If you are seeking the authentic you, the unadulterated authenticity of the unique self, it would only be revealed when you are by yourself, without the distractions or pressures of others.
Yet, who we really are might only come from the challenges of interacting with others, otherwise your conception of self is untested.
Category: Self
- Theme: Self
Finding yourself through others
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1–2 minutes - Theme: Self
Peter Pan’s dark shadow
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1–2 minutesThere are multiple versions of the self we show the world. This engenders a “shadow self” anchored to problems and secrets, binding us to failures.
Peter Pan caught his shadow, unwilling to let the dark trickster slip away. The lesson is to integrate the shadow as a dark reflection of ourselves necessary to becoming whole. After all, it is our shadow… no one else’s.
- Theme: Self
Participating in our own erasure
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1–2 minutesIt seems a constant erasure of our past is buried under new scribblings.
If we are driftingly content to dismiss our own lived experience (that is to change our memories to fit the new lines or repress the dissident noise) then we are not only shaped by history and culture, but we fortify the very shape that writes us out of existence.
- Theme: Self
Best intentions to help yourself
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1–2 minutesThe little things you do to help yourself often trip you up.
So I won’t forget something, I put it in my pocket, but then it is “out of sight, out of mind” and I walk around looking for it.
It is only by internalizing our system, so that we no longer remember to remember, that we truly help ourselves.
- Theme: Self
The cure for pain
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1–2 minutesWhen you are the center of the world, every emotional pain is amplified. The pain gets trapped in a loop becoming stronger and more hurtful.
The cure is to care more about something outside of yourself.
- Theme: Self
Moment Mori
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1–2 minutesToday I envision myself being killed in a traffic accident during rush hour. My only concerns were that my wife knew that I loved her, and that I had not spent enough time enjoying the rich beauty in nature.
Literally two minutes later I found belly button lint in my actual belly button! It somehow seems profound in a lighthearted way. Is this the first time the navel gazing actually generated a result?
- Theme: Self
The Trap of Grave Compassion
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1–2 minutesSerious, grave people full of concern, caring, and -most importantly-compassion often attempt to decide how the world should be for everyone else.
The trap is obvious: considerate goodness is, of course, something we must support. But whose goodness leads to whose sacrifice, for whose "greater good?"
As promising, judgmental people rush to out-empathy each other, there are ways to help the greater good that do not decide, but provide options.
- Theme: Self
The Crowd and You
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1–2 minutesYou can merge with society to fit in and gain solidarity and comfort. But only you can be you, and great innovation comes from the fringes, not the middle.
Vacillating between solitude (singularity) and solidarity (belonging) is a practice we must cultivate. - Theme: Self
Anachronistic Physicality
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1–2 minutesThe physical buffets the intellectual. Attempting to remain isolated and engaged with itself, the mind is constantly interrupted by reality in the form of the body and objects.
This physicality of external pressures, seeming of the old world as we hurtle into the new, is not a curse to be thwarted. It is our medium by which to filter, process, and exercise concepts into reality. - Theme: Self
Health is Politics
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1–2 minutesThe role of governments is to provide some level of safety and security to the citizens in trade for taxes and the collective good.
When we are too sick to think, too sick to function, our world closes to survival. To have a voice, to hold the government to the social contract, we must remain healthy.
Timothy Snyder’s "Our Malady" is a good text to read on this topic.