Associations with past events

Associations

Being ill can make you appreciate the good times. To be ill enough to take the day off work but not so bad that you wish you were dead can give you time to reflect. It is quite sanctifying.

Members of your family are throwing up in the toilet. They are groaning. They are ill for sure but are exaggerating how bad. They try to elicit some sympathy. Rather than expressing sympathy you drink some fresh orange juice, gleefully believing it will ward off the nasty cold that the others have. Sometime later you begin throwing up too, re-tasting the orange juice drank shortly beforehand. From that day forth, the sight of orange juice brings back memories of that emetic experience. You drank it happily, readily, before but now you declare that you would prefer something else to drink instead. You create an association between orange juice and vomiting in your head.

These associations are powerful. They can linger for a long time. In some cases, you might avoid oranges and orange juice for years. However, after several hundred revolutions of the earth you try some orange juice again, albeit with a little trepidation. You announce to the world that you like orange juice again via attention seeking displays and fanfares. You have returned to your former state. Your preference for orange juice over other drinks never went away. It was masked instead by the negative association you had with it.

Bad associations put a blanket over our preferences. The intensity of associations we have with things can become so great that we become phobic. A total rejection of something that you inherently like but avoid because of bad experiences associated with it. In such cases, we either exist with the phobia or dismantle the connections in our mind that derail our preferences. Associations can help us stay safe, but they can stop us from enjoying the super and sublimely great.

There is an art to seduction, much less a science. We can seduce people to go on a date with us. We can seduce people to buy things. We can seduce people to override their inner preferences. Your fixed preferences will rarely align well with your friend’s preferences. Your preferences can’t be moulded and shaped at will to suit others. When a friend says something positive about something we may agree but agree with dishonesty. The wise may agree however, knowing that it is good to be polite and diplomatic.

We can’t change the core of what we are. We can’t change our preferences given to us at birth. Nurture plays a huge role in how we turn out but some aspects of us are fixed. It is a cornerstone of who we are as individuals. The things that we have a strong preference for, things that we go to great lengths to seek out are what I call affinities. A powerful force are they.