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What portion of our pursuits are motivated by anxiety and fear?
Is our level of optimization equal to our stress?
If this number is high we are operating from a place of fear rather than a) the curiosity of our potential or b) the drive toward thick and beneficial desires.
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In response to yesterday: happiness may be a choice, but it is a political choice.
We are socially compelled to be happy: it is a desire we must urgently pursue and sacrifice to achieve. However, to choose happiness when faced with the pain and suffering of others, or a global catastrophe, requires a convoluted contradictory stance.
Nietzsche says we should instead pursue "joy", which involves sacrifice and may include suffering over the long term to achieve a goal that is great and rewarding. Others, such as Timothy Brennan, say "pleasure" is preferable.
"Happiness" is now politicized and commoditized, enfolded within an individualistic imperative for emancipatory freedom. Our blind pursuit of happiness has become an entitled right.
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You’ve heard happiness is a choice, but don’t believe it.
When we pursue status and toys we lose happiness.
Happiness is fleeting and only arrives when you desublimate (cease to be self-aware).
Caught in your desire, you are engrossed in what "you" want.
Happiness requires you to lose yourself in the present, which is a choice to no longer want.
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Can you envision your a moment of supreme happiness?
Envision a moment of contentment, or when you were firing on all cylinders with glee.
Live in that feeling now.
Bring your positive past into your present.
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Being smart is hard. Feeling is easy.
We like to read books that offer an illusion of understanding: clever detective-esque inquiries with a tidy revelation.
Between our repetitious “A-to-B” obligations, we don’t have to think: we consume the book/podcast’s form of thought without doing the act of critical thinking.
And yet, this escapist distraction away from emotion allows productivity in the sense of pacified inner turmoil: existing between thinking and feeling.
This placebo intelligence is often preferable to the chaos of continually existing in your heart or head.
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You can realize you’re silly and emotional and ignorant and confused. But this does not mean you are not a good person who is trying.
Instead, recognizing your flaws, owning them, and still attempting to improve is all we can ask of anyone.
The person you should fear is the sure one who "knows."
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You can be an ass. You can realize you’re silly and emotional and ignorant and confused. But this does not mean you are not a good person who is trying.
Recognizing your flaws, owning them, and still attempting to be better is all we can ask of anyone.
The person to fear is the one takes pleasure in their assery or the one who hides it.
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People fall into love. People fall out of love.It is an irresistible physics, yet a continual downward trajectory.
The inevitable nature of both implies something beyond control. An undeniable force acts upon you, leaving you to deal with the consequences.
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Having a purpose in your life provides an orientation point, but people fundamentally want to feel alive. (That is to have your inner sensation and bodily sense engaged and aligned to experience rapture.)
Feeling alive happens when we chase meaning or mystery. Any purpose will do; what we want is pursuit.
