7 Portals That Changed The Way I See The World
By: Roman Bromidge
Tags: Meaning, Productivity, Reflections, Self Improvement, Life

We can get stuck in our views. It’s all too easy to believe we’ve found the answers already and there’s nothing else to discover. But sometimes we find portals to new ways of seeing the world, and I’d like to share some that I’ve found with you.

On rare occasions you find yourself in a situation that is so thoroughly alien or profound that it completely upends your comfortable worldview.

As we age we usually grow more certain about ourselves and our views. In many ways this is a good thing, settling down into a stable personality and outlook helps us to focus on other, potentially more important, things. It is probably more difficult to raise children, for example, when you’re still not sure what path you want to take in life.

It is comfortable to drift into a solid mindset about how things work, because it helps you figure out what your position is on how things should work. Your values help you orient yourself in the world and if they are changing rapidly it can be exhausting to keep changing your path ahead as a result.

Comfort, however, is not always a good thing. It can be limiting, because we fear venturing beyond it. It can be toxic, if we are fearful of losing it by questioning the views of our peers. It can deprive you of purpose, by reducing your potential for meaningful suffering.

However, on rare occasions you find experiences and ideas that are so thoroughly alien or profound that it completely upends your comfortable worldview. Black becomes white, up becomes down, left becomes right. In the pursuit of truth and beauty such experiences are incredibly valuable for finding out what is real and what is a paper thin facade, just waiting to have a hole poked through.

By seeking portals to new ways of seeing the world we can expand our outlook beyond what we have previously known. It is difficult to reincorporate these revelations back into your consistent psyche, but I have found that doing so is deeply meaningful.

1. I Am Capable of Evil

I, like most people, think I am a mostly good person. I help others, I volunteer, I spend my time doing productive things. Learning, and truly understanding, that I am nonetheless capable of great evil and even that I might be able to revel in it, was a troubling experience to say the least.

“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts…”

Photo by Chester Ho on Unsplash

Reading and watching books about the Gulags and the Holocaust, I came to understand that in all likelihood I would not be a camp liberator or a brave individual who sacrificed themselves to protect others, but that instead I could have been a camp guard, towing party line and striking fear into the prisoners. That I, someone who believed that in general they helped others when they were in need, could easily be capable of doing the most despicable things forced me to reconcile with my shadow side. I had to understand and control it so it did not control me.

But, this knowledge makes being a moral person all the more impactful. When you behave and act well with the full knowledge that you are capable of doing terrible things it lends a greater weight to your choices. You are not following the rules because you have no other options, you are actively making the choice to behave ethically because you understand that your decisions have consequences.

I’m don’t think conforming to the ethical norms of society from a position of naive weakness can be considered moral behaviour. Your actions are not really your own, you only act in this way because you are fearful of the consequences of doing otherwise. This is fine when your own values align with those of your society, but the moment when these diverge is when ‘good’ people can become concentration camp guards.

“And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained.” — Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

Paradoxically, acknowledging your capacity for evil and discreetly choosing to forge your own values and act in a moral way decreases the likelihood you will be swayed by any pathological societal morality. It seems that knowing that you can commit and revel in horrific acts reduces the probability you will do so.

2. Process Beats Goal

When it comes to doing things, I’ve found that processes and systems almost always beat goals and outcomes. We’re trained a lot to see our success as an achievement of a series of goals: get the grades, graduate from uni, be hired for a big job. Unfortunately, such occasions are rare and the associated good feelings are fleeting.

What I’ve found is that by reframing what you want to do as a process you can ensure that regardless of whether you reach the goal, that you think you want to achieve, you can be content and happy. In the same way that Stoic philosophers encourage us to be satiated with less, I have found my life much more fulfilling after I decided to determining processes and systems for myself to follow instead of goals.

Because of the difficulty involved in being a responsible individual we are often swayed by those who promise that they will be responsible for us, if we just do what they ask us to do.

This is something which applies on many different levels, from individual to global. A company that puts goals before process will attempt to hit ever growing revenue targets whilst hollowing out its perceived value because it engages in anti-consumer practices. Socialist regimes across time have prioritised the goal of total equality before any ethical consideration of the process, resulting in the murder of over a hundred million people in the 20th Century alone.

Goals are ephemeral and ever changing, but processes are simply ways of doing things. A goal may not be achieved, but a process can always be performed. If you enjoy the process then it does not matter whether to achieve the goal or not.

3. Responsibility is Liberating

After coming to understand responsibility as being liberating rather than constricting I have found that the world is far more open with opportunities than it once was. Taking responsibility for your own life, your actions, and your environment is a surprisingly difficult but meaningful task. I have found that it forces me to reconcile with who I am as a person, determining my values and what I stand for.

Photo by S&B Vonlanthen on Unsplash

Because of the difficulty involved in being a responsible individual we are often swayed by those who promise that they will be responsible for us, if we just do what they ask us to do. Overriding our individuality by hijacking our need to belong they can influence our behaviour and actions, swamping our mind with their thoughts.

The archetype for this is the overbearing and overprotective parent. They offer you a tainted bargain: allow them to control your life for you and you will never have the difficulty that comes with personal responsibility. This can only leads to resentment and unhealthy dependency, as the infantilised child is trapped in a stagnant existence, unable to grow and change outside the boundary erected by those who control its life.

Breaking free of these constraints then, liberating oneself, is only possible through the acceptance of responsibility. You become the ultimate arbiter of what happens in your life, which will come with the positives and negatives. Overall though, I have found great meaning in being able to make, and feel the result of, my own actions and decisions.

