughts are caused by the concepts you are thinking about, and the circumstances around you make your own thoughts surface.
Once you realize this, even the most boring things around you will suddenly become interesting, as you would be the one filling them with meaning.