dont ever say you understand me.. because you just cannot

Many times i hear people use the phrase 'i understand' ... 50% of the times, they just dont understand, it is only used to mean 'ok, time's up, it is now time for me to put across my point' .. th give-away here is when the person says 'i understand' followed by the word 'but' .. it means he never really cared to understand you....

the above para is just intended to say that it is difficult to understand people's motivations, desires and behavioral choices.. and the primary reason why it is so difficult for one person to understand the above mentioned aspects of another person is "every person has a whole different set of chemical levels driving his day-to-day behavior and choices" ....

let me give an example from my own behavior.... i get excited big time when my wife asks me if i want another cup of coffee... if i say this to someone else, they think "whats wrong, what is so exciting about a cup of coffee?" ... but for me, the idea of a cup of coffee is extremely attractive since i derive a lot more pleasure than someone else from that cup.... my levels of opioids - the pleasure releasing chemicals of my brain are activating the pleasure giving region of my brain much more than the opioids of another person does to him with a cup of coffee... thus, the pleasure i derive from the cup is much more enhanced than for the other person... but this is about liking a particular thing - opioids only control how much one likes a particular thing, be it chocolate or coffee or anything else.

another example from my life.. i can go to great lengths to buy the best Banganapalli mangoes.. if i am invited to play a game of squash, i dont mind driving 15 kms to play a couple of games... to another person this may seem excessive - is the want for a couple of squash games so much as to make him drive 15 kms? this is where dopamine steps in - that wonderful neurotransmitter which was once known as the pleasure chemical but now is known as the chemical that drives want and desire, while opioids drive liking something.... just to deviate from the plot - wanting something is like wanting to eat a sweet.... liking something means, not having the intense need to eat a sweet, BUT if given a sweet liking it's taste by feeling pleasurable while eating it....

so my dopamine levels are MY dopamine levels and the way they make me do things is the way it ONLY makes ME do it... the dopamine system is the chemical system in our brains that helps us make the behavioral choices that helps us achieve goals or things that IT HAS TOLD US we DESIRE. So if am driven to great lengths to achieve something, as trivial as it might be like "to get a particular variety of coriander to make the curry smell and taste better" then it is because the dopamine tells me that i desire it big time and it motivates me to satisfy that desire. This can be applied to a whole lot of our desires and wants and our behavioral choices to satisfy those desires.

So next time someone tries to tell us that we are chasing something trivial, tell him that what he considers trivial is what you think is vital for your pleasure..