A Question that changed the way I think about the world

"Tell us a Question that changed the way you think about the world."

This was an essay requirement for one of the colleges I was applying to. Are you sure you are not joking? How can 'one' question change someone's vision of the world! That was insane, but I had to fill up the requirement for the application, so I started to think about it. I searched through my entire life, all my memories, not for an answer, for a question: 'The Question'. My initial response was to question the biggest truths about the universe, bring up some philosophical mysteries that would make me look smart to the admission officers. After a long, tiresome search, I found it; but unfortunately it was not a philosophical puzzles that perplexed the greatest minds of the planet for centuries, rather it was as simple as a bitter, sour fruit. So, really a simple fruit taught me to think about the world differently, not questions like 'What is the meaning of life?' or 'Where did we come from?'. So I wrote about myrobalans. The reason for me to share this piece of writing is to show that, if thought carefully, the tiniest experiences of our daily life can be turned into a deep understanding of ourselves.

Why did I feel like eating the myrobalans (আমলকী)?

Myrobalan. The one fruit that I hate more than any other fruit. I wonder why people buy and eat those bitter, sour tasteless fruit while so many other fruits are available. It doesn’t even taste like a food!

One day, I was having a daytime sleep after an all-nighter. I woke up at noon getting a call from the newspaper I work for part time. There was an accident in my area and I had to cover the news. I rushed to the spot, worked under the scorching summer sun to collect data, interview the local people and so on. When the job finished, it was evening and I was on my way home. While walking on the street I saw some vendors were selling delicious myrobalans, it immediately watered my mouth. Wait a second, did I say ‘delicious’? I am confident that I hate myrobalans, so why did my mouth watered? Why did I feel like eating the bitter, sour, tasteless myrobalans?

Once a thought come across my mind it is hard to get rid of. I started thinking to find the answer. The primary answer was, because I was hungry. In the business of the day I couldn’t take my breakfast, lunch, so by evening I was extremely hungry and at that time any food would seem mouth watering. The answer makes sense, but I wasn’t satisfied, I went further with that question. My hunger is a physical process, but my ‘wanting to eat’ is a psychological process, how did the hunger had an effect on my ‘wanting to eat’, while I have a firm belief that ‘I’ am the master of my brain? This question struck me at a very deep level and opened several new thought processes in my brain.

·         Thought 1: Our brain ignores the smaller discomfort in the face of a larger discomfort.
This theory can be used on personal, social, national, even on global scale.

o   I didn’t like to eat vegetables, after this finding, I stayed hungry for a period of time and vegetables didn’t seem as distasteful as usual.

o   A society that never experienced a challenge will be more likely to be fastidious about unnecessary aspects of social life rather than main aspects of the society.

o   A nation or the Globe in inner conflict can be united with a larger common danger or the hoax or threat of a larger common danger.

·         Thought 2: As higher negative feelings can turn neutral or lower negative feeling to appear as positive feeling, higher positive feeling can also turn a lower positive feeling as negative or neutral feeling. This taught me:

o   In the first local science Olympiad I attended, I secured a 9^th position among 400 competitors which appeared to be a great success for me at that time, but later in my school years when I continuously stood first in 3 competitions and then became second in the fourth, the last one became a great frustration for me.

o   The higher one’s expectations will be, the higher chance for him or her to be unhappy about smaller accomplishments. So higher goals ultimately make us unhappy.

·         Thought 3: Same thing can be of different value to people in different situations.
Just like a different time had different reaction from the same fruit, the same thing can have varying value to same or different people in different situation. I learnt from this theory:

o   If an economic structure can be established that distributes asset from the higher class of society to the lower class in a reasonable economic manner, the total amount of happiness and peace around the globe will be higher.

o   The small amount of food wasted by someone in a western country can mean life and death to a hungry child in Africa. So it taught me the importance not wasting anything that can be valuable to someone else.

·         Thought 4: Our thoughts, feeling, desires can be manipulated, modified.
As the hunger manipulated the my ‘wanting to eat’, almost all of our feelings can be manipulated and misled by other variables.

o   For example, if a person hurts me without a reason, I will feel angry and want to hurt that person back. In this case, my feeling, which is ‘anger’ and my desire, which is ‘wanting to hurt the other person’ both is controlled by the person who hurt me first, not by my own opinion or interst.

o   This taught me to control my reaction in a variety of situations and acting according to my intellect and experience instead of letting someone else control my behavior.

·         Thought 5: Happiness can only exist with sorrow.
As negative experience can create or increase the intensity of a positive feeling, a positive feeling cannot exist without the existence of negative experience. If there is so much positive that it is hard to find a negative, then the positives will lose its value and work as a negative feeling. So negative always accompanies the positive.

o   So it is important to remember in times of happiness that there must come the time of sorrow, and also in time of sorrow that there must be a time for happiness.

o   There can be no ultimate place for happiness like Heaven or Eutopia according to this logic. So instead of seeking for the ultimate happiness we should accept the sorrow and keep trying to overcome it.

·         Thought 6: The things that we think that make us happy may be fabricated.

One of the biggest driving force for human is seeking for happiness in materialistic things. After satisfying the need for happiness or positive feeling with one thing, that positive feeling looses its value and takes the place once occupied by neutral feeling. At that point, human brain takes even upper positive feeling as target and this phenomenon continues, driving human desires higher and higher with no boundaries. This is a very inefficient way of acquiring happiness and ultimately brings bigger frustration when not being able to acquire the too high positive feeling. In my finding with the myrobalan the most sustainable form of happiness would be a continuous loop of negative and positive feelings. So instead of finding the upper positive feeling or higher happiness, we should search for a lower or higher negative feelings, i. e. less or very unhappy experiences. And after overcoming that experience we will get more happiness than than the upper positive feeling could have given us.

Whew… So, what do we understand from this lengthy discussion? It’s all over the myrobalan again. When you eat it, it is sour, it is bitter, in a word, it is the opposite of sweet. But if you drink water after it is eaten, the water will taste sweet! So, this question on myrobalan has changed the way I think about happiness, sorrow, expectation, feelings, materialism and gave me a new perspective to look at the world. Thanks myrobalan, for not being tasty.