#humanexperience

Note: This text offers a lyrical refutation of the "mind as computer" metaphor, arguing that trauma, memory, and the subconscious are not malfunctions but meaningful, living parts of a human ecology. Read it as a piece of philosophical prose poetry.

✦ ᛉ ᚨ ᚷ ᛟ ✦

When we call trauma a “virus” in the system

it’s a metaphor that glitches.

because memory is not a static file. every time we remember, we reconstruct. we don’t replay—we rewrite the book, each time, with new marginalia from who we’ve become since.

because the subconscious is not malware. it’s more like a private archive in a vast library. some volumes are written in languages we’ve forgotten how to read. others have pages fused shut by a careful, protective hand— not corrupted, just withheld.

because emotions are not bugs. what a machine would flag as an error—grief, fear, rupture— are actually annotations in indelible ink. they don’t corrupt the narrative. they become part of the text.

to call the mind a computer is to mistake a cathedral for circuitry. it turns mystery into malfunction. a virus is something you purge. a wound is something you live with, weave into your skin, sometimes even learn from.

this metaphor carries a quiet violence: the assumption that there’s an optimal, clean way to function. that deviation is defect. that healing means deletion.

maybe some don’t want to walk the long corridors. maybe they’d rather run a scan and quarantine the shadows.

but the mind is not a machine to be fixed. it’s an ecology. a haunted house. a library after hours. to be human is to learn to be its librarian— to sit with the stuck-together pages, to decipher the old scripts, to understand that not everything is meant to be optimized.

some things are just meant to be heard.

"But What Is Grief, If Not Love Persevering?" ❤️‍🩹 This Hit Different.

This powerful exchange from WandaVision isn't just a scene; it's a profound truth about loss, resilience, and the enduring nature of love. If you've ever felt the crushing weight of grief, or found strength in perseverance, these words will resonate deep within. 💔✨

Want to explore more moments that truly move you, share your own experiences, or find a community that understands? Click the link and connect with others who feel it too. 👇🗣️ 👉 https://t.co/Ttddedmvoc 👈

At its heart, literature feels like an offering: a human voice, fragile yet insistent, carrying across the dark. Strip away the genres and schools, the analysis and criticism, and what remains is a simple question: This is how the world feels to me — does it feel that way to you?

And yet, in this age of algorithmic summaries and artificial intelligence, something vital feels at risk. To let machines read for us is to inherit the skeleton of a story without its living pulse. Empathy does not come from the mere transfer of information but from dwelling in the grain of a sentence, the pause of a comma, the rhythm of a voice reaching out to us across time. When those textures are flattened, what is left is efficient but bloodless — a report on what it means to be human, without the experience of humanity itself.

Karl Marx described alienation as the estrangement of human beings from their own “species-being,” the essence that makes us capable of creating, feeling, and recognizing ourselves in others. To treat literature as something to be consumed through digests or mechanical paraphrase is another mode of that estrangement. It reduces the act of reading to utility, severing us from the raw encounter that binds us to one another. Against that drift, reading in its fullness becomes a form of resistance — a way of reclaiming presence, of insisting that empathy cannot be automated, that recognition requires our participation.

This exchange, humble as it may sound, has shaped civilizations. Aristotle, in his Poetics, claimed that tragedy offers catharsis — a purging of pity and fear, a ritual cleansing achieved through the safe container of representation. What seems at first like a technical detail becomes, on reflection, a timeless truth: we turn to stories not merely to be entertained but to metabolize emotion, to bear what otherwise might be unbearable. Centuries later, Martha Nussbaum, in Love’s Knowledge, argued that literature provides a form of moral philosophy — a training of the imagination that lets us inhabit perspectives beyond our own. In both accounts, the power of literature lies not in formal perfection but in a raw human gesture: the ongoing attempt to breach the silence that separates us, to transform solitude into recognition.

