Saturday, August 27, 2011

Do you sublimate?

Sublimate, Word of the Day for Saturday, July 9, 2011, has 3 major meanings as seen below:
1. In psychology, to direct the energy of a primitive impulse into activities that are considered to be socially more acceptable.
2. In chemistry, to refine or purify a substance.
3. To make nobler or purer.
Now, few of us are chemists or likely to often refine or purify substances normally. But all of us I believe, have always before us the opportunities to try and make thinks nobler and purer if we really wanted to. And the best way to do that is psychologically.
In the example they give for sublimate, they then give this following quote: “I sublimate my depression into creativity, but as a man who can only focus on one thing at a time, I can only sublimate into one target. --- Marc Koetzle, The World of Should”.
Thus there, we see the beneficial psychological direction of a basic hurtful action taken and intentionally redirected into something creative and beneficial. But even here we see that usually, one can only direct or sublimate our energies fully and properly into any one objective at a time, don’t we? Again we have the warning to not to try and spread ourselves too broadly and to always finish what we start too, don’t we?
So how are you going today sublimating the energy of your primitive impulses into creative activities? Or do you still need to work on that a bit more?

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