Fragmentarium

288. Something More

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 08:00:00 -0800

I’m feeling spiritless as I stand at the window, looking out at the world. There are people walking on the sidewalk down below. Many are alone, like me, but moving briskly towards destinations unknown. Others are in pairs or small groups, some talking and some not. The faster ones are passing the slower, sometimes even stepping off the sidewalk and into the street to complete the maneuver.

I pick out one person from the mass. He’s walking with a leisurely stride. What’s his story? I decide that he lives in the neighbourhood, in a building just like this one. I decide that he has a one-bedroom apartment that he shares with two cats and zero humans. I decide that he has just been at the library where he was perusing books on eighteenth-century philosophers. Obviously this is only a fantasy.

I look around again and I see two people walking together, towards the heart of the city. Perhaps they are going to meet their friends downtown, or perhaps they are looking to get something to eat nearby. They are engaged in an animated conversation. I cannot hear any of what they are saying — for me, this is a silent play. It’s a good one, however, as they’re now both laughing, and I find myself laughing too.

I suddenly feel the desire to be down there, in the street, observing the action more closely. No it’s not that, I realize. I don’t want to merely observe. My desire is different. I want to be walking somewhere. Somewhere away from here. Not with any particular direction or destination, just away. Or just walking, maybe.

I want to allow myself to go wherever I will go. I try to imagine myself doing this. Descending the stairs, going out into the crisp air, and then just walking and walking. I remember the times I’ve done something like this before. I don’t think I’d feel any different than I do right now.

How do I feel? I don’t know but it’s not good. It’s not away that I want. It’s not walking either. There must be something more, but I cannot seem to say what it is.

287. Beyond Hypocrisy

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 08:00:00 -0800

It can be frustrating to see someone do something opposite to their earlier actions or stated beliefs. We want the people around us to be consistent. We want to be able to understand their motives and beliefs. We want their actions to be predictable and orderly.

We expect people to be rational and their actions to follow a consistent set of principles. When we discover something that contradicts those principles, we criticize their behaviour. We expect the other to be responsive to our critique, for we feel they ought to value consistency just as we do.

When we point out instances of clear hypocrisy — where actions directly contradict previously demonstrated beliefs — we expect an explanation to be provided and changes to be made. When these are not forthcoming, our frustration increases. We cannot understand how the other is unable to see the problem we are seeing.

But pointing out hypocrisy is the worst kind of criticism. It shifts the focus to mere consistency, rather than concentrating on the goodness (or lack thereof) of the actions themselves. For consistency is irrelevant when it comes to assessing whether or not particular actions are good ones. By focusing on hypocrisy, we waste our energy on petulant critiques that make us feel superior instead of trying to address the causes of wrongdoing.

People act wrongly because they are suffering. We may not be sufficiently sensitive to suffering to notice every occurrence of it, but this does not mean it is not present. We want people to act rationally but they cannot because they are distracted by their own suffering and the desire to escape from it. To defeat wrongdoing, we we must first overcome suffering, and we can only do so through compassionate action.

Furthermore, compassion itself sometimes requires that we act inconsistently. A compassionate response is always attuned to the particular situation and needs of the present moment. What is compassionate today might entirely contradict what was compassionate yesterday.

In the end, it is our desire for perfect consistency that must be met with skepticism. Like any desire, attachment to it will produce suffering. By attempting to fulfill it, we become distracted from what is needed and we end up perpetuating the very suffering we need to overcome.

286. The Experiencing Subject

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 08:00:00 -0800

We measure and evaluate and judge. We distinguish and classify and categorize. We hypothesize and test and infer. By doing these things repeatedly, we construct a perfectly objective world that we can perfectly understand and perfectly control.

We use our understanding and our control to make ourselves happy. We see lack in our lives, and we focus on it like a problem to be solved. We reason that by increasing whatever is lacking, we will improve our well-being, and when nothing is lacking we will finally be happy. Then all of our desires will be satisfied, our aversions vanquished, and our beliefs confirmed.

It is this state of objective perfection that we seek. We want to be the perfect human animal, the one that has optimized its environment through control and thrives endlessly as a result. But in focusing completely on this singular goal, we miss something important. We forget to ask who it is that will thrive.

