Personal: God Laughs

Have you ever had your life sort of turned topsy-turvy, where things that you didn't think were going to happen for a while suddenly happen and things that you thought would happen sooner get delayed and the like?

Well, as they say, "Man plans; God laughs" and the Lord has been having a good chuckle over here.

I don't think I talk a lot about myself on this blog but the things that are relevant to this post are that I'm a perfectionist, don't like change, have a preoccupation with the future, and am terrible at adhering to my limits (not "realizing my limits", mind you; I know what they are, I just don't respect them... which is stupid)

For the last five or so years, I've been in something of a self-imposed rut. A seemingly endless sea of monotony, that was, quite frankly, taking it's toll on me. Not the "monotony" itself, I guess, but the nature of it  - always pushing myself, always trying to live up to people's expectations of me regardless of whether they were realistic or not.

I guess, the defining incident that stands out was the first semester I took on four units and had been advised by one of the higher ups to take on a calculus unit that I didn't really have the prerequisites for. Furthermore, the unit was aimed at engineering students while I was a mere commerce student, a young one at that. But I wanted to pursue statistics so it was what I needed. It was a tough semester, but I made it through that unit and achieved a Distinction (at my uni, it's the second best grade type) and was initially quite proud. Until everyone else started weighing in. Mum was calculating whether I could maintain my average with this mere Distinction, the lecturer who had recommended the unit to me said he was expecting a High Distinction. The only person who actually gave me positive feedback was the lecturer who taught the unit.

In hindsight, I should have seen that they weren't being realistic expecting that high a grade of me. I mean, I liked maths and was good at it but was no mathematical genius - better than commerce but not a mathematician or engineer. However, it unfortunately set a standard in my mind that I really couldn't keep up on a long term basis.

(I am not blaming others for my... stupidity, since this attitude did die down in later semesters. But they did plant the idea which grew to define part of me... that unless my grades were perfect they, and by extension I, were worthless. It was an exaggerated view but it was still my view.)

I managed to keep being a high achiever for four years, at the expense of everything else. Including my health. I won't go into details but, I was definitely worse for wear. Being a high achiever wasn't really the problem... it was the fact that that was all I was. Any hobbies I had in high school had either been abandoned or left to the side to be resumed at some undefined point in time (with very few exceptions). When I talked about my hobbies, I was often working off very old information. Even my holidays were spent in preparation for the next semester. (I can think of only one exception, and it was in the recent two years - even then, it was a hobby binge)

(Honestly, I really should have picked up on the decline earlier - just looking at some of my unpublished posts has me facepalming at how obviously... "not right" things were)

Anyway, the toll that the my stupidity has resulted in a drastically decreased load and thus adding a bit more time to my degree - but, after much deliberation, that's a good thing. I mean, I'm not just a student, I'm a person. I have a personality, and I have things that I've liked to do. I am an amateur writer and that's been neglected for a long while. I'm not saying that I'm giving up on my grades or something like that - I still want my degree and I want it to be worth something. It's just not going to be the only thing that defines me, not anymore.

Going back to that expression at the beginning... the one on God laughing. Well, we don't laugh at something unless it's either very silly or very funny, so wouldn't it stand to reason that God laughs at those sorts of things too? And let's face it, my "plan" wasn't exactly intelligent... but I would have continued it if it hadn't negatively impacted my well-being.

So the whole "God laughs" bit isn't really about messing up Man's plans, but more about going "Hey, you're doing it wrong - let's give you a chance to think about that for a second, silly child". Of course it really does say something that it takes a metaphorical arrow to the knee to get me to sit and actually think about what I'm doing but hey, I should work on that.

If you're not particularly religious, the moral still applies I think, in that really more thought should be given to a person's priorities when things are going well rather than having these overly long contemplative moments when things don't turn out as planned. But in my case, I'm going to pay a little less attention to me-as-a-student and more attention to me-as-a-person.

Which, incidentally, actually includes getting back to this blog. :)

Battle of the Sex Hormones

No, this isn't about fighting hormones - this about the two main sex hormones: testosterone and oestrogen (or estrogen) - the "male" and "female" hormones respectively.

Now, I know that not everyone knows that these hormones are not restricted by gender - one episode of Charmed made the mistake of having two coroners shocked that the female "corpse" had testerone in its system [facepalm]- so I'll give a quick summary here:

Testosterone - male body produces 10 times more than the female, but the female body is more sensitive to it.
Effect in males: Developes testis and prostate; promotes increased muscle, bone mass, deeper voice, and body hair; too much results in aggressive behaviour and atropy of the testes; lowers during fatherhood; makes organs like the heart and liver bigger.
Effect in females: Regulates menstrual cycle.
Effect in both: Essential overall health, and prevents oesteoporosis. Too much in females will produce some of the male results. Mental affects include higher risk tolerance, and higher levels are speculated to ward off dementia and Alzheimer's Disease. There are also suggestions of a "curvilinear or even quadratic relationship between spatial performance", as well as relations to attention-span and memory.

