Altered State of Mind: Sustaining a Paradigm Shift
By Devna Panda
Each time I read a new quote or watched a new movie when I was younger, I felt like I was experiencing a paradigm shift. Every beautifully written piece of prose worked its powers of persuasion on me and slightly swayed my worldview. Eventually, I began questioning the validity of the quotes and wondering if I was possibly just an incredibly impressionable person. Yet, when I was seventeen and I read John Donne’s “Meditation 17,” my life was irrevocably altered. Now, chances are if we are close friends or even if you’ve met me in passing at a party, I most likely have shared this experience with you already.
My high school teacher Ms. Wallenberg (known affectionately as Wally) introduced the poem we would be discussing in AP Literature by asking a question: why are bells commonly used as a symbol in literature? After a few raised hands, the answer came swiftly: bells often signify death and suffering. In John Donne's “Meditation 17”, he uses this imagery to describe the idea of common humanity – “Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind. Therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls; the bell tolls for thee.”
These words have been reverberating in my mind since. As Wally explained how this stanza underscores that other people’s pain should affect us as acutely as if it were our own, something shifted in my mind.
We have a duty to the individuals in the periphery of our lives. I was reminded of the first time I was exposed to this line of thinking. In my junior year of high school, while I was taking the required health education course, our teacher had a guest speaker come in to lead the class. The guest speaker had been a victim of sexual assault and was coming to discuss the legislation she had been able to help put in place after her experience. Toward the end of her talk, she described a thought process that I had never encountered before. What if we were to accept partial responsibility for the well-being of those around us? When people that you’ve never encountered before walk past you, what if you consider what you owe to them merely because you are alive at the same time?
As someone who had been fairly consumed by my own life and mind, I was stunned into silence. If we were to give other people’s hardships as much wholehearted attention as we do to our own, this world would undoubtedly be a better place. We are each other's keepers.
While this thought process has been echoing in my mind for the last few years, it can be difficult to apply regularly. When my friend tells me about their latest failed talking stage, my sister calls me to tell me about the hard day she’s had, etc., I find myself consoling them with ineffective platitudes instead of putting myself in their shoes and imagining what it would be like to undergo that specific experience. I get caught up in the daily hustle and bustle of my life and what once occupied so much space in my mind fades into the background.
Ultimately, this experience begs the question: how do we sustain the paradigm shifts we experience? When we’re caught up in the sensory experience that a new album might plunge us into or walk out of the movie theater only to be surprised that there is still light outside, how do we hold onto this feeling even after the initial sensation has passed? Perhaps the answer is to live life with more intentionality and center the types of thinking that shake us out of our reveries and bring us closer to the persona we hope to embody.