107. The Possibility Of Hope

When I’m overwhelmed by the bleakness of the world, my suffering feels inevitable. Everything around me feels final and limiting. Meaning and purpose feel distant or even absent. My present situation feels like the only one available to me and any kind of change feels impossible.

In such a state, there is no way for me to break out of the cycle of suffering. My actions will be mostly reactions to my misery, attempts to temporarily assuage the pain I feel. But by acting in this way, I only guarantee further suffering down the road. I need to see what I must do to bring my suffering to an end, but I cannot because my attention is completely distracted.

106. A Surprising World

You always see the world from your own point of view. You know the world is not your perception of it, and it might even be quite different from what you see. There are many parts of the world you haven’t seen, parts beyond the range of your present understanding. You know such things exist, because you’re sometimes surprised by the things you discover.

But sometimes it feels like it’s been ages since you saw anything genuinely new. You’re then tempted to conclude that you’ve seen it all, and the world has nothing left to offer you. But then you’re surprised once again and you realize the foolishness of your conclusion. Others see the world differently than you do, and sometimes they know things you don’t know. This is evidence enough to regularly remind you that you haven’t actually seen everything.

105. Creativity Means Creation

To be creative is to make something new. An idea forms in your imagination and then develops into a vision of a something real and tangible. You intuitively follow your vision, giving it structure and life. What was once imaginary becomes a real entity in the world.

The most familiar form of creative action is the making of artworks — paintings, songs, films, performances, stories, and so on. But creativity is present in all of our practices, regardless of whether we are baking bread, playing a sport, building a house, or simply choosing what to wear. Creativity is never limited to those who call themselves artists or to any one area of experience or expertise. It can exist everywhere and anywhere we can imagine, and it is open to all of life.

104. Systemically Flawed

When something goes wrong, we look around for someone to blame. There must be some person (or group of people) who is responsible. We want to hold that person accountable, just as we are held accountable for our actions. This basic reciprocity is the foundation of our social relationships, and helps to ensure they remain predictable and reliable.

When there is wrongdoing outside of our personal sphere, we tend to demand the same kind of accountability from the people involved. We believe that whoever was in charge must be held responsible. We are not wrong about this, but the situation is also more complex than it seems.

103. Maybe One Day

His loneliness has become intractable. He goes to social events but he always ends up feeling even more alone than before. The problem is that he doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere. He wonders if he is just too strange or awkward. Or perhaps it’s his intensity that makes him undesirable.

The people he meets don’t seem to understand him. When he tries to talk to them about his interests or his work, they seem to almost immediately become bored. They look at him like he’s speaking a language they cannot understand. They respond with platitudes and try to change the subject to literally anything else.

102. Shame Is Suffering

When I’ve done something that others think is inappropriate or wrong, I feel embarrassed. If I also sense I’ve acted wrongly then I feel guilt. These feelings are intuitive responses that arise immediately from my present situation and how it relates to my past experience.

If I’m sensitive to these feelings, I will quickly respond to them by taking action to rectify the underlying problem. If the situation is resolved or otherwise brought to an end, then my feelings of embarrassment or guilt will dissipate with time.

101. It Can Be Done

What most holds us back is the belief that it cannot be done. We discover a new way of doing things but we immediately decide it’s too risky or it requires too much sacrifice. Others have already found success in the usual ways, and the new way seems unnecessary. Why take the risk when there is already a proven method?

But by thinking like this, we emphasize the costs of the new while ignoring the costs of the old. While there is always risk in trying something new, there is also risk in doing the same thing over and over again. The risk is that by sticking with the usual ways, we impede our potential growth — the very growth that could make our lives better than they presently are.

100. Letting Everything Out

Out of a desire to be valued by others, we sometimes filter our lives to make ourselves look better than we are. We carefully sweep away anything that might suggest we are flawed or limited, while at the same time drawing attention to the parts of us others will like and enjoy.

We perform this kind of filtering not only for ourselves, but also for the artworks we create. We believe others will judge us harshly if we share a flawed creation. We think they will label us as unskilled or uninformed, or they might tell others our work is unattractive or unrefined. These outcomes are both possible and distressing, so we limit what we share to the best of the best.

99. Dangerous Distinctions

To use language is to create distinctions. We notice a group of objects that are alike and we create a category to hold them. We label our new category with a name that distinguishes it from other categories. We might then notice a pattern of change or repeated action and we create another category. Or we see a feature that is similar across many different objects and again we create a category. This process of endless categorization is how language develops and expands.