Just read a book by Victor Lamme, a Dutch Professor at University of Amsterdam studying ‘consciousness and the brain’, called: “Waarom? Op zoek naar wat ons werkelijk drijft” [Why? Looking for our true motives]. He defines self-realization as “the search to the ideal balance between rewards, warranty from misery and social adaption fitting our brain”. His arguments and examples are absolutely convincing and I tend to agree with him (well, who am I as a layman to not to agree with an expert). Realizing that if this is true it also means I am driven by the same motives however feels a bit awkward; am I really that shallow?

Or is there more; is there room for more complexity within the framework? The answer is yes, not everybody feels rewarded by the same drivers and there can be social adaption with a lot of different groups. Still, the fact remains that you might be less able to ‘choose your personality’ than we think. Does this make life easier? Yes. Does it make life easy? Nope. Does this make understanding society easier? Yes. Does this make understanding society easy? Nope again.

So, my far but epic search to the layers of endless complexity called life is still far from ended. Welcome to my journey.