I've once read somewhere that the will is a muscle. If you strain it too much, it'll break down on you and stop working. If you train it bit by bit, pushing it to near limits every time, then it gets stronger and stronger till you can weave it as you please.

Like a muscle, it has its original intended function, yet with practice can be wielded to many purposes. We don't ever realise how much we're using it, until it collapses and the lack of it surfaces disastrous effects.

At the same time, I've never realised how difficult it is to control thoughts.

Everyday, day to day, we learn how to restrict, to control, our actions, our speech, how we talk, how we act, but the underlying thoughts behind them are granted free rein. It is as if we can think of whatever we want to, and not suffer from it, as long as it doesn't show on the surface, on our words, our moves.

Now that I attempt to tame what has been let free for too long, I find the task improbable, and failing many times a day. The only way to control one's thoughts is through enforcing the will on the mind. And yet my will is but a weak and faltering muscle disused way too often in thought-control.

What happens is simply disastrous.

Sometimes the will breaks down and thoughts run a free, breaking the tight reins the will imposed and pulls along emotions that was kept away. Other times repetitive thoughts overpower everything else and impulse, instinct, takes over and threatens speech and action.

How then would I be able to control a beast fed too fat from years of indulgence?

Sometimes I see myself as an amphibian. The one that dwells under a well. When I look up, the sky is only a circle, just that small round circle. Occasionally I see clouds, occasionally the big bright sun. Sometimes the moon appears in its various forms, and other times disappearing for days and weeks altogether.

Tunnel vision doesn't affect me, but SNSD is the only sky I see.

Maybe flying across the sky is a swan that I'll never be, but that doesn't stop me from lusting the flesh of its wonderful body.

Sometimes voices speak to me, asking me why don't I ever leave. I just don't know what's good for me, in the world that I'll never see.

Erikson's psycho-social stages

In young adulthood, people face a challenge of intimacy vs isolation.

It is often described as a fork in the road where if successful, leads to the path with the more desirable outcome. However if the wrong path taken, less than ideal outcomes would often surface, which in this case is obviously the result of isolation.

It can be thought of in a way that people at this age group requires some form of identity and intimacy already formed. Without which, what often entails is the constant feelings or loneliness and isolation. It isn't so much so that they can't find intimacy anymore but more like they suddenly realise, rather painstakingly that maybe isolation suits them better. Even if the realisation is misguided.

How would they then get out of this cycle?

I have no idea, since I probably require the answer too.

After depression comes denial, and acceptance follows right behind. Beginning to think that the great old puppeteer has once again fooled my mortal minds, blunt those instincts that I've come to trust so dearly.

Maybe it's really the learnt helplessness kicking in. Just like how I realize at the end of the day, we are all just animals, fighting for the same things that animals would fight for, just in a different and supposedly more civilized way.

Just like how learnt helplessness disables the ability to struggle, perhaps one day I'll learn to wriggle comfortably in unease so much so that I'll slowly forget the consciousness of others.

Where to one, one is the world, yet to the world, one is nothing but a speck of dust.

Once and again, it happens. Fate plays us around like little pieces on the chessboard, and I'm just a pawn that deserves no special attention.

Why then? Every time I come close to stopping, to understanding, to enlightenment as some might call it, divine intervention stops me? Is it the lack of resolve that leads the devil to tempt, or just the good old angel guiding towards the right direction when I'm off my track?

Its as if my decision don't mean a thing to any of them, and that with a simple flick of the wrist they could rewrite my destiny, my circumstances, my decisions.

Learnt helplessness?

Maybe I should just stop feeling, stop desiring and my sufferings would stop, like what Buddhism preaches, since it lies the closest to my atheistic views.

And here I am talking about angels and devils, how ironic.

How do you win in a chess if you show your intentions right away?

If your opponent already knows what you're up to, how can you go around it and win? It might seem real foolish, especially since the intentions were purposefully set forth in an obvious manner, just so they would be known.

Well what if the other option may allow you to play the game with small chances of victory but the looming threat that you would forever stay as just a chess mate to your opponent? Nothing more than someone who he/she plays chess with occasionally (or not)?

Maybe the read on the situation wasn't clear enough to realize one option heavily outweighs the other, but at the same time, availability heuristics has clouded judgement and who is to blame since heuristics is always our first course of action, even though it is often bias and incorrect, as compared to algorithms?

Is it even possible to base one's thinking and decision making purely on algorithms?