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We spend much of our lives avoiding pain or distress, assuming happiness will arrive when anxiety has dissipated.
Yet, joy and bliss are intense feelings grown from overcoming challenges and fulfilling psychological goals.
Running away from stress is self-defeating: neither solving the problem nor producing an ecstatic state of owning a problem and overcoming it.
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Our contrariness is our path to sovereign individuation: “You can’t tell me what to do.”
Soon no one is in charge, and nothing gets done. Social distinctions flatten, and it is hard to see how we compel systems reliant on unity (infrastructure).
As hierarchy collapses into chaos, perhaps we should reconsider our correlation of individual freedom with contrariness.
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Every belief system you follow has an authority that limits your thinking.
True freedom revels in doubt, not belief.
This reminds us that belief is not true, it is merely guide we lean on so we can escape the anxiety of doubt.
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To believe is to be sure, righteous, and secure in your thoughts: you know exactly how (who) to be in the world.
Without belief, you are lost and insecure. Having forsaken illusions, you are ultimately free and thus horribly alone. For relief, we jump back into belief.
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The more we avoid pain (and seek comfort), we narrow our world. When difficulty arises, we repeatedly retreat to prevent confrontation.
In retaliation to being cornered, we often manufacture victimhood or become externally adventurous, avoiding the inner courage to confront ourselves.
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Continued contradictions become nonsense: illogical, irrational closed systems perpetuated by mass-concensus, dogma, and momentum. The danger of engaging, even to critique, is to become corrupted (contradictory) yourself.
To avoid corruption, we must return to bottom-up rationality instead of top-down nonsense.
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Assessing inefficiencies and perfecting systems is a unique and meticulous cognitive labor. It can also become a safe harbor by which to avoid reality.
When mental labors never manifest or encounter reality or peers, it is disguised. It is either masking laziness or a deep fear of failure.
When thinking negates doing, your planning steals you from the world.
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If your attention is captured, you cannot choose what to focus on. Without focus, without awareness, you cannot prioritize.
Others control you, blown about by distractions, prodded into place by manipulations.
This is not yourself. To know yourself (your values), you must recognize the impulses: of me, not of me, which takes focus.
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Coming to your senses is literally waking up from thought.
To come back into your physicality is to escape your mind’s incessant ramblings
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When the impulse to purchase or sink into emotional distraction arise, attempt to pause.
The hedonic treadmill of pursuing pleasure means you must always be running faster, because pleasure and desire always requires more. Turning from pleasure, is there a more enduring (less transitory and consuming) goal you may pursue?
