Each year, John Brockman, the manager of Edge.com puts forward an open-ended question to the world's greatest scholars and intellectuals and to those of us who are just nosy, who are used to responding to background noise. This year, he asked, "What is your favorite deep, elegant or beautiful explanation?". The Theory of Evolution came in first; the Theory of Relativity, second, and How the Brain Works came in third. However, the theory below was also on the list and being a 12 Stepper, I was intrigued by it and wrote something about it on my blog that I'd like to share with you.
Theory: We are who we pretend to be.
In 12 Step program, we are often told to "act as if," especially when we are confused about what to do or how to behave early on. We're told to act as if we know what we are doing. Acting as if is a form of practice. Practice makes yours. The behavior you practice becomes yours. To become a non-smoker, I had to practice not smoking. As a matter of fact, I'm still practicing, still pretending that I don't smoke. The article uses a quote from Kurt Vonnegut,"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."
You can read more at my blog: http://bgaineshunter.typepad.com/my_weblog/