Oestrogen - there are three main types (estrone (E1), estradiol (E2), and estriol (E3)) which are active during menopause, non-pregnant/non-menopasusal stages, and pregnancy. So, the big one is estradiol.
Effect in males: Low levels are speculated to cause OCD, too much will give men breasts and lower libido; increases in sympathetic pregnancy; used to treat prostrate cancer in certain situations.
Effect in females: Develops breasts, hips, regulates fertility (ovulation); promotes finer hair and smoother skin; low levels lead to poor mental health; once breast cancer is established, high levels feed it; increase fat stores; accelerate metabolism; reduce muscle mass;
Effect in both: Helps wound healing. Too much in males will produce some of the female results.

Admittedly oestrogen doesn't appear to play that great a part in male bodies but it's there.
I could stop here but the actual reason I wanted to bring this up was because I was rewatching a couple of my favourite episodes of House: Skin Deep and Act Your Age. In these two episodes the hormones of oestrogen and testosterone feature as the central players. I rather like House as it accurately portrays medical disorders and I get to watch an intelligent jerkass prove why he's the best doctor.

Every fetus is a girl to begin with and then depending on if it is XY or XX, it will then change internally - the male/female hormones of testerone/oestrogen will then give the fetus secondary sexual characteristics, like the testes dropping in males.

In Act You Age the two child patients are suffering from "Precocious puberty" due to too much testosterone from a certain, ahem, "medication" their father is taking. The symtoms in the boy are extreme aggression and a heightened libido - which results in the rather amusing incident of an 8 year old pinching the female doctor's bottom and tackling (and biting) the male doctor out of jealousy.
The little girl, 6 years old, I think, gets her period, hair in places, double vision, hot flashes, and a stroke - basically the symptoms of an old woman.

What can be said for the girl is that she got puberty with none of the femininity and then proceeded to get all the symptoms of a post-menopausal woman - because there is no oestrogen here. In the boy's case he is now "macho", kind of like an animal when you think about it - territorial towards "his" females to the point of violence. It's okay, I talk about oestrogen bad points next.

In Skin Deep the patient is a 15 year old female model, who is revealed to have cancer on her left testes. Yep, she is in fact a male - one who suffers from pseudo-male-hermaphroditism due to Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. I mentioned that everyone is born as a girl and then they change; in this case the child is insensitive to testosterone and hence doesn't make the big changes. They still get testes but they don't drop and they don't develop in a male way. Instead they are entirely oestrogen, even more feminine than women. Perfect skin and shape and they never get a period.
However, just like testosterone, there are mental effects - in the case of too much oestrogen while the patient was docile, she was as manipulative as hell. This sort of figure appears in literature as the femme fatale, or the "seductress" in the Three Faces of Eve.

I'm not entirely sure why I wrote up this note but I find it amusing on how the extreme effects of each sex hormone on their main gender results in the undesirable literary archetypes of the possessive violent male and the manipulative vamp, who, traditionally, always lose to the main character or never get the boy/girl.

I dunno, maybe it's everything in moderation making its way to the surface in a strange way - funny since these archetypes appeared before people even knew about these hormones and their effects.

Fear versus Actuality

I just thought this was funny and sad at the same time - it's a list of fears and the realistic chance of them eventuating. Found in a book published in 2006.

Deadly shark attack: 1 in 280 million
Deadly antrax attack: 1 in 57 million
Deadly airplane accident: 3 million
Shot by a sniper: 1 in 517,000
Losing your job: 1 in 252 (this is pre-GFC though)
Home burglary at night: 1 in 181
Developing cancer: 1 in 7
Catching foodborne illness this year: 1 in 4
Cathing a sexually transmitted disease: 1 in 4
Developing heart disease: 1 in 4
Dying five to ten years earlier if you're overweight: 1 in 4
Death from tobacco-related illnesses: 1 in 2

Funny: Not only are you more likely to catch a deadly case of anthrax than get killed by a shark, even more likely to get shot by a sniper than die in an airplane crash. It's amusing to think that we should all be more worried about little red lights being directed at our heads over giant fish with multiple teeth.

Sad: Why do people spend so much time worrying about the improbabilities in life, when there are real things to be afraid of that can actually be prevented by healthier living and regular medical check-ups?
Instead we're hearing the Jaws soundtrack play in our heads everytime we go to the beach.

Self Fulfilling Prophecy

When one hears the phrase "self fulfilling prophecy" most mythology buffs will immediately think of the story of Oedipus - the boy who heard that he will kill is father and marry his mother, prompting him to leave town to spare his parents who were actually his adoptive parents and thus actually end up killing his biological father and marrying his biological mother. There is also the fact that the whole reason he was left on that hillside was because his father heard a prophecy that he would be killed by his son.

Actually come to think of it an awful lot of kings get that prophecy thrown at them.

