Random Musings of The First Week of October

I’ve had some very fun conversations with friends this week – even if it hasn’t been a great week – so I thought I would share some of the ‘mini epiphany’ thoughts that had formed in my mind.

• Peoples’ vices could, in a way, be likened to mini psychiatric disorders. One’s enjoyment of smoking or comfort food vice is almost like a mini addiction, or mini eating disorder. Vices could be categorised like psychiatric disorders – as externalising and internalising issues.
  For context – externalising disorders are mental illnesses characterised by externalising behaviours, for example conduct problems, ADHD, antisocial personality disorder, substance related disorders, pyromania. In contrast, individuals with internalising disorders internalise their maladaptive emotions and cognitions, and so might struggle with depression, anxiety, or an eating disorder.

• Every culture and generation have their own ‘languages’ that they learn as ‘first languages’ – when times change, picking up new knowledge is a bit like picking up a second language, and can never come so naturally. For example – technology. My generation grew up on computers, so we are well versed with them, but my mum and grampy have to think through steps to understand how to use them, and have to purposefully remember things. Likewise, I can’t pick up new social media like TikTok like the younger generation can. And this also applies to…well, anything, like nutrition. I have grown up in a word with nutritional labels, and just have a feel for them, while my mum, and my grampy don’t fully ‘get’ them. They have to use reason and logic to understand them – they have to think through why a brownie would be more calories than a cake, for example.
  I’m not exactly fully sure about this pondering – because it’s not just about your generation but also about your interests as you grow up. I think what I’m getting at is that whatever you are exposed to and you learn from birth is learned like a first language and feels natural, while as you get older the things you learn about seem to be ‘picked up’ differently, and we have to use logic and reason and to think about them, to ‘get’ them?

• A lot of people seem to dislike chocolate flavoured things, like chocolate mousse, chocolate cookies, chocolate ice cream, but love chocolate. Why is this? Is it perhaps that a lot of chocolate things are merely flavoured with cocoa powder, rather than being flavoured with real chocolate, which has cocoa butter as well as cocoa powder/bean within it, providing an intensity and richness? Even when baking a proper chocolate cake, you can’t just add cocoa powder to a basic sponge – it doesn’t really taste chocolatey. You have to add quite a few different things to make up for that lack of cocoa butter and recreate the richness and intensity!

• People are these amazing, wonderful, beautiful fountains of knowledge. Every single person I have met has taught me something and touched me in some amazing way, and I’m grateful for them in my life. Everyone has something so special about them, and so many of them don’t see it. Because it doesn’t have to be a specific talent – in fact it very often isn’t. It’s the interesting reflections on life, it’s people’s mannerisms, it’s their perspectives. They open your mind and suddenly your own life feels different and wow, boom, just like that..they’ve shaped your journey. I wish I could be as good as the people around me.