Living and Adrenaline

 Through evolution our body has told us to run away from what we are scared of. With this brain setting we have built up the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, also known as the fight or flight response. Through human history we have learned that we need to run from the things that scare us or we are going to die. The human who is the jumpiest is going to survive longer and pass on more of these "run away" genes. However, we have gotten to this point in history where we finally feel comfortable. Not just the "I have air conditioning" comfortable but a good feeling knowing that you are probably going to survive the day. With this finally comfortable feeling we no longer need to run away from our emotions but we to try to figure out the cause of our fright.

During the time when we were unsure whether we were going to live to see the sun set again the definition of what it meant to live would have been to survive long enough to reproduce. Now that we are at a time where we can pretty much reproduce all over the place, reproduction is not the main thing we have to be concerned about. We are able to widen the definition of what it means to live. To live usually means gaining as much pleasure out of life as possible which is a hard thing to do when pleasure is such a subjective thing and hard to accomplish; especially since everyone feels that they know what would make you the happiest.

I got intrigued by what it means to live while reading The Bad Girl by Mario Vargas Llosa. One of the characters hears the story of the main character Ricardo with The Bad Girl. Afterwards she says, "what a life" and several other phrases that make it seem that she thinks that The Bad Girl knows how to live, while she has been incompetent at forming such an existence that is as admirable. It bothered me the most that she envied The Bad Girl's life after she knew all about her strange lovers and how she practically man hopped her way around the world. To Elena, that is the life she wishes she could have. Maybe it's merely the fact that we want what we can't have. Since Elena had a stable life with a husband and a child she is not likely going to go out and get a bunch of lovers. She would be scared of that prospect and that emotion intrigues her.

It intrigues us to see people who face their fears since we still have that sympathetic nervous system telling us to run away. We envy them which is why we watch horror movies trying to scare ourselves into being brave. We watch the movies to prepare ourselves for the worst, hoping that if we were ever put in such a situation we would stand and fight, not run and hide. The Bad Girl faced her fears with her Japanese lover but all it got her was major tissue damage in her orifices. The sympathetic nervous system released the adrenaline when she was with him and it heightened her senses and reactions. She enjoyed that scared feeling that many people would run away from. Though I admire her dedication to pleasure, I feel that when it comes at such a price, you are looking too hard. Excitement can be forced from pain but sometimes the stakes are too high. Our evolution has failed us in some occurrences such as in The Bad Girl's case. We need that adrenaline to survive and so it has been made pleasurable to feel so that it can occur readily. Yet her pleasure was mixed up in a harmful desire, creating a situation that was dangerous for her, but pleasurable in its danger. She should have started running as soon as she felt the hurt occurring but because we are now so comfortable in life we are losing our sense of danger.

Even after The Bad Girl recovers from her injuries she refuses to live a comfortable life. The desire to feel that addictive pleasurable sensations that become so heightened with adrenaline is too much for her. She refuses to live what she deems a normal life and would rather die than be comfortable in her pleasures. She even tells Ricardo that she will make sure that he is never comfortable around her so that he will feel that heightened sensation around her. Though Ricardo cares dearly for his comfortable life, he would rather be uncomfortable with her than have any other life.

The aspirations and desires you have seem to correlate with what you think it means to live. We can all breathe and our hearts are all designed to pump until the electrical impulses stop. Yet, living is something that we seem to fail at quite often. We enter each day with a sort of trepidation towards the unknown that is about to occur. We see chances, encounters, and dreams pass us by. We do things to better our lives such as go to school, work hard, and build acquaintances. How successful are we really at making our lives the best possible? Why do we not just reach out and take all of the chances we have? But then, even if we did maybe that wouldn't lead to the life that we want anyways. Maybe the ability to be comfortable with your life is something to strive for. We are scared of the unknown, but there is usually a good reason.