Photo by Daniel Mingook Kim on Unsplash

4. Most People Are Making It Up as They Go

Discovering that most people don’t really know what they’re doing, and that they’re mostly just making it up as they go, was at first a quite troubling discovery. There is no proper way to act, and most just do what they need to fit in with whatever group they have around them. There are no secrets which, once learned, reveal the correct way to behave in all circumstances. There are no rails and procedures for life, only suggestions, and it’s up to you to decide which ones you want to follow and which ones you don’t.

After getting over the initial shock, this makes sense. Why do people act in a certain way?Because they think that people like them act in that way. You are not the imposter who does not know the procedures that everyone else is secretly following to achieve success whilst you just make it up as you go. Everyone is making it up as they go, according to who they are and what they think they should be doing.

You can have the best of intentions but if you do not do anything then you will not have anything to show for it.

Understanding that this is what is going on in the head of every person across the globe gives you a powerful toolkit. It means that you can do much more than you think you can, because you too can make it up as you go, fitting whatever you’re doing to who you are and what situation you find yourself in. There are no written rules for life, and while there is a constrained space for actions so that you don’t do wrong things, you can become whoever you believe you can be.

5. Outcomes beat Intentions

In a world of supposedly good intentions, outcomes beat everything. It does not matter if your plan was intended to produce the desired effect, it matters whether or not it actually did.

In your own life, intending to go to the gym, intending to start a business, intending to go on a date, does not equate to doing those things. The grand total of work done intending to do something is zero. You can have the best of intentions but if you do not do anything then you will not have anything to show for it. Your body will not grow a six pack because you intended it to.

More abstractly, the intentions behind say government policy to end homelessness does not make this policy good or moral if it doesn’t work. If your plan to end homelessness increases it then it is an immoral plan, not only not effective but counter-effective, and the fact that you had the best intentions does not count for anything. Your good intentions will not shelter that person from cold winter nights. Becoming more critical of whether things actually produce the intended outcome helps design solutions that work.

It is therefore essential that we look at outcomes and not intentions in our lives and those of others. As someone who used to be a person of intention, rather than a person of action (and therefore outcome), I have noticed a dramatic transition in my quality of life now that I have started to actually do things and measure how effective they were at altering my trajectory.

Photo by Scott Rodgerson on Unsplash

6. Life Ends Sooner Than You Think

Death, to a person in their 20s, is still seen more as an abstract concept than something which you deeply know will happen to you. Though you might have seen some relatives, pets and others pass away you are not entirely certain about your own mortality, yet. The time ahead seems to stretch on forever and you feel as though you’re still only just getting started with your life. This is true, but it doesn’t mean that your time will last forever.

Volunteering this summer, coupled with some deaths in the family, made me come to terms with how short life can actually be and gave me a sense of what death would feel life. The volunteering work, though often difficult and exhausting, is incredibly rewarding and after finishing it I have fond memories and know that I want to return, even though I know that beforehand I will be anxious about doing so.

This, I think, mirrors life itself more generally. From your starting point, the time ahead seems to stretch on forever with no end in sight. You know there will be troubles ahead and this makes you anxious, maybe you should just hide in your comfort zone and never leave. But then life happens, and after you look back and think about all the things you did, or didn’t do. In retrospect it will have seemed to go by so quickly, and you wonder where the time went.

Did you spend your limited time meaningfully or did you squander it on the altar of an eternal tomorrow which never really comes to pass. I have decided that I want to spend my time well, on difficult and meaningful things, so that i can look back on my life when I’m dying and know it was a life well spent.

7. You Are Being Lied To

Finally, I would caution you to take everything both I, and everyone else, says with a handful of salt. The world is full of people who will distort the truth and lie to get what they want. This may not even be consciously done, everyone has their own biases and ways of seeing the world. Sometimes the specifics are plastered over by our mind because it refuses to see something it doesn’t agree with.

When you realise that a lot of what happens in the world is built on a foundation of lies you start to question everything that people tell you. I’ve found this incredibly useful for getting to the bottom of how things actually work in a more pragmatic way. Politicians are just trying to get you on their side by telling a compelling story, but does what they’re saying line up with reality. Often it doesn’t, and this small segment is indicative of the world at large. If there is something you care about I think it’s worth doing the digging to find out the truth.

Photo by James Lee on Unsplash

I don’t think this means you should lie yourself. Truth and honesty is a powerful thing, and I’ve found that overall it produces the best outcome for any given situation. It may not be the outcome you think you want, but in retrospect I have found that it is always the best one. This seems like it can’t be true, but I’d suggest giving it a try. In the same way that someone who likes you because you pretend to be someone else isn’t really your friend, your achievements from lying are not really your achievements. Everything gained from lying is mentally tainted, even if only you know the truth.

This is not to say blind naivety is good either. Most other people will not be attempting to achieve truth and beauty, so you should be guarded as befits anyone operating in a world of change and uncertainty. But, where possible I have found it deeply rewarding to tell the truth, or at least don’t lie.

By exploring new ways of thinking we can uncover more about reality than remaining trapped in our own bubbles of thought.

So, now that you’ve seen a glimpse of the world through the portals that opened to me, it’s over to you to find some for yourself.

These are just a selection of the gateways that expand into new ways of looking at the world. I believe there are many more, some which only you may be able to find. By exploring new ways of thinking we can uncover more about reality than remaining trapped in our own bubbles of thought. In a world of growing polarisation and accelerating forces, being able to grow your mindset to cope with the changes that will come is, I think, probably one of the most important skills you can develop.

Take a step through a portal and you might be enlightened by what is on the other side.