I was waiting for enough content in this thread to respond to with my own thoughts -
My relationships with inanimate objects are perhaps in
many, many cases much, much stronger than my relationships with people - to the point where my ex-wife used to feel
jealous of my relationships with my Keyboard, my computer, my car, my keychain [I've had it for 12 years], my pillow, a Dodgers T-shirt my sister got for me,
Long story short, they were talking about personifying inanimate objects or body parts (arms, toes, pens, gummy-bears). It's probably different for someone who has the condition, and I can't say I've ever personified a pen, but I do feel sorry for inanimate objects quite often.
Anyways, does anyone else personify objects? If so, which ones?
Yes. I not only personify objects, I love them, dearly, to the point of feeling loyal to their existence, to placing value upon their existence because all that those objects do for me in my daily life. I kept a ticket stub of the first movie date I went to with a dear crush for 7 years [from age 17-24] and I still feel a pang of guilt as I type it for throwing it away.
I had a deep connection with my wheelchair and my walking stick as my "partners in life" and I would consider them my best friends for a while when I had no one else to talk to. I didn't talk to them - but they were my "pillars of strength"
I had a pillow that I still long for and sometimes long for the
feel of that pillow like one would long for the touch of a lover.
lol, when I would format my computer:
"Goodbye old friend."
When I would throw away excess water/drink into the sink because I cant take another drink:
"It's nothing personal."
My computer is also one of those objects that I have a love/hate relationship with. It's not the computer - but the data it contains. It contains everything I've ever done over the past 15 years [thankfully never faced the trauma of losing any of my data ever].
My earliest music tapes [about 9 of them] have disappeared and with it my first ever creations :/ I miss them like I would miss a great friend and I sometimes wonder what might have happened to them - what kind of ordeal they might have gone through :/ I feel neglectful and uncaring and guilty to have allowed myself to lose them.
Well, I often feel a lot for inanimate objects. Strongest one by far was the one for my pillow back in the old college days where the hostel was a complete dump. It felt like I was leaving behind a comrade, someone who had experience hell and high waters with me and there was a very strong feeling of abandonment. I literally cried.
No pillow has replaced that pillow ever since.
The part I could feel most is the feeling of abandonment. Another thing is also placing and position where if I move or break something, it is as if I have tampered with it's sense of place and home. Like taking someone and placing them where they don't belong...
Are you me?
We implies that everyone feels the same way. I recognize that it's something that everyone has experienced in some form or another, but I don't necessarily think everyone feels the same way about such things. Certain objects carry significance for some individuals and do not for others. It's incredibly complex.
No, nobody will rejoice about dropping their iphone, obviously. I'm talking about appreciating an object to the point where it becomes human-like in the way one administers sympathies, hence "personification". Like I said in my initial post, I am endeared to my computer because it does a lot for me- it makes things easier for me, it essentially does nothing but "give" and cater to my needs. For these reasons, I'm endeared to it....not just because it's expensive, although that does factor into the equation.
I'm basically saying that it triggers my empathy, almost as if it were a human being. I do feel sorry for the couch, because as you said the couch represents an idea, one of loneliness and abandonment.....something that was once loved and enjoyed is now sitting by a dumpster. I guess I don't really disagree with your points (aside from the animal crackers) I just disagree with the use of "we" because that implies that everyone experiences the same reactions in these situations.
As for synesthesia, the forum did make it seem as though there was a correlation, however, in the context of this thread, it was basically just a backstory....something I saw and related to in some instances, which sparked my further interest in the topic.
I don't know about any relation to synthesia - but I've bolded what I relate to.
I personified objects when I was young. I had a very over active imagination, though. I thought my dolls could be alive (too many horror movies too young) and would get mad at me for mistreating them. So if I would get mad and throw one of them across the room, I would have to apologize to it and soothe it, or same thing if I dropped one off the bed while I was sleeping. I also couldn't let others dolls get jealous of the amount of time another spent with me. ...I was kind of a weird kid.
However, I don't think this is quite the same thing as what everyone else described. If it does have to do with sentimentality, well... I'm not very sentimental honestly. I mean, I sorta am. I still have most of my favorite dolls from when I was a kid. But I've also lost a lot of stuff while moving and I don't care about most of it (but I do about some of it
).
I don't personally relate it to sentimentality - more so to the desire to create emotional connections because after all we're 'feelers' and emapathic ones at that. When I break something in anger, I feel guilty not because I broke it, but when I look at the broken pieces, I feel evil, uncaring, unkind. It triggers my empathy for the object - especially if it's one I loved.
I broke my walking stick in a fit of anger - and I felt like I killed my best friend ... It tore me apart inside when I finally recovered from the anger and I just sat there thinking of all that the walking stick and I had gone through together - and I killed my best friend - I still feel the pain of what I did that day - though it's getting better.
Great thread
