M.K. Permejo

Are you also the type of person who does everything by the book? Well, I was. I feared being wrong because of the supposed shame I dread it entails, so I always try to do things right. And by *always* being right, sometimes, it translates to being cruel. I realize as I grow older that not everyone lives by the same principle, so being around me was like walking on eggshells. Finally allowing myself to be a beginner and make a few mistakes not only took a huge load off my back, it also made me more of a person. Perfection is for robots. We become less judgmental when we try to loosen up too.

You won’t be able to do this by yourself, but experiences–the good and the bad–can get you there. It also takes mustering the courage to let go of matters that work you up. And of course, reading books will help you a lot. So allow me to share 3 books that changed my life perspective, and hopefully, yours too.

The Brain: The Story of You by David Eagleman

Book: The Brain: The Story of You Author: David Eagleman Category: Psychology, Neurology, Science Publish Date: October 6, 2015 Pages: 256

David Eagleman, the neuroscientist who also authored ‘Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain‘ describes and illustrates details that explain our human tendencies in layman’s terms. The Brain is an engaging way to learn about ourselves and why we do what we do. Not to be mistaken as a textbook, although it doesn’t actually feel like that as you read through it even if it’s filled with facts that explain the story of us…

…the story of you.

I gather that having different experiences and upbringing which largely poles us apart is something that we already know by way of feeling, but particular predispositions somehow make us dismiss this common thought. We are coerced to believe that there are no grey areas in being right or wrong. It’s either you uphold a certain type of thinking or you’re canceled. I’ve noticed it from multiple spaces that claim to be representing minority groups, but every single time, these claims just prove to be how their sense of social justice is mostly to get themselves a hard-on rather than actually help. And the people they condemn, because they’re supposedly on the wrong side of righteousness, are actually the people who don’t even intently do others harm. This rewired my brain completely and made me question all the things I used to fight for so passionately. From a scientific standpoint, we are the result of everything we’ve experienced. Everything that altered the physical structure of our brain: our families, our culture, the people we surround ourselves with, the movies we watch, and the conversations we have–these leave footprints in our nervous system. I can no longer take it out on a person when they display their views and they look crooked as that must be how their brains interpret things. I have no control nor authority over what they should see as right and tell them what is otherwise considered relative anyway. All I can do on my end is simply provide my own thoughts, even if they are opposing, but not impose these thoughts for their undertaking. It is up to them whether they want to subscribe to it or not. The problems of the world are not mine to carry after all. I have a whole universe inside my own brain that I need to keep intact. I can’t keep worrying about anybody else’s.

Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain

Book: Kitchen Confidential Author: Anthony Bourdain Category: Biography, Memoir, Autobiography Publish Date: May 22, 2000 Pages: 312

Anthony Bourdain, a world-renowned chef, wrote an expose of sorts about what it’s really like to be in the food business. The way he tells it is so humorous and punk rock, but what made an impact on me is how he described employable traits. How he preferred those who did things from scratch, or at least knew how to, rather than those who aim to advance by means of artistic shrewdness. I can understand why he’d regard it as such. I’d hate to be served some spaghetti tacos, sushi donuts, or pizza soup under the guise of gastronomical innovation. The food and restaurant business is cutthroat, and he needs people who can step up to the plate. There’s no time to be babying anyone. Somehow, this goes against my pro-employee and socialist tendencies but I also fully grasp what he means by it all. It’s the simplest application to the old, age saying, “If you can’t take the heat, stay out of the kitchen!”

Similarly, I started applying this very notion in my everyday living. No longer do I try to change an ecosystem that’s long been that way before I even entered it. If some place’s culture is bad, it’s bad. I can either endure nobly or just get out. It’s the same principle as speaking your mind once to make your stand known, but if they don’t budge, it’s not on you to keep repeating yourself and convince them. Since refraining from making constant complaints, I can filter battles that are much more worthwhile to put my energy on. Everything else is just noise.

I also realized how easy it is to find yourself in a hate circle and discuss what ticks you about a person, a thing, or a place. The validation it brings as someone else echoes your same, negative views absolves you from any type of accountability–that somehow, you are exempted from the very thing you are calling out, that just because you pointed out something about someone, whatever that thing is can’t be pointed back at you. Time and time again, these are proven to be false as we all know how people can be a bunch of hypocrites.

The Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick

Book: The Silver Linings Playbook Author: Matthew Quick Category: Novel, Romance, Comedy, Drama Publish Date: September 2, 2008 Pages: 289

This debut novel by Matthew Quick is easily one of my favorite books of all time. It’s quite the read, starting off with the events of the main protagonist, Pat Peoples, and gradually describing how it came about little by little. No big information dump at the onset to make sense of it in the middle; it’s all sprinkled in the perfect amount for easy absorption. More than the plot to end “apart time” for Pat to reconcile with his wife, it tackles a delusion that many of us may very well possess–the belief in the coming down of Christ because you simply had faith. Sometimes it works in our favor, sometimes it doesn’t. When we’re not accustomed to changes or have a hard time accepting things that are out of what we had planned, it disorients us. For Pat Peoples, it disoriented him enough to forget the past 4 years of his life as he spent it in “the bad place”. It takes a whole lot of everything to dig yourself out of varying bad places. He was so determined to turn a new leaf after he got out that he does everything his wife used to ask of him. He starts working out like crazy to achieve a muscular body that he thinks his wife would be thrilled by when apart time ends. He reads books his wife teaches to relate to her more and be able to weigh in on conversations on those very topics. This shows how easily we can lose grip on what we should value most in life and soon spend our days trying to get that back. It displays how things may not always go as we had hoped, no matter how strongly we believe in silver linings. And I think we’re not immune to the reality that there are moments we simply can’t alter, whose repercussions we can no longer rewind. All we can really do is make peace with the past and move forward with a new sense of dealing. You could say this book didn’t really teach me to believe in silver linings. Rather, it reminded me that the mundane is already full of miraculous marks. All we have to do is not miss them.