Patterned responses

Excerpt from "The Search for Freedom" by Robert S. McGee:

"These patterns develop at a time when we are in poor condition to make good choices. To help you grasp this, let me use as an example something that happened a few months ago when I had my appendix removed. While in the hospital, my attention was riveted to one of two things: either the pain I felt or the relief that the morphine brought. Many of my friends called or visited during the hours following my surgery, or at least they told me they did. I don't remember some of them.

Let's suppose a person called several days after my surgery to inform me that he had visited shortly after my operation and that I had signed all types of business agreements. Some of these arrangements, as it turns out, were extremely detrimental to me. As you might expect, I would not accept the legality of any documents I signed or verbal agreements I made. I would have such decisions set aside on the basis that my reasoning was extremely impaired. Both my visitor and I would clearly know this to be true.

Yet there was a time in my life when my judgment was even more impaired than during my recent post-surgery haze. It was during the first several years of my life. My thought processes were essentially dictated by those around me. Other people taught me what they believed to be truth (or, at least, what they wanted me to think truth was). Eventually, these truths became absolute convictions--about myself, the people around me, and the world in general. These basic convictions then became patterns of responding to myself and to other people. I can tell what I really believe by how I respond to life, not what I say I believe."