It's strange, (just noticing how many paragraphs I've started with 'it's strange') how a moderatly warm day (not too hot or humid) can be such a unique relaxing sensation with the sun on your skin and so inviting for a nap. However, even just being a little too warm in bed is unbearable and it is much more comfortable while sleeping indoors for it to be cold and pile on blankets. Why does it work like that?
I have a conflict between wanting to be really good at one thing and being naturally interested in almost everything. I only stay learning something for a few weeks and so I'm not an expert in anything. It seems like it would be nice to be a craftsman but would it? Do they really enjoy doing the same thing over and over and over. It's so useful to a society for people to specialize but is it a human thing to continually do?
An away game and you sit at home watching, hoping your baseball team is gonna win then the broadcast does something horrible. They show a little kid rooting for their home team. Now you've got a dissonance, how can you still root for your team when you've seen a kid at the game who'll be so upset if their team loses along with the thousands at the stadium and you wonder if your meagre joy is worth it. It might make you utilitarian hoping for every game would have the winner make the most people happy. However the part of sports that makes it exciting is that sometimes your team doesn't win, so you think it's an important lesson for children to learn. But still, wouldn't it just be nicer if the kid got to watch their team win on the special day they go to the stadium? Mahjong is somewhat similar. Often, to win yourself, you have to make other people lose.
As a metaphor for life, as you move to the midgame of a round of Mahjong you are often faced with a swinging ebb and flow decision. Fold for safety in despair at your hand failing, or hope. Hope for the low chance miracle of your hand completing.
I don't miss ice cream and brackets and hide and seek, I miss being a kid and nostalgia the (perhaps helpful) liar.
It may not just be a lack of humility, those jobs are very unpleasant to humans in many ways.
After donating some money to Partners in Health I had a thought. Shouldn't I donate almost all of my money? The typical argument against the 'jumping in a lake to save a drowning child and ruin your new suit' metaphor is that it is very inhuman to extrapolate the unselfishness any of us would do if the child was right in front of us to something very abstract... But then it stuck with me, and any purchase I made I could see in my mind a starving or sick child watching me buy something I now saw as something I did not need. When I've been in relatively mild sickness I didn't care about anything but being well. Why doesn't that extend? Overwhelming despair? Should I strive for semi-sainthood? Those people who fully dedicate themselves to the greater good in sacrifice of themselves, often destroying themself in the process. I am so weak in comparison to those rare people with intense conviction I would destroy myself trying. Should I religiously avert my gaze from these things and why? We do so much that is irrational as humans, if we stopped and surveyed every action and assumption and belief of ours, we may go insane. We can try and strive but maybe we shouldn't be disappointed when we don't miraculously transcend beyond our humanity. I would not angrily blame someone else for not becoming a saint, and just wanting to be comfortable and nice. I am a human with human desires for self preservation and kin favor, the saintly aspects are hard to take precedent. But can I live with myself? Are we all just selfish only wanting to ease our personal pain of feeling guilt, pity, or sadness?
Schopenhauer starts his mammoth text The World as Will and Representation by saying the whole book is meant to express and communicate a single thought. When I began reading it I thought that was such a wild idea, why not come out and say it? Why take up hundreds of pages? But it took months of reading and reflection to fully grasp that thought within myself. Without those months I would not have been able to understand what that single thought meant but now the full depth of those hundreds of pages can be captured in that single thought: the world as will and representation. (though it may have been easier and quicker if I just went straight to the Upanishads)
Learn with your nose. As scents come to you, follow them. Don't try to learn in a regimented and forced way. ||| There are dark knowledges even for a child. Learning a firefly lights up for love can spark joy, but learning that some light to lure others so that they can eat them can spark fear.
the default 'true you' of intuition to fall back on is not true it is just the habit that has fallen into from the buildup of /karma/ if acting a different way feels better than it can become a habit and the norm.
When the atmosphere isn't peaceful and ataraxia won't come, put a bookmark in Epicurus and remember those Buddhist monks. Allow yourself to just, 'feel the feeling' whether for physical pain or strong emotion. It won't work for something long or chronic but it can be helpful to something transitory (pro buddhist download: the all things are Anicca dlc).
From where do desires come from: You are not your thoughts but also are, you are not your feelings but also are. The mingling and arising from the complexity of things is 'you' not any individual thing. You are always changing and incredibly complex. You focus to small aspects but there are tons of things going on that you can't see (identifying with object yes, Brahman may be single true nature, but this is human experience). There are headwaters of desires you can't see. Listening to certain parts of the body at different times and at different amounts. ||| 'I' don't 'believe' in an unchanging, eternal, true, one self. 'I' 'believe' in an ever-changing beehive, the intermingling mass with no boundaries that your consciousness only focuses on certain parts of at a time. (Or maybe I do and its both sometiems)
Bleed on your item, full moon, create the memory, eldritch pathway, forever connected with the pain and moonlight
linked by title.
We dream don't we? Where is the line between turning away and the butterfly dream? Unreality as a mirror. Creating a little world / Entering someone's world:
Can have Tension and Release with just the sweetness and without the bitterness? Like the SOTE trailer: joy in anticipation and in the thing itself (and afterward)... Or even just music, the tension is also sweet. Is there tension and release in a painting? The full picture is present to you at all times.
Going into the light at the end appears scary. Somehow being comforted by the dark doesn't. The light can be overwhelming, the dark can be cool shade.
Oh so much joy, an artistic work that gives inspiration. That gives joy of anticipation, joy of the thing itself the fullness of a good story, and the joy of afterglow with the things it gives you - the best of all to bring it with you. A thing that makes you want to keep unraveling it! A thing that wants you to make your own creations!
We hate repetition and doing the same thing over and over again. We hate going way out of our comfort zone to totally strange things that are overwhelming. We like something we are familiar with that has a bit of a twist. We are always moving just a little bit into new territory, not too quick, not too slow. balance, balance, balance