What A Fool I Used To Be

 Recently, I've been reading the Book of Joy, which is a chronicle of a conversation between the Archbishop Tutu and the Dali Lama. The book is a joy :) and it contains a lot of wonderful suggestions on how to bring more joy into your life. However, one particular remark caught my eye (or my minds ear I suppose).  The remark, to paraphrase, was part of a discussion of what brings suffering into our lives. When this was the topic of conversation,  the Dali Lama, being Buddhist, placed an especially high value on not relying on pleasures and attachments for happiness. The author then provides a list of things which exist in the "physical dimension of joy and happiness" and lists "a good meal or a good song" as two of the things which can help keep us locked into this shallower dimension of joy (p.54, The Book of Life, Abrams ). Now I have not been exposed to Buddhist thinking for a super long time, and especially growing up in the Midwest watching A Christmas Stor...

Being reuploaded here, written on 2/9/22 Just finished watching The Wind Rises Wonderful movie, one of the best ive seen in my whole life. As someone who grew up in America it feels like a slice of an exotic cake, baked well and long with rich flavors of culture and love. It demonstrates to me that all wars are waged between evils and at the cost of everything which is good and wonderful in this world, but that good and love still exist under all that filth. Even for Ghibli standards, the movie is breathtakingly beautiful. Colors pop out into the foreground with stunning clarity and to great effect. The color choices always feels vibrant, as if each one wants to help bring the story to life. Beautiful blue skies truly feel as though they stretch out before the characters, giving hope as it contrasts with the grey steel and black smoke of the war ridden world below. Every single frame present breathes with the weight of beautiful wind. It draws in drama and character and scenery and exu...

Its a common idea, especially in the martyrous and conservative American Midwest, that suffering is the pathway to success. The more you suffer, the better at suffering you become, and the more rewards will come your way which will justify your suffering and give you the sense of peace and achievement which you sacrificed so much for. Sadly this is an idea which has in some ways found new popularity in my generation, especially those of us who have found the most digital fame. Even without a faith in a martyr to justify their efforts, the modern focus on "the grind" be it for fitness money or just plain exposure falls into much of the same mindset. Intentional sadness now, rewards later. Its been suggested that the focus on material goods is one of the underlying causes of the depression so prevalent in Western culture, but its my hypothesis that the issue runs much deeper than that. The issue is not that we are competing for material goods, but that we are competing at all. ...

The ability to separate yourself from the world around you around you and discern different things about each of its pieces is one of the crucial components of human consciousness From the time we are babies, we are aware that not all our needs can be met by our own bodies and selves. We rely on someone else, hopefully a stable parental figure of some kind, to provide us with the basic necessities. Food to ease our aching tummies, shelters to keep the bad noises and feelings outside and away from us, and clothing to keep those terrible chills from returning when we're trying to sit still and exist. As we grow slightly older, our need for other people becomes slightly less desperate. We find that actually food does not have to come from other people we can find it all over the place if we know where to look (admittidly its easy to make mistakes as to what to eat and what not to eat at very early ages. Some babies try to swallow LEGO's or other toys, for me the sand at the beach ...

It seems the misery in me has always been there Even as I cast my mind to the furthest reaches of memory I find nothing but self loathing, judgement, and jealousy especially at time when I should have been feeling joy Mine is a heart which will never heal The wounds are too deep, too vague, and totally omnipresent As Robin Williams once said  It is a wonderful thing, when you yourself feel so much sadness, to try to make others smile and laugh To know simply by the way they react that they do not feel as sad as you do For those whom happiness is unattainable It seems making others happy is the next best thing I spend a lot of my time trying to respond to people have lent me their ear On social media, over discord Trying to give them the hope and self love that I have never known  Not to say that I always make other people happy My own tendency to think of my life as inconsequential has caused me to make incredibly careless choices throughout my life Goals I should not have giv...