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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 Think about it Musicalities! Kill that boredom!
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Jhonen Vasquez's site Overheard in New York Passive Aggressive Notes Submarinechannel.com Superdickery UHpinions Whirled | Solidifying steps Tuesday, September 26, 2017 I'm thinking again about the passage I posted a few entries back from Man's Search for Meaning. Specifically this part: And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would,or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate. Frankl himself admits that he wasn't always able to be his best self under the difficult circumstances he faced, but it's clear that he did try. The effort matters. I'm also reminded of something that Joël mentioned while I was visiting Becka and him in Australia. When he was preparing to interview at Google, he spent some number of months (six, I think?) learning about Google and its culture and doing research on how to ace an interview there. He read one book that talked about how Google wants people to be very ambitious, and so they expect people to meet something like 75% of their goals. Now, 75% seems kind of low, but the idea is that if you're meeting your goals 100%, your goals are not ambitious enough. When I think about things from this perspective, I feel... somewhat better about not getting every single thing right. I'm ambitious in this regard, and that's not a bad thing, so long as I don't beat myself up over every failure. Failures are just learning opportunities, after all. So anyway, I'm asking myself, "how can I be my best self across as many situations as possible?" and trying to give myself some basic directions to simplify things. Thinking through this, I come to the conclusion that I have to be aware of myself first and foremost. If I don't realize how I'm being in any given moment, how can I be my best self? Sort of an obvious starting point, but it is tricky. I don't think people, myself included, are often aware of the ways they're being influenced by external situations. This is a big part of why I have a checklist to run through if I notice my mood seems pretty negative. I keep it in a task tab in Gmail for quick access. When I was younger and my mom and brother and I would fight, my dad often suggested we eat something, and I thought it was a dumb way to address the problem, but he had a point-- when you're hungry you tend to be more irritable and less charitable. Same goes for the other things on that checklist for me personally. If I'm lacking any of those then my mood can take a hit. It's helpful to me to be aware of those influences so that I can correct for them. Otherwise it's easy to just rationalize away bad behavior. It's especially easy to feel justified in acting badly if you've been through a lot of stress. We see this commonly when people take out their anger on others (the defense mechanism known as displacement). Frankl gives an example of this kind of behavior in his description of one of the ways some of the concentration camp prisoners reacted to being freed: During this psychological phase one observed that people with natures of a more primitive kind could not escape the influences of the brutality which had surrounded them in camp life. Now, being free, they thought they could use their freedom "licentiously and ruthlessly. The only thing that had changed for them was that they were now the oppressors instead of the oppressed. They became instigators, not objects, of willful force and injustice. They justified their behavior by their own terrible experiences. This was often revealed in apparently insignificant events. A friend was walking across a field with me toward the camp when suddenly we came to a field of green crops. Automatically, I avoided it. but he drew his arm through mine and dragged me through it. I stammered something about not treading down the young crops. He became annoyed, gave me an angry look and shouted, "You don't say! And hasn't enough been taken from us? My wife and child have been gassed not to mention everything else - and you would forbid me to tread on a few stalks of oats!" I know I just shared this clip a few days ago, but it felt relevant again because of this one line: "Well, I'm sorry that things have been so hard for you, but that doesn't give you the right to be shitty to me." I feel like this is one of those things that seems obscenely obvious when you hear it said, but until that point it isn't necessarily. Or at least, it wasn't for me. I had to learn that it wasn't okay to take things out on other people because I felt bad, and that it wasn't okay for them to do that to me either. There's a constant stream of choices to make about how to behave and how to view what happens to me, and for awhile I've been feeling like it's a burden to always have to choose the "right" path, but I'm reframing things now. When a difficult situation is presented to me it is a challenge and a test of my commitment to my goals. It's an opportunity to prove to myself that I can do the things that are important to me, and that's ultimately good. 0 Comments.
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