Another example is Paris of Troy - Paris was a shephard after his parents abandoned him to the wilderness because the queen dreamt that she gave birth to a firebrand who would bring Troy to ashes. Zeus chose Paris to judge the the beauty contest that the goddesses were having because he was a humble shepherd. If not for that prophecy Troy wouldn't have burned. (Actually, the Trojan war can be traced back to a curse many generations prior on another household but suffice it to say that that the stars were not aligned favourably. :P)

One final example is actually from Norse mytholgy - Odin was told that Loki and his children would bring about the end of the world. So what did he do? Lock up all of Loki's kids and have everyone shun the guy. Gee, I wonder why the god of Mischief slowly got evil and at least three of his kids grow to hate Odin. (Fun fact: Loki was actually benevolent - one myth I stumbled across actually had a poor couple ask Tyr and Odin for help in saving their sons from giants only to have those two give up after failing once. When they prayed to Loki, he actually fixed the problem permanently.)

Anyway, you are probably wondering why I related these tales to you. It's because these "prophecies" aren't just restricted to mythology or fantasy - they are very much applicable to real life.
If you look at each of the above examples the prophecies aren't predicting happy dreams of fluffy bunnies and spiders - they're all about destruction, death, and general negativity. They're about fear. We may as well call them "self fulfilling fears", which is actually what I wish to talk about.

Now, a lot of us have a fear of some sort: I, myself, have a fear of falling. (No, not a fear of heights - that would be irrational...) However, the fears I wish to discuss are the psychological ones (yes, I know all fears are psychological but I mean the ones that aren't a fear of a physical thing... or lack of thing). For instance a fear of heights falling is hardly self fulfilling.

This is hardly a new concept - it's all over the place in sociology (and time travel). I'm just putting it in one place and chatting about it. (It is also in economics but I will cover that subject in more depth in a later post.)

Since most people are familiar with the Pygmalion effect (treat someone one way, or expect someone to do something and they will meet your expectations - e.g. Loki) we won't dwell on it, mainly because it's the Reflexivity Theory that is most relevant here. It's where you believe something will happen, so you react in accordance to that belief thus bringing about that belief (also present in the Loki myth). (Economics example is that if you believe prices will fall you will sell - this causes supply to increase and demand to either decrease or remain unchanged, either way the prices will fall.)

I will use three examples of fear to explain:

Fear 1: Abandonment.
Now someone thinks that their friends or family members will eventually leave them - perhaps this belief is founded, perhaps not but that's not the point. Depending on the individual there would be two more common reactions - clinginess (must hold onto them while I can) or distance (mustn't get attached because they'll go away). Blah blah clinginess makes people want to have their space blah blah - discussed to death. In the case of distance this makes the people around that person wonder what is wrong but the fact that they keep getting stonewalled will make them think that they are not wanted and so the will eventually leave. There we go, "abandonment".

Fear 2: Not Good Enough
This is one I saw recently. Now, keep in mind that the idea of "good enough" is subjective. The person believes that they "ruin good people" or "don't deserve good people" - good being their own definition. So, they settle for what they believe are "bad people" because it's what they think they deserve and further indulge in "bad behaviour" - rending thing unworthy (in their minds) of said "good people". Eventually they may actually become unappealing to the "good people" if these behaviours are that opposite those of the "good people" (not saying the "good people will look down on them but just that they don't want to date them - there's a difference). Self-fulfilling.
(The main thing in this one is that they really believe this and that nothing they can do will ever make them worthy - that is their fear.)

Fear 3: Crushing Rejection (pun!)
Suppose you have a crush on a friend, maybe a new friend. Now, obviously you really like them and you don't want to scare them off by declaring it. You want to be sure first. So you wait a while and guess what? You really do like them. But you also like them as a friend and, just like before, you don't want to ruin the friendship. At the same time you don't want to be stuck in the "friend zone" for eternity but the "ruin the friendship" fear is greater. So you don't say anything and the crush gets worse as you get more and more attached and hence more and more afraid to confess. This one isn't so much self fulfilling as it is self stagnanting. A vicious cycle where the fear feeds itself.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't be wary of these things, but being afraid of them results in more harm than good... such as the fear itself or stagnation. A wariness would be much better served - so that the first prson doesn't push people away, so that the second seeks to correct what they see as "bad behaviour" rather than fall into it, and so that the third isn't so paralyzed.

The last thing I said about Fear 3 was that the fear feeds itself - the same goes for them all. Fear 1 gets more rejection, and Fear 2 becomes more "unworthy". They all dig themselves into a deeper pit from which it becomes very difficult to emerge from.

Fear... it's pointless. Wariness isn't - you should be cautious. Fear for your life is ok - that's instinct. But these other fears feed themselves and grow. Even "fear of failure" results in a crash and burn scenario from overwork, or failure at something they neglected (usually a personal life). But yeah - fear is self fulfilling, so don't give it the satisfaction. As you can see with the above examples, it's very difficult to get out once you're in.

(P.S. It's Monday here so... I'm still adhering to my schedule.)

Addendum: Fear 3 is not a bad thing so long as it's weariness and not fear. Not confessing because you're scared is silly; not confessing for other reasons is not. For instance, if you know your friend doesn't feel the same way (duh), if you're not sure how they feel (this is not a "scared" thing - the fact is that they may feel pressured into reciprocating those feelings or it could get awkward for them. It should be more about how your news will effect them.), or, and this is a nice one, you are happy being "just" friends with them and value that over the possibility of a romantic relationship. There is nothing wrong with friendship after all.

I just felt I had to clarify that.