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Living, Thinking, Looking. Siri Hustvedt (2012)

by Siri Hustvedt(Favorite Author)

3.78 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

144473265X (ISBN13: 9781444732658)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Sceptre

review 1: The book is beautifully written. Different from the usual female authors, Siri states her thoughts through physiological theories, instead of purely basing on feelings and personal experience. I admire her knowledge on literature and arts. The whole section on Looking is talking about arts, which I had to skip most of this section due to my shortage of touch on this area. ‘You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are, in fact, no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. Mind is matter…All of human life can be reduced to neurons.’ The below is not related to this book, just some thoughts after I attending a class in TSOL called ‘how to stay calm’. I... moret came across a few questions in the class.1. Should people take medication to cure depression? Is depression curable by medication or it is just to get numbness? Spiritual gurus always say to embrace the pain/grief; In Buddhism, it’s believed ‘Life is Suffering’. Going through the pain is just part of the life and people do need to go through it instead of avoiding it (taking drugs) to learn the lesson what it is supposed to teach you. A guy in the class challenged this question by saying we do not know how much pain the people going through in depression. He watched a video comparing a person is holding his broken leg and this injury is treated properly by the doctor. However, a mental pain is just as bad as a physical pain (if not worse). Why do people think it is unusual or unnecessary to seek help (including prescription drugs)? Why are we treating this differently only because it is intangible?2. How long is a too long for a person to going through the grief period? Another example was brought up in the class is that a girl’s father passed away, 6 months later, the pain of loss didn’t go away. She went to see a GP, and the GP told her 6 months is enough time for grief, and then she was prescribed anti-depression drugs. On what basis can you defy a grief period? Is there a general standard? I guess it’s on a case by case basis. I remembered I goolged this question when I was in pain after the break-up w S. I questioned the time I was supposed to walk out of the pain. As people’s general expectation (as the web result I googled) the grief period is about the same /or half of how long the relationship lasted. However in my case, the grief time for S (2 months) is not any shorter than for R (2 n half years). When I think back, the incident with S is more like a sudden death of the person. I went through more difficult stages to recover from shock and denial. Therefore, it will be extremely difficult to identify the timeframe for the pain. 3. Do people have the same level of pain or affection? I noticed that people have different degree of attachment in romantic relationships. Some people can walk out of a relationships and keep the friendship with the ex. This is something I have never been able to do and never be able to understand. I do not hold the grudge or hatre towards my ex’s, but the broken relationships to me were always reminders of something painful. To keep seeing that person, is rather awkward and uncomfortable. We created pain, love those abstract words to communication, but people do not describe the degree of those feelings in their conversation. When you say you love a person, do you feel the same degree of affection as I do? When you say you feel hurt, how much pain are you feeling in your heart? This communication is particularly important in a relationship. And because of this misunderstanding of the words (not misunderstanding, we just cannot communicate on a satisfied level), that’s where the crack of relationships from. ‘Sorry, I thought you said you love me means you can’t live without me, not just you are sexually attracted to me’ 4. Can a broken heart be healed? When I think of going through a grief, I have the image of a heart being smashed or stabbed (it does feel like that sometimes). And the healing process (which we usually leave that to the time), is like the wounds on the organ (heart) being healed gradually. But is the whole brokenheart process as what I thought? Is that actually an organ get injured and to be healed, like any other physically injuries do? The pain is actually a sense in the brain which is the neurons reactions and give signal to make the heart feel trenched. The bad experience calved into memory. After a while, people don’t feel the pain that much is only because that they forget, (which time take effect here), not ‘heart’ being healed. The memories will be carried on and any similar experience will trigger the pain, and that’s the whole Carl Jung’s shadow theory are based on. Therefore, bad news! A broken heart will never be healed. We carry the bad experience forever with us in our memories. Good news! Bad experience is also the base of consciousness growth.
review 2: Siri Hustvedt is a remarkable writer, a perceptive art critic, a painstaking intellectual, and a profoundly gracious human being. Don't pass up an opportunity to read her work, or, if as privileged as I was, to hear her speak and to speak with her.Perhaps I will return to write my thoughts on/appreciation of some particular essays in this collection, as some have a more tenacious quality than a few others (there are 32 of them!), but for now, I will urge you: if memory, neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, or literature or art in any form matters in your life; swan-dive into this without delay. I often found myself nodding along with what I knew, and furiously scribbling in the margins what came as revelation. She is among the best and most pertinent we have. less

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