Table of Contents
B. You As a Protagonist
The Protagonist in Our Mind
Of course, as the protagonist is associated with stories, the protagonist syndrome is also is associated with our story brain. Our right brain is our emotional as well as the imaginary brain. We do not deal with the external world directly. Anything in the external world is infinite, non-linear, and too complex to interact with. We create a version of the external world entities in our brain and interact with the world through these objects which are called internal objects.
So any number of people you meet in life, or you observe even remotely, gets snapshotted by your brain as an internal object, like a character in the movie of your life in your brain.
Just as your brain has these characters of internal objects that represent some physical persons you met in real life, your brain also maintains internal objects of different roles you play in life through different personas.
So, for our mind, our life is a story, a story that has several characters from the outside world, interacting with the characters of our personas. Awareness is the feeling that you experience out of this ongoing story. But if you are not you, but rather different personas, then how can you experience the story? The story of your life has to have a protagonist. It is the protagonist, whose journey you can experience. Therefore the brain creates a fictional character representing you, who interacts with your other personas, who interacts with the world.
Therefore the protagonist is at the top of the hierarchy(a Pyramid) of internal objects, that connects you with the external world, and through which the story of your life is told to you by your mind for you to feel and experience yourself.
Experince the Protagonist
It is very important to understand that at this moment also when you are reading this article, there are several threads and visions that your mind is creating for you to understand this article.
Even though you are interacting with the reality of this article, in order to make sense of this reality, your brain is continuously interlinking this reality with your memory which consists of events, and internal objects.
If I command you “Remember and visualize the first prize you won in life” your brain will show you the snapshot movie of the event from your life when you actually won your first prize. You can vividly see the entire event like you are watching live. And you will experience a positive feeling as if you are winning the prize right now, at this moment.
Now because you obtained a positive feeling while reading this article, unaware of the fact that the article made you feel positive by helping you to link your positive memory to the current reality, you will start understanding the entire article better. This article would have much better significance to your brain. And due to this, you may understand the concepts better, which will give you further good feelings, which would make this article more relevant, which would make you connect to the article more.
But if you try to remember what you have read so far in this article, you will not be able to recall each of the sentences as is. Rather you may see one picture of a pyramid with you at the top and some of your personas and some of the people in your life. So the brain remembers information as a concept, as a model, as a story, and not just a sequential set of sentences or random pieces of information.
Now if you close your eyes, and think of the concept of internal objects and protagonist, you may see a completely different picture than this article. What you are seeing is your perspective of the concept of the protagonist. This concept has your feelings and life experiences attached to it. This concept is created by your imaginary brain.
It is the protagonist you who learned the concept of the protagonist, neither the father persona of you, nor the son persona of you, nor the brother persona of you. You learned this concept, the protagonist learned this concept.
You might feel happy at this moment because this article navigated you from a not-so-positive state of “unknown, curiosity, confusion” to the present positive feelings state of “clarity, understanding, learning.”
At the end of this article, the protagonist inside your brain will be enriched with more knowledge.
Now you know that even though you are playing multiple roles, there is a protagonist who is getting enriched by the experiences of your life, by the knowledge, by the events, by the feelings, by the thinking. This is your Hero, the you, your aware self, the protagonist you.