A human being is not just an animal that exists as an object in physical space. A human being is also an experiencing subject. And the difficulty with experiencing subjects is that they reflect on their experiences and they develop values. They see some things as good and other things as bad, not because of any objective evidence, but simply because of their own individual judgments.

We can judge that things are good for us even when we have been shown that they are objectively bad. But in what sense can anything be objectively bad? To construct our objective standard we have optimized for certain metrics. But why should we choose those particular metrics or optimize in that particular way?

It is only by submitting to a narrow group of subjectively-chosen values that we have arrived at the idea that there can be anything objectively good for a human being. The source of the judgments that have produced our objective standard cannot be anything other than subjective. No one has measured, judged, categorized, tested, or reasoned about human beings who was not also a human being. A purely objective view of life is not possible. To live more joyfully, we must consider our lives from the perspective of the experiencing subjects we also are.

285. Real And Virtual

Tue, 03 Mar 2026 08:00:00 -0800

We call the world where our bodies exist the “real” world. This is the world of structure and society that has mostly been given to us, and which we have learned to understand in order to live productively. It is also the world where we have obligations and roles to fulfill. Often we focus so intently on this world that we cannot even begin to imagine any alternative to it.

But sometimes we also get lost in virtual worlds. We immerse ourselves in games and other media products that take us away from the ordinary and grant us an entirely different way of existing. Our desire for escape is sometimes so powerful that we become obsessed with our virtual worlds, and we start to value our existence in these worlds more than in any other.

We usually try to keep the real world separate from our virtual spaces. We do this to minimize conflicts between our flexible imaginations and the more rigid structure of reality. We give our imaginations a fenced-off space to run wild, while our bodily existence remains calm and orderly, which keeps us protected from any kind of change.

But the distinction between what is real and what is virtual is not always clear or obvious. The real world contains a plethora of virtual constructs — all of the norms and systems created by human beings, which we share through our laws and traditions. Our deep concern for real success is often actually a concern for virtual success, in terms of artificial markers like status, wealth, or fame. At the same time, our virtual spaces are profoundly influenced by the mechanics of real human experience, as this is a basic requirement for us to be able to understand them. Always the real bleeds into the virtual and the virtual into the real.

Creativity is the process of making the intertwining of the real and the virtual more explicit. Rather than trying to keep the real and the virtual separate, the creator aims to collapse the distinction entirely, by bringing what is imagined into reality. In doing so, the conflicts between our imagined worlds and the real world are made evident. It is by seeing these conflicts that we also learn to see how they begin in ourselves, and we can then start thinking seriously about how the real world could be made different than it presently is.

284. Falling Short

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 08:00:00 -0800

Even if I always do everything I possibly can to help others, there will still be those who won’t receive the compassion they need from me. Despite continuous effort to see what I must do and then do it, my actions can still fall short. This happens because my awareness is imperfect. Where my awareness is lacking, I’m unable to see the most compassionate course of action.

Even with an unshakable devotion to seeing clearly, I still won’t achieve perfect awareness. This is partly because the world around me is complex and varied, which means there are more kinds of experience than the ones I’ve already had or seen. It’s also because there is more to myself than I can fully grasp, and uncovering all of my hidden desires, aversions, and beliefs is itself an endless task. I can try to expand my awareness by allowing my attention to be open and free to explore everything I encounter, but my progress towards perfect awareness will always be partial.

I need to be careful that the knowledge that my awareness is necessarily limited does not cause me to purposefully limit my compassion. This can easily happen, as I might become attached to an aversion to the hard work that compassion often requires. To guard against this, I have to allow myself to regularly reflect on my own actions, motives, and intentions.

Sometimes I’ll discover that I’ve misled myself. I’ve allowed my actions to be less compassionate than they otherwise could have been. There is no point in dwelling in shame or guilt over this, but I still need to take responsibility. Doing so includes figuring out what the correct action would have been so that I can become more sensitive to similar circumstances in the future.

Compassion has no time for worrying about past actions that can no longer be changed. Its orientation is always towards the new actions that can be taken today, in the present moment, to help meet the current needs of myself and others.

