Ever since we were born, we have been fed a certain sense of solidity and discreteness when we perceive the world. Nouns are assigned to objects and items, and even to abstract phenomena that somehow can fit in a certain box to help pare down the complexity of the world into a few simplistic interpretations. We humans exist as nouns as well – as personas and identities that separate ourselves from our surrounding. We are our occupations or professions, our hobbies and interests, our habits and behaviors. An office worker, an athlete, a reader, a motorbiker, a musician, an activist, a learner. Sometimes personality traits also define our identities: an extrovert, a hard worker, a visionary, a thrill seeker. We absorb these perceptions of ourselves and paint an image that is more or less consistent to them. And even if we don’t intentionally project this image, we subconsciously cling to it, often under the assumption that without such sense of identity, our existence would disintegrate or be compromised somehow.
The fascinating thing about all this is how little of the world is anything truly solid or static or separate. On every level, reality operates in a mode that allows everything to move, interact, and change in one way or another. Every single object is made up of matter containing subatomic particles that are far from static and could transform the matter from one metastable state to another. On much larger scales, landmasses and continents are (very) gradually shifting, massive stars and planets revolve and spin and rotate, and the universe itself is ever expanding. Organisms like animals and plants go through cycles of life, and overtime we all evolve and change depending on our interactions with the surrounding. Within human society, we exist in a system that is constantly shaping and reshaping ourselves, via the structure of laws and politics, the fabric of culture and tradition, and all the interpersonal relationships that fall under these. Our own individual, seemingly distinct selves are ever progressing, shapeshifting, and interacting with one another as we experience life events, relationships, and the push-and-pull of reality.
It is thus rather absurd and illogical to conceptualize anything in the universe as a static, discrete object. In fact, everything goes through processes of transformation. Everything is processes of transformation. This idea lends some insights into how we can reframe our way of observing and understanding the world and ourselves. I myself am not only linked to but also made up of whatever I have been taught to identify as “non-me”. There might even be no such thing as a “me”, so “non-me” could just as likely be automatically rendered an invalid concept (but this is an idea for another post). What I mean here is that the “processes, not objects” reframing can liberate us from feeling contained and penned up in the arbitrary bounds of discrete identities. Contrary to the immovable sense of self which we so often fall back on, we’re better off if we can know ourselves as mobile, unbounded existences that can very much change and morph in the most spontaneous, random manner possible. Society always tries to pin us to certain boxes and categories (if you read my blog regularly you know that I tend to start sentences with “Society” whenever I’m complaining about something). Thus we all intuitively adopt some sort of self-categorization even without external triggers because we have come to understand that our self-worth and value is only ever substantiated by this sort of static categorization. And yes, even any kind of “becoming” you think you are doing is rooted in this same notion of static categorization, because you are ultimately “becoming” a distinct “thing” (e.g., a wealthy person, an educated person, an accomplished person). Striving so hard to build up or guard this artificial sense of a distinct self is a Sisyphean pursuit of happiness and contentment.
Likewise, the “processes, not objects” reframing allows us to see the interconnectivity of every aspect of reality. Everything exists not in a vacuum but in a web of interactions that carry impacts across more ground than our limited mind can ever comprehend. The awareness that such interactivity exists not only humbles us into our minuscule position in this vast universe, but can also teach us a thing or two about how we may potentially repair our arrogance-induced failures. Anything we as human society do produces repercussions that we sometimes either brush off out of an assumption that things are isolated and non-interacting, or intentionally turn a blind eye to out of greed and vanity. We end up destroying the planet, waging wars, treating each other terribly, and sowing damage and misery wherever we go. Acknowledging our share in all the processes that are happening in this world can remove the barriers we tend to place between us and the “non-us” and help us realize for once that our place in the universe also heavily depends on everything else.