For me, this practice is not about mastery. I have never been especially gifted in the close reading of texts. My interpretations feel incomplete, my essays often lack elegance. But I persist — not because I expect to master the craft of literary criticism, but because I believe the act of engaging itself is essential. To read seriously is to keep the channels of empathy and imagination open. Just as muscles wither without use, so too does the ability to feel beyond oneself. Literature, as Nussbaum suggests, is an exercise — a way of building our capacity for connection in a world that continually tempts us toward indifference.

When I sit with Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, I feel language stretch itself toward consciousness: not the blunt recording of events, but the flicker and fade of perception, the half-formed thought, the swell of memory dissolving into the present. Woolf shows me that the texture of life is not linear but tidal, and in reading her, I sense my own inner life mirrored in that ebb and flow. By contrast, Toni Morrison’s Beloved offers not the rhythm of thought but the weight of history, insisting that the traumas of the past do not remain buried but walk among the living. Morrison’s novel echoes Aristotle’s vision of catharsis: the text does not spare me from fear or pity but channels those emotions into recognition, forcing me to sit with the ghost of history until I see it as inescapably human.

James Baldwin, in The Creative Process, reminds us that the discovery of literature lies in realizing our pains are not unprecedented. Reading reveals that solitude is never total; the feelings we believe to be private belong to a wider human story. I return to that observation often, because it captures both the solace and the summons of literature. Solace, because I see myself in others’ words and am less alone. Summons, because the very recognition of shared vulnerability demands that I acknowledge the lives of others, each carrying griefs and longings as real as my own. Roger Ebert, speaking of cinema, called movies “a machine that generates empathy.” Literature, I think, works no differently: it places me within the lives of others, allows me to feel what it is like to inhabit a different consciousness. Baldwin insists that our solitude is never absolute; Ebert insists that empathy is civilization’s most urgent task. Between the two, I see why reading matters: it is both the recognition that I am not alone and the invitation to recognize others in turn.

This is why I think of literature as both mirror and bridge. A mirror, because it reflects my own inner weather back at me. A bridge, because it carries me outward, across boundaries of time and culture. To read Homer is to feel the persistence of human longing across millennia, a reminder that even in the epic past, people loved, feared, and hoped as we still do. To read Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is to feel the urgency of voice in the present, tender and unflinching, a bridge into the intimacies of migration, queerness, and memory. These works do not stand apart; they converse with one another across time, and in their conversation, I am invited to join.

If there is a paradox in literature, it is this: it both isolates and connects. Reading is solitary — a quiet communion between me and a page — yet through that solitude, I am linked to another consciousness, sometimes separated from me by centuries. Literature creates a paradoxical intimacy at a distance, an intimacy all the more profound for being impossible in any literal sense. Baldwin, Morrison, Woolf, Vuong, even Homer; they are gone, or far away, yet their voices arrive in my solitude, refusing to let me believe that solitude is absolute.

And so, I continue to read, and sometimes, haltingly, to write. It is not fluency that matters, but willingness — willingness to engage in this long ritual of recognition. Literature, to me, is not an achievement but an exchange — a conversation that outlives its speakers. It insists that I listen. It refuses to let me retreat into silence or certainty. It keeps me in motion toward others, asking again and again: This is how the world feels to me — does it feel that way to you?

.·:¨༺♥༻¨:·.

References

Aristotle. Poetics. Translated by S. H. Butcher, Macmillan, 1902.

Baldwin, James. The Creative Process. In The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction 1948–1985, St. Martin’s/Marek, 1985.

Ebert, Roger. “Roger Ebert on Empathy.” Speech at dedication of plaque outside the Chicago Theatre, July 2005. Transcript via RogerEbert.com, 2018.

Homer. The Odyssey. Translated by Robert Fagles, Penguin Classics, 1996.

Marx, Karl. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Progress Publishers, 1959.

Morrison, Toni. Beloved. Alfred A. Knopf, 1987.

Nussbaum, Martha C. Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature. Oxford University Press, 1990.