283. Who Is Responsible

Fri, 27 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0800

He knows he’s supposed to be working on his project. He’s supposed to be, but he’s not. Instead he’s thinking about it, about what form it might take, about how he could put it together, about the kinds of arguments he could make, about the evidence he could employ, about how he could achieve the greatest rhetorical impact.

All of this is theoretical. Not a single word has landed on the page. There is not even a page for it to land on, since he’s not at his desk. Still, he’s thinking about the project and he feels this should count for something. It does not. He should be writing.

He should be writing and he’s not. Where does this “should” come from, he wonders. There’s an expectation that he will complete something. There are people — his editor, mainly — waiting on him to produce some valuable words. But no one can force him to do it. Only he can require it of himself.

And does he? At this moment, he does not. The result is that there is no progress. Nothing is happening. Nothing will happen. Not now, at least. But if he’s going to procrastinate on the project, then he thinks he should at least do something else that would be productive.

There’s that pesky “should” again. Who is responsible for it? Again, it has to be him. He has imposed these standards on himself — standards about using time efficiently, about getting things done, about making progress. He isn’t allowed to just sit here, lounging around. So says he.

But what if sitting here is exactly what he needs right now? He tells himself this is an important question. If he needs to rest, should he not rest? It’s difficult to argue with that. Maybe rest is more important than work right now. Then he realizes he’s only playing a mind game. He’s sabotaging himself by not working and there will be real consequences he won’t enjoy.

Where does this all get worked out — his obligation to work and his need for rest? Where is the final answer? He has no idea and this lack of knowledge suddenly scares him. Not knowing means risk and risk is scary. He goes over to his desk and gets straight to work.

282. Mysterious Joy

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0800

Joy cannot be sought and it cannot be conquered. To make joy my intentional goal will not bring it to me any faster. Trying to control my actions in order to reach joy will not succeed, for joy is not something that can be controlled.

I cannot directly choose joy for myself in this moment or in any moment. Joy ignores my intentions just as it ignores any effort to keep it. I cannot choose joy any more than I can refuse it. Joy arrives on its own and when it arrives I must experience it. I get it whether I want it or not, for joy has nothing to do with want.

Joy is not something I do, but it does arise from action. I cannot reach joy by living passively. But not just any action will bring joy, and an action that once brought joy might not bring it again. The action that brought joy yesterday might only bring suffering today. Equally, an action that brought great suffering before might now bring incredible joy.

It is not the actions themselves that seems to matter but the origin of the actions. When I act from attachment to a desire, an aversion, or a belief, with the goal of producing happiness for myself, then the possibility of joy is reduced. When I act instead from compassion, in response to the needs I see in myself or others, then the possibility of joy increases.

Still, there is never any guarantee joy will arrive. Joy remains a mystery. If I could see which actions are most compassionate in every moment, I might have such an overwhelming chance at joy that its arrival would feel inevitable. But my awareness is always imperfect and never complete. There is always more I must see and more I must do, which means there is always more joy possible in each and every moment.

281. A Further Need

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0800

You think you’ll be happy when you have everything you want. You make plans and goals and you put your efforts towards their fulfillment. You avoid anything that might impede your success or limit your achievements. You believe that your actions are the right ones and that you will build the best possible life for yourself by reaching your goals.

With time and effort, you start to get a taste of success. The flavour is sweet but it fades quickly. You’re always left with the impression that something is still missing. You think this is just because you haven’t achieved everything yet, so you continue forward in your quest towards bigger and bigger goals.

Finally, after enormous effort and struggle, you’ve got it all. There’s nothing else that you want, no further goal to strive towards. This is it — the top of the mountain. You feel happy when you look back on all you’ve accomplished to get here. But when you try to sit with the present moment or look towards the future, there is a distinct feeling of dread that you cannot seem to shake. Something is wrong and you don’t know what it is.

You have everything you want and you should be happy. But there are still months and years stretching out before you, and you can’t see any purpose to this time beyond trivialities like travelling the world and seeking hedonistic exploits. You realize now that your accomplishments are not as meaningful as they once seemed and your years of climbing almost feel like a waste. You sometimes even think you did it all for nothing, but you bury that thought as deep as you can because you cannot bring yourself to accept it.

