Just for a moment: Take a pause from your incessant flow of life and look back at yourself.

If you can observe yourself and your past neutrally you may find many moments when you have found yourself behaving quite out of character. If you are lucky, thank your stars that those momentary aberrations did not seriously impede the state of your affairs.

However, not everybody is as lucky as you.

Has it ever struck you as to why that happens?

Why, in a few triggering moments our behavior and personality goes completely out of character? The answer lies in a deeper understanding of the human system. We typically operate as a mind-body combine, with the body representing the hardware and the mind representing the software of this amazingly complex and yet supremely efficient supercomputer that we call as HUMAN.

The dichotomy lies in the processing of time.

For the human body, time exists in the here and now. So when we introduce ourselves as a certain age, knowingly or unknowingly we are referring to our physical bodies at that point of time. The body cannot go back in time and get younger no matter how hard we try nor can it grow older than its time. The body exists, here and now.

Paradoxically, for the mind running this body, time is very real. The mind has a past it may or may not remember, a present in which it is now and a future which it anticipates. When the mind running the body belongs to the same physiological age, we are in integrity, living as rational, intelligent happy adults. However that is rarely the case.

So in different situations, or triggers our mind of the past or the future hijacks the body and then we lose control of how we are behaving.

The best way to understand this is to look at the body as a car and the adult mind as the driver. This car also carries passengers in terms of different mind parts that have been created in different times due to conditioning, trauma, influences, beliefs etc. All these parts have a right to be passengers as long as the car is being driven by the adult who knows where his life has to driven.

However, if any of the passengers hijacks the car, then the direction is no longer safe and stable.

The net result is mental chaos and physical behavioral pandemonium.

So, the next time you observe a fellow human in the grip of an unhealthy state of mind, just for a moment, pause….wait…don’t rush into judgement…as you have no clue which passenger has hijacked his car.