Vuong, Ocean. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. Penguin Press, 2019.

Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. Hogarth Press, 1927.

.·:¨༺♥༻¨:·.

May mga sandali na hindi naman malalim ang nangyari, pero tumatama siya sa isang parte mo na matagal nang hindi nagagalaw. Yung simpleng biruan sa mesa, tapos bigla kang napatawa nang hindi mo mapigilan. Yung tawang may tunog ng pagod, may halong ginhawa. Bago mo pa mapansin, may luha kang pinupunasan. Hindi dahil malungkot, kundi dahil hindi mo na maalala kung kailan ka huling tumawa nang ganito.

Meron ding mga tagpong hindi mo inasahang bubuksan ka. Yung biglang may nag-abot ng bagay na matagal mo nang gusto pero hindi mo sinasabi. Yung simpleng “andito lang ako” na hindi mo hinihingi pero dumating. Yung mababaw na success na sa totoo lang, hindi naman malaking bagay sa iba, pero para sa isang taong sanay magtiis, parang may nabasag sa loob. Masaya ka. Pero may luha. Kasi hindi ka sanay sa gaan.

Minsan naman, natatawa ka sa gitna ng gulo. Yung tipong mali mali ka na sa stress, at biglang may nangyaring sobrang kabobohan kaya pareho mong naramdaman ang takot at katawa-tawa. Yung sandaling kinain ka ng pagod pero binawi ng isang simpleng biro. Hindi mo alam kung dapat kang magreklamo o tumawa. Kaya ginawa mo pareho.

Ang iyak-tawa ay hindi contradiction. Hindi siya clash. Parang maliit na puwang kung saan pumapantay ang bigat at gaan. Parang saglit na pahinga kung saan hindi mo kailangang magpanggap. Hindi mo kailangang mamili kung alin ang totoo sa nararamdaman mo. Kasi pareho silang totoo. Pareho silang sa iyo.

--///--

Paulit-ulit ka ng course pero nakagraduate ka rin. Nakakatawa sa labas kasi parang running joke na, pero noong hawak mo na yung diploma, hindi mo alam kung tatawa ka dahil sa dami ng beses mong muntik sumuko, o iiyak ka dahil hindi ka bumitaw.

Natanggap ka sa trabaho pagkatapos ng isang taon mong pag-aapply. Sanay ka na sa “We regret to inform you,” tapos biglang may email na “Congratulations.” Mapapahalakhak ka sa disbelief, at may kasunod na luhang tutulo.

Nagtipid ka nang todo, tapos noong sweldo mo nagkaproblema sa payroll. Nakakatawa sa malas, at may kasunod na konting iyak sa frustration.

Sobrang kabado ka sa interview, tapos basic lang ang tanong. Nakanganga ka lang, tapos naiiyak sa pag-uwi dahil na-realize mong hindi ka pala bobo, sobrang pagod ka lang noon.

Nag-resign ka sa galit, tapos niregret mo pagkatapos makita mong mababa pala yung final pay. Hahalakhak ka sa sarili, pero masakit din.

Hindi mo alam ang sagot sa recitation, pero lahat ng hindi mo alam tinawag ng prof. Napatawa ka sa absurdity, at naiiyak sa biyahe pauwi dahil ramdam mo na pagod ka na sa pakiramdam na kulelat.

Nag-ipon ka ng confidence para mag-confess, tapos ang sagot niya ay “hala di ko napansin.” Awkward tawa, at may marahang kirot.

Nanalo ka sa raffle, pero ang nakuha mo pinakamurang item. Malakas ang tawa mo, at may luha sa dulo dahil matagal ka nang walang nararanasang swerte.

Akala mo bagsak ka sa finals, tapos pasado ka pala. Tumawa ka agad, at nang nasa jeep ka na, may luha kang pinahid dahil isang buwan kang hindi nakatulog.

Nagka-crisis ka sa buhay, tapos biglang may promo ang favorite mong pagkain. Tumawa, at may kasunod na konting iyak.