You wonder if this is all there really is to life. If it always ends with this feeling of nothingness. If the void ultimately consumes us all. You’re wildly successful by every available metric and still you feel no joy. Sometimes you force yourself to sit with this terrible conclusion until you start to squirm in discomfort. It’s only then that you have the strange sense that there is an intense but vague need inside you that still has not been met.

What is this need? Where does it come from? What does it require? These are the questions you must now find the courage to confront.

280. Creative Structure

Tue, 24 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0800

Creativity brings together imagination, memory, and intelligence into a substantive form. The created object — the artwork — communicates by its very nature. Its form allows something to be seen in it, something that is new or previously unnoticed. This might be nothing more than a simple insight but with a value significant enough that it can alter the perspective of the audience.

Providing such insight regularly is far from easy. The artist has to develop a practice of repeatedly engaging with the materials of both self and world. Some of these materials will be virtual entities like words or images, and some of them will be physical entities like paints or instruments. Through this process of engagement, the artist expresses part of their own being. They transfer an internal object into the world using the materials they have chosen as their medium. How this transference can be accomplished is what the artist learns through their practice.

Every artist develops a unique practice. Some artists spend weeks or months on studies, exploring materials and techniques before finally committing to a single great work. Others spend their time repeatedly creating similar works, in the hope that they will eventually manifest the aesthetic value they can already intuit.

Effective practice almost always requires structure. Structure might seem contrary to creativity, as the former demands a degree of discipline and rigidity, while the latter is focused on imaginative possibility. But the artist can benefit from boundaries. Uninhibited imagination easily bounces from one idea to the next without ever creating anything at all. Creativity requires action — it is the movement from intuitive seeing to actual seeing, from having an idea to having an artwork before you.

It is out of the need for action that the artist develops an idiosyncratic structure that most enables their own process. This structure gives their practice an order that does not limit the chaos of imagination but rather channels it into real forms. Structure is a tool of creativity, one that the artist learns to embrace for regular creating to become finally possible.

279. Past And Future

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0800

To broaden my awareness, I cannot look only at my present experience. I need to also be open to memories of experiences I’ve had throughout my life. I need to be open even to those memories that are regretful or painful for me to think about.

By exploring my memories, I become better able to see the nature of experience itself. I learn how to relate my present experience to my past experiences and to empathize with others who are currently having experiences similar to those I once had.

While I need to be open and attentive to every memory that arises, I also need to be careful not to transform my memories into cherished relics. To do so would be to form a dangerous attachment to the past, which will cause me to deny my attention to present needs. When I’m attached, I see the past as a lost ideal that I want to recover, rather than allowing myself to move towards what I must see and do today.

Just as my attention must not exclude the past, I also need to become more aware of the future. The future is never something I can know precisely, but it’s exactly this that I must learn to see. Awareness of the future is really awareness of the scope of possibility. It is to see that this scope does not have any hard limits. The future might include anything I’ve already experienced and many things that exceed my previous or present experiences.

I might be able to imagine some of the possibilities the future could bring, but even imagination is limited compared to the actual future. To be truly aware of the future is to see that it is a place of unlimited possibility, and as such, everything that presently exists is subject to change. It is through a broad awareness of past experience and future possibility that I also become more sensitive to the nuances of the present moment.

278. A Chance To Be

Fri, 20 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0800

She doesn’t want to acknowledge it, but she knows she must. Her anxiety has returned. The feeling of it is too demanding to be ignored. She knows that if she tries to work in this state, she’ll get nothing done. She’s already at her desk, staring at the screen. She knows she’ll look at it for half an hour or so and then she’ll have to give up. She’ll need to find something to take her mind off her worries.

She knows that her seeking will not be creative or fulfilling and the distraction will consume both time and energy. She doesn’t want this for herself, not only because she won’t accomplishing anything, but because she knows she’ll suffer more. She’ll suffer because her desire for progress will go unfulfilled. She wishes she didn’t have this desire but she does.

She thinks about the possibility of forcing herself to work but then she realizes this won’t help. How can she force creativity to happen? Forcing will only make her tighter, more frustrated, more tense. What she really needs is looseness, but she can’t figure out how to get there.

