390. Invincible Art

What is divine cannot be debased merely by talking about it. We would never imagine that the splendour of nature could be degraded by talking about its parts or how they function. We would never for a moment think that human beings are reduced by talking about their experiences or feelings. Even if we were to condemn nature or humanity with extreme vitriol, we would understand that we could deal no real damage to either.

389. Finding Reassurance

When I’m facing a particularly bad situation, I immediately start looking for signs of reassurance. I want to know that things are not as bad as they seem. I want to be able to see a way out of the difficulty. I want to know that there is a route back to the relatively comfortable existence I’m used to living.

But sometimes nothing like this is available. Even as I try to find something that might at least temporarily satisfy these wants, nothing provides me with any solid reassurance. What I instead discover is that the situation truly is bad and it’s likely to get worse. The realization that the comfort and certainty I desperately want are not only distant but receding almost always brings on the suffering of despair. I feel miserable because I’m trapped where I am.

388. Overheated

It’s half past five in the morning and he is awake. He has managed less than four hours of actual sleep. The heat in the room is already intense even though the sun hasn’t yet made it over the horizon. Hot energy is pulsing through his body, through his feet and hands, through all of his extremities.

He lies there knowing he cannot possibly sleep further. The heat demands action. It is telling his body to get up and do something. But he cannot figure out what. He is far from attentive and his mind is sluggish. He has not felt rested since before the heat wave began. He considers taking a shower, but then remembers there is no hope of cold water. It will be a lukewarm shower at best, which would cool him only slightly.

387. Experiencing Awareness

Awareness is the amalgam of everything we have seen in all of our experiences throughout life. In this way, awareness might be thought of as a kind of memory we have formed. But unlike the memories we can directly recall and explore, awareness only reaches us through intuitions that arise from it.

A past event that we have no ability to recall might still have influenced us in a way that causes a particular intuition to arise. Since we cannot see where this intuition comes from, we might become distrustful of our awareness. We expect to be fully conscious of our past experiences and the impact they have had on us. But we also know this isn’t always true. Countless things happen to us every day that we forget entirely, and our ability to recall the details of even the most important events fades with time.

386. A Better Human

You’re bad at being human. There’s no point in denying it because it’s obviously true. Anyone with a brain can see you aren’t doing it right. The only reason they don’t call you out is because they’re just as bad at it.

Your problem is that you have too much power and you don’t know how to use it. You can see more than an animal is supposed to see. You can examine the past, the present, and the possible future and see how they’re connected. You can reflect on your past actions and plan your future actions.

385. Texts As Stories

Every text is a story and every writer is a storyteller. Even the most conceptual, theory-laden, abstract text is still a narrative. For every text weaves together disparate elements into a cohesive structure using the norms of language in exactly the same way as we tell a story.

A text is a means of connecting a series of normative entities called words in order to reach a specific end, and as such it is itself a normative entity. Just as a story shows how one event leads to the next in a plausible fashion, an abstract text shows how its conclusion is reached through a chain of premises and logical inferences.

384. The Joy In Beauty

When I see something beautiful, I’m stopped in my tracks. It’s the shock of beauty itself that causes this arrest. Sometimes it’s something I’ve literally seen, so I stop to look at it more carefully. On other occasions, beauty reaches me through another mode of perception — it’s a beautiful sound, scent, flavour, or texture that I experience.

In every case, my attention is fully captured by the beautiful, which surpasses everything else in my immediate surroundings. I want to perceive as much of it as I can, for I cannot escape the feeling that by observing, it will be brought closer to me. I want to become one with the beautiful other. I want to incorporate its beauty into my own self.

383. Never Hold Back

Whatever happens, she never holds back. She always speaks everything she feels as sincerely as she can. She doesn’t see any point in doing less. She could try to pretend to be something she’s not — maybe then she would be more liked and accepted. But what good would that appreciation and acceptance bring? Wouldn’t it mean that she’d have to continue playing the character others expect her to be?

382. The Universe Of Dreams

In this universe, you are a substantial self that relates to a separate world using knowledge and language. In the other universe, you are completely empty of content and the world is also you.

In this universe, you know exactly what you are and what you are not. In the other universe, you are everything and nothing at the same time, which means you can be something completely different in each moment.