Tuesday, May 20, 2008

The Lesson

Many years have past since Princess Fiona's college days... One day, she recalled a lesson from Professor Hawkins in her Philosophy class. Professor Hawkins asked the class, "What is your perspective of life? What is it to you?" That spurned an interesting debate and discussion in class. Everyone seems to have something to say on this subject. Princess Fiona gave it some thought and concluded that the question is too difficult to answer. She figured she is still young and have many years to think about what is life to her.

Princess Fiona now, has a better picture on what is her perspective of life. She has lived it enough to witness her lives many ups and downs and it is becoming increasingly clearer to her. Imagine a circle that's filled with career/money/house/car, the material things that influenced the environment we lived in. A bigger circle goes around it that represents the people we interact with, family/friends/lovers/colleagues. Now, an even bigger circle is looped around the 2 smaller circles. What do you think is in the biggest circle of all?

For Princess Fiona, the biggest circle encapsulate the meaning of her life. It signifies feelings and emotions. Feelings stem from emotion and it is a conscious subjective experience of emotion. How then is emotion derived? Environment influences how you feel about certain things, for example money. If you were born in a well to do family, money does not seem to be an issue and is always readily available at your disposable. However, if you were from a poor family, money will be key to your survival.

People around you raises certain emotions in you. It could be anything from friendship, various forms of love, like, dislike, hate, rage, annoyance, curiousity and even feeling nothing is a type of feeling. Perhaps its their behaviour, or their character that causes these emotions in you. All these combined feelings and emotions give you thoughts and make you think because you will feel something about everything. Ultimately, this defines who you are.

Princess Fiona was jokingly told by a friend that she could possibly be one of the most emotional person that her friend has ever known. But of course, her friend was young and may not have experienced as much. Maybe, she is who she is because she has experienced things in life that she would never wished on others.