Her desire is pulling her in one direction and her anxiety is sending her in another. Neither is any good. They’re both blocking her from taking action. She needs to get free of them, but how? She thinks she needs to let go. Not just of her desire or her anxiety, but everything. She needs to put everything down and just exist.

She gets up from her desk and goes over to the window. She looks out at the world, at the city below, but all she sees is frantic activity — vehicles and people rushing from one place to the next. This is not what she needs.

She goes over to the couch and she sits down. She stares straight ahead, at nothing in particular. Time passes and she notices she’s looking at the books on the shelf opposite. She’s thinking about them, itemizing the ones she has read and the ones she hasn’t. This is not what she needs.

She closes her eyes. She does nothing but breathe in and out in the safety of her self-imposed darkness. Still, thoughts bubble up inside her. Thoughts about her mother, about her art, about her friends, about what to eat for lunch. She tries to let them go. She needs to be empty of everything.

She needs to be bored. That is the conclusion she has reached. If she can cultivate real boredom, there might be a chance. A chance for what? A chance for freedom, perhaps. A chance for creativity, too. Yes, and also something more. A chance to be.

277. Compassion Is Chosen

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0800

Compassion is attention to the needs of living beings and action that responds to those needs. Needs include material needs — the physical resources required for survival — but they are not limited to just these. The need for truth, the need for connection with others, and the need for purpose and meaning are some of the other needs of a human being.

A person can also have needs they are not already aware of, including the need for awareness itself. While desires often arise because of needs, needs are not desires. Need is not merely what anyone wants, but rather what is necessary to survive and thrive. Compassion is passion for life, for the growth of life and its transcendence into more than it already is.

Compassion is never an obligation. It is not something anyone can be required to do because of an agreement with or duty to another person. Compassion is chosen simply because it is personally felt to be an absolute necessity when one is deeply aware of both self and world.

No one compels another person to be compassionate. A person must choose it for themselves as the necessary response to the needs they see. Just as everyone responds to hunger by eating food, the aware person responds to need by taking compassionate action. They respond in this way because they can see how unnecessary pain and suffering inhibit the success of life itself, of which they are a continuous part. Their awareness makes them sensitive to suffering and they can see how it arises from attachment to reflective intentions.

Awareness is thus a central need for a human being. Without awareness, a person will remain forever trapped in the cycle of suffering with no possibility of escape. Without awareness, they will not see how to loosen their attachments and attain real freedom. Without awareness, they will not see the need to assist others towards greater awareness. Without awareness, the needs of living beings will not be fully met. Without awareness, a person cannot live to their full creative potential and discover the joy of purposeful action, which is called compassion.

276. The Unstoppable Machine

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0800

The machine is silent and nefarious. It operates in myriad ways, often without notice or detection. It requires no one to control it, guide it, or feed it. It does all of these things for itself. It does them today, it will do them tomorrow, and it will keep doing them for as long as time itself. The operations of the machine are entirely automatic. They follow from each other just as night follows day.

You cannot stop the machine. You can demand that it explain itself, but your question will not be heard. The machine is not something that listens. You can break the machine’s parts, but they will be replaced. The machine is not something that fails. You can stand in front of the machine and dare it to kill you and it will kill you. The machine is not something that feels. Any individual effort to oppose the machine will not succeed. The machine is used to handling dissenters and it will carry on regardless of protests or attacks.

But the machine does have a weakness. It is built out of parts that can be changed. In fact, its entire structure is created and contingent. Everything that makes up the machine could be other than it is. Changing the parts will not cause the machine to stop, but it will function differently. The parts can be changed because we decide together what the parts will be. If we reach an agreement to make a change, the machine cannot prevent it from happening.

Still, there are parts of the machine that can overcome the changes we make. These are the oldest parts, the ones that are the most solid and battle-tested. These parts can grind though new parts that are not as strong. But we need not despair when this happens. It only means there are more parts to change than we thought. Entire sections of the machine might need to be replaced.

Most importantly, we cannot make these changes alone. Parts of the machine will be replaced only if we can agree with others on their replacement. It is this consensus that we must create, nourish, and grow if we hope to build a machine that benefits us all.

