How it started
I am not sure when this idea started forming.
Whether it was always there, quietly sitting under the surface,
or whether it emerged at some point on a whim of the reflective imagination.
But I know what surrounded it.
Instigated it
And led to it.
Living a very long period of difficulty across different levels of life.
Repeated attempts to make sense of what was happening.
And the weight of the pain that came with all of that.
At first, I was living and seeing from within.
Fully inside the experience.
The pain was too much.
The anger was too much.
The darkness was too much.
And the loneliness was too much.
The Turning Point
It could have been for survival’s sake,
letting go sake,
denial’s sake,
or healing sake.
At one point, I felt the urge to shift my way of seeing
So, I tried to step outside my experience.
Disembody it.
Observe it.
like I was a fly on the wall.
Watching things unfold.
Or an observer at the edge of the room.
Looking at my heaping body trembling in tearful weeps.
Noticing emotional pain that turned physical.
But none of that was enough.
Because even when I stepped outside,
the emotions were still too strong.
Too domineering.
Too clouding.
I thought that watching from the outside would be enough
to prevent emotions from controlling me.
But it wasn’t.
It felt like watching someone being beaten in front of my eyes.
The anger was too much not to react.
And the more I experienced,
the more things did not make sense,
and the less I was able to keep from bursting into tears
at the smallest events.
My body was flooded with emotions that were too much to carry around
without spilling over.
No matter how hard I tried,
how good my intentions were,
and how much I wanted to change my life to better.
The life I was living did not improve.
To the contrary. Challenges increased.
And what made it harder was what I saw around me.
People committing what felt like clear harm,
and being rewarded for it.
Applauded.
Appreciated.
Living as if life was at the tips of their fingers.
Not caring whether their thoughts were dark, or their deeds were darker.
That is when I realized that I can’t run or hide from what I see
or how much I feel.
At the same time, I can’t stay where I am.
I had to go further away.
Climb a level above.
Then another.
Then another.
To take myself outside of all of it.
How Everything Made Sense
As I kept climbing
seeking to normalize my feelings
I reached a level where things started to look different.
Less like events.
More like pieces.
Puzzle pieces.
And for the first time, I could see how things connected.
Not always neatly.
There are times when the puzzles aligned.
Other times they stacked in ways that didn’t make sense at first.
But there was always some form of structure.
A structure, no matter how high I reach, I was still part of it.
There was always some interaction.
A clash. A dance. A game.
That is when I started seeing the world as systems.
Not as isolated events.
Not as good or bad people.
But as structures that function in certain ways.
And every time I try explained something from that lens,
to myself
It made sense in a way nothing else did.
It answered questions I couldn’t answer before.
Not because there was no answer.
But because I was too involved.
Too physically, psychologically, and emotionally inside it.
To be able to see clearly what was happening from the outside.
The Power of System’s Lens
Seeing through a systems lens made me notice that,
It reduced judgement.
because things were happening based on how they were arranged.
within the complexity of everything surrounding them.
It reduced the feeling of superiority.
Because every part exists within the system is necessary.
There are different systems, not better or worse.
It reduced anger.
Because anger assumes that things should be different,
while systems showed me why things are the way they are.
Regardless of my opinion or preference.
It also changed how I see myself.
If I am not loved by certain systems,
that does not reduce my importance.
If I am rejected by a system,
it is not a rejection of who I am.
But a matter of finding my placement.
If I do not fit within a system,
it does not mean I should force myself to fit.
It simply means I am not meant to function there.
I learned that there is always another place where the same piece
would fit and make the system work differently.
And that way of seeing carried emotional relief.
The Way of Cells
As answers started to emerge,
Like puzzle pieces fitting together seamlessly
Another question appeared
How does this apply at smaller levels?
I imagine that in some ways, it is the same.
But in the opposite direction.
I saw that firsthand during my PhD.
Working with cells.
Watching them behave.
Respond.
React.
Sometimes it was subtle,
Others it was dramatic
Based on how they were treated.
How they were fed.
How they were handled.
At the time, I did not have a clear hypothesis.
So I was not trying to prove or disprove something specific.
I was curiously observing and listening.
To what the system was showing.
Even with limited guidance,
and more naivety than I realized at the time,
I was trying to make sense of fragmented pieces of a story
I had the privilege to access to.
And what I saw stayed with me.
That at the most basic level,
systems respond in predictable ways.
And when I look at humans now,
I see something similar.
Not in a reductive way.
But in a structural way.
A systemic way.
We may present ourselves as different,
advanced, intelligent and unique.
Which may be true
But underneath those layers,
there are patterns.
Reactions.
Ways of functioning that are more primitive
than we like to admit.
Often driven by ego.
This realization made me understand some things about humans and their interactions.
Final Thoughts
Seeing the world and humans as systems.
Both primitive and unique.
Is not a judgment.
It is an observation.
When I see interactions between people now,
I don’t only see what is being said. or done.
But I see a complex web of systems interacting
Sometimes aligning.
Sometimes clashing.
Sometimes creating something that works.
Sometimes reinforcing something that doesn’t.
This does not make everything simple.
Neither it is absolute.
But in that complexity lie some answers,
making some things clearer. To me.
And for me, that clarity is not optional.
It is the only way to make sense of what I was living through
without being consumed or broken to infinte pieces by it.
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