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Memores acti prudentes futuri


You're unsure if I am a loose end or a strand
that waits for you to mend or understand
A few words
"When we describe the Moon as dead, we are describing the deadness in ourselves. When we find space so hideously void, we are describing our own unbearable emptiness."
~ D.H. Lawrence

"Is the meaning of life defined by its duration? Or does life have a purpose so large that it doesn't have to be prolonged at any cost to preserve its meaning?"

"Living is not good, but living well. The wise man, therefore, lives as well as he should, not as long as he can... He will always think of life in terms of quality not quantity... Dying early or late is of no relevance, dying well or ill is... even if it is true that while there is life there is hope, life is not to be bought at any cost."
~ Seneca

"People will tell you nothing matters, the whole world's about to end soon anyway. Those people are looking at life the wrong way. I mean, things don't need to last forever to be perfect."
~ Daydream Nation

"All Bette's stories have happy endings. That's because she knows where to stop. She's realized the real problem with stories-- if you keep them going long enough, they always end in death."
~ The Sandman: Preludes & Nocturnes

"The road now stretched across open country, and it occurred to me - not by way of protest, not as a symbol, or anything like that, but merely as a novel experience - that since I had disregarded all laws of humanity, I might as well disregard the rules of traffic. So I crossed to the left side of the highway and checked the feeling, and the feeling was good. It was a pleasant diaphragmal melting, with elements of diffused tactility, all this enhanced by the thought that nothing could be nearer to the elimination of basic physical laws than deliberately driving on the wrong site of the road."
~ Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

"It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend."
~ William Blake
TICoSME
Musicalities!
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dead winter (has some explicit stuff)
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Love Me Nice
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On practice
Sunday, January 18, 2015
My friends say things about me, like I'm patient, or strong, or caring. They talk as if these qualities were some innate part of me. I tell them otherwise and they shrug it off as modesty.

But I really don't think that I naturally have many of these positive qualities I'm perceived to have. Most of the things I am now were developed through purposeful effort. It's no different than training for a sport, except that whatever progress I make is internal rather than external, and therefore hard for others to see.

I wanted to be someone patient, kind, caring, selfless, etc. and that's the kind of person I have worked toward becoming. I don't think I had any sort of natural affinity for those things, and it's not always been easy to pursue them as qualities. I guess if I had any sort of innate or at least strongly-rooted advantage it would be that if I truly want something I pretty much always find a way to get it. This aspect of me just doesn't come up that often because there aren't many things I truly want.

In a previous post I talked about the insignificance of the individual in the larger scale of the universe. The external world is absurd and unpredictable, unmoved by the self. The internal world is more controllable, though many people don't understand that. It seems to me only sensible to focus one's efforts on the parts of life that one can control-- the self. Of course there are ways to affect the external world, but it's much more difficult, I think, and much less flexible. We can't choose the system we're born into, but we can choose how we play our role within it. This thinking has factored heavily into how I plan to achieve my goals.

My goals, I think, are hard to explain though. I guess in a way I want to be a skeleton key that can open any door. I want to be in a position where I never have to worry about my options, rather than wanting a specific option. I think having money and a good education will help me get there, but money and education aren't ends in themselves... I don't want to know things for the sake of knowing them, I want to be able to flesh out my understanding of the world with the knowledge I gain.

I don't get depressed as often or as heavily as I used to, and I do think this is significantly related to my efforts to mentally restructure myself. Having friends helps a lot when I'm feeling down, but I wouldn't have as many friends if I hadn't put a lot of calculated effort into becoming more social and learning how to get past my shyness. Being outgoing used to be very forced for me but it's become much more natural with time. I still have a long ways to go though, I think. I'm always going to be in the process of becoming the person I want to be, but I don't think I'll ever be that person, in part at least because I think I will continue to find things I want to change.

Epictetus had some good things to say about how I feel.

"...None of these objects that men admire and set their hearts on is of any use to those who get them, though those who have never chanced to have them get the impression, that if only these things were theirs their cup of blessings would be full, and then, when they get them, the sun scorches them and the sea tosses them no less, and they feel the same boredom and the same desire for what they have not got. For freedom is secured not by the fulfilling of men's desires, but by the removal of desire. To learn the truth of what I say, you must spend your pains on these new studies instead of your studies in the past: sit up late that you may acquire a judgement that makes you free: pay your attentions not to a rich old man, but to a philosopher, and be seen about his doors: to be so seen will not do you discredit: you will not depart empty or without profit, if you approach in the right spirit. If you doubt my word, do but try: there is no disgrace in trying."

"Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things. Death, for instance, is not terrible, else it would have appeared so to Socrates. But the terror consists in our notion of death that it is terrible. When therefore we are hindered, or disturbed, or grieved, let us never attribute it to others, but to ourselves; that is, to our own principles. An uninstructed person will lay the fault of his own bad condition upon others. Someone just starting instruction will lay the fault on himself. Someone who is perfectly instructed will place blame neither on others nor on himself."

These late hours are not the best time to be pursuing Stoic ethics, but here's one last quote I should really keep in mind for my own sake:

"The will of nature may be learned from those things in which we don't distinguish from each other. For example, when our neighbor's boy breaks a cup, or the like, we are presently ready to say, 'These things will happen.' Be assured, then, that when your own cup likewise is broken, you ought to be affected just as when another's cup was broken. Apply this in like manner to greater things. Is the child or wife of another dead? There is no one who would not say, 'This is a human accident.' but if anyone's own child happens to die, it is presently, 'Alas how wretched am I!' But it should be remembered how we are affected in hearing the same thing concerning others."

I don't advocate for being resigned to everything one encounters in life, but to figure out which things can be controlled and to control them in a way advantageous to the self, I guess. No bad faith...
2 Comments.


I feel like this kind of goes along the same lines as saying that you are your own worst critic. People see what they want to see and when something changes from that, something you're perfectly used to {such as quietness on a bad day} suddenly the people around you notice and aren't comfortable with it. Shrugging off people saying you're caring and patient is perfectly acceptable because you know there's several layers that others aren't aware of.
» LostSoul13 on 2015-01-18 01:36:56

re: I forgot to add this in with the other comment ... I think the ease of use for ergonomic keyboards for me comes with the fact that my fingers don't sit on the keys "correctly" so the slight tilt of the keys is actually kind of mimicking how my fingers sit on a normal keyboard. My fingers are offset by a key, with my pinkies sitting on the shift keys.
» LostSoul13 on 2015-01-18 01:39:13

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