Ilang taon mong niligawan, pero basted ka pa rin sa huli. Nakakatawa sa tagal mong nag-invest, pero pag-uwi mo, may luha kang pinigilan dahil ginawa mo ang lahat, pero hindi ikaw ang pinili. Ayos sana kung napunta ka sa "FRIENDZONE" kaso kahit dun hindi ka napunta.

Kapag sobrang pagod ka pero may nagbitaw ng timing na biro. Halos sumuko ka na sa araw, tapos may sinabi ang kaibigan mo na sa iba baka hindi nakakatawa, pero sa iyo parang may nabuksang pinto. Tumawa ka nang sobra, at may lumabas na luha dahil iyon lang ang ginhawang natanggap mo buong linggo.

Kapag matagal mong hinintay ang isang bagay at sa wakas nangyari. Simpleng good news lang—natanggap mo, naayos ang problema, gumaan ang bigat, at masaya ka sa iisang hininga.

Kapag may nagregalo o nagbigay ng maliit na kabaitan na hindi mo hiningi. “Uy naalala kita kaya binili ko ’to,” o “Inreserve ko sayo yung upuan.” Para sa iba babaw, pero para sa isang taong hindi sanay alagaan, nakakabiyak siya. Tatawa ka, at may luha sa gilid.

Kapag may nakwento kang mababaw na memorya at biglang umabot sa core mo. Kwentuhan lang, childhood, kalokohan… hanggang mapansin mo na masaya ka, pero may lungkot na sumisingit.

Kapag sobrang saya ng tropa, tapos may isang maliit na bagay na kumalabit sa emosyon mo. Lahat sila humahagalpak, at ikaw biglang nahuli ng sarili mong luha. Nag-overflow ka lang.

Kapag nag-crack ka sa sobrang pagod. Nasa gitna ka ng trabaho o problema, tapos may nangyaring sobrang kabaliwan… natabig mo tubig, mali yung pinasa mo, napa-utang ka nang hindi sinasadya. Naiinis ka pero natatawa, hanggang umabot sa luha dahil sobrang naipon ang bigat.

Kapag may narealize kang huli na. Na okay ka na, na napatawad mo na, na kaya mo pala. Yung realization na hindi mo hinahanap, pero tumama nang direkta. Masaya ka, malungkot ka, magkasabay.

Kapag matagal kang hindi masaya, tapos biglang may sandaling totoong magaan. Hindi mo alam ang gagawin. Hindi ka sanay. Kaya tumawa ka nang sobra, at umiyak nang konti… kasi puwede pala.

At sa huli, ang lahat ng iyak at tawa ay sabay. Hindi mo kailangan pumili. Hindi mo kailangan itago ang bigat o pilitin ang saya. Pareho silang sa iyo, pareho kang buhay. Ang mga luha mo ay hindi palatandaan ng kahinaan, at ang tawa mo ay hindi laging pagkakalimot. Pareho silang pahintulot na maramdaman ang lahat, ang pagod, ang ginhawa, ang sorpresa, at ang simpleng kasiyahan.

Sa gitna ng lahat, may maliit na puwang para huminga. Para lang sa iyo. Isang puwang kung saan pwedeng magpahinga ang puso at isip, kahit sandali lang. Isang puwang na nagsasabi na okay lang maging tao, na okay lang mapagod at mapasaya. Na sa bawat iyak, may tawa; at sa bawat tawa, may iyak. Na sa dulo, hindi mo kailangan pilitin ang sarili.

Dito mo mararanasan ang kabuuan ng pagiging buhay. At sa bawat paghinga mo sa maliit na puwang na iyon, mararamdaman mo na ang lahat ng nangyari sa iyo, lahat ng luha, lahat ng tawa, ay hindi nasayang. Lahat ng ito ay sa iyo. --///--

What you want,

you can't grasp,

if at all

it's placed

in the minds,

hearts,

and bodies of people.

What you want,