275. A Sense Of Truth

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0800

In the end, language always fails. No matter how many words we use, no matter how we arrange them, no matter how much time we take, we cannot fully capture our experience. The best we can hope for is the transcending power of metaphor — that our words will somehow provoke a feeling close to the feeling of the actual experience.

Language is most powerful when it exceeds its ordinary boundaries. It does this through metaphors that take us to a place that each word on its own cannot reach. Here, the usual meanings of words give way to another kind of meaning that is deeply felt. It is only here that we might be moved towards a new way of seeing and being.

A text that makes us feel nothing cannot have any function beyond the purely practical. It is in its practical usage that language does its job well. It allows us to indicate and describe, to connect and distinguish, to identify and denote. We need these practical abilities in order to communicate and cooperate with each other. But our experience of life is not wholly practical. A purely practical existence would not allow for the beauty that grants us joy.

Writing that creates meaning for the whole of life is beautiful. It is by creating such meaning that we obtain a sense of truth. Not truth in the practical sense, like the truth of a proposition, but truth that aligns with our composite experience of life. How does this alignment occur? We cannot know. If we did, our metaphors would stop being metaphorical and there would be no point to poetry because we could communicate truth and feeling directly and without struggle.

It is our struggle with language, both in the writing and in the reading, that also helps to remind us that joy comes from action. Joy is not a passive state of being but the result of activity. That language always fails is, in the end, an enormous success. It means reading and writing are never finished. There is always more joy to be created.

274. Talking To Myself

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0800

There are many ways to expand my awareness. I can look out at the world around me and explore its contents and the connections between them. I can witness the actions of other people, consider their feelings and motivations, and listen to the stories they tell about their experiences. I can seek out the creations of humanity — the art and writing that speaks to our shared experience.

I can also look inwards at the self and explore my own feelings, thoughts, memories, and imaginings. I can investigate the sources of my desires, aversions, and beliefs. I can reflect on my own experiences of suffering and joy and try to locate their roots. Even in total isolation from the outside world, I always have access to the endless fountain of awareness that is the self.

I need to explore the self, for it is here that I can discover the causes of my intentions and see how I so easily become attached to them. These attachments can produce endless suffering for myself and others. It is when I can fully see my attachments and their connection to my suffering that I gain the opportunity to break free of them.

Seeing the whole complex of attachments operating in me is not straightforward because there are parts that are hidden by familiarity and parts that I do not wish to see. To overcome this, I have to allow my attention to wander openly throughout the self, while taking care to free it when it gets stuck. When I discover something I don’t understand I need to allow myself to reflect on it. I need to express what I see, listen to what I express, and also question it.

In this way, the investigation of the self is similar to talk therapy. In therapy, the therapist is the more-aware other who supplies me with questions that allow me to broaden my understanding of myself. But when I reflect, I become multiple — I am both therapist and patient. I am the subject that asks and the object that responds.

When I engage in self-reflection, I am effectively talking to myself. Sometimes this takes the form of literal talk, sometimes it is accomplished through introspective writing, and sometimes it is nothing more than a silent dialogue of thoughts. But regardless of the medium, this continuous process of expressing, listening, and questioning allows me to travel inwards towards a greater awareness of myself.

273. Out Of Time

Fri, 13 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0800

Another day, another defeat. Despite trying relentlessly to get somewhere, I’m stuck where I started. And it’s impossible to know if the situation will improve. Tomorrow looms before me in my mind, and I can’t say with any certainty that it will be better than today. The prognosis feels bleak.

The problem is that I’m running out of time. There are so many things I want to do, and I feel I need to do all of them. But my time is finite. Days are passing and once they pass they’re gone forever. At the same time, not every day is as bad as today, and I have made some limited progress over the weeks and months. But is that really enough?

People keep telling me that I’m still young, that I have lots of time, that I don’t need to worry. I just nod when they say this, but I hate hearing it. It might be true, but it also feels false on another level. Time is slipping away and with it goes the chance of achieving what I want to achieve.

If I don’t reach my short-term goals soon, I won’t even be able to start on my long-term goals. There simply won’t be enough time, and I know it. I’ll be too old, too tired, too weak and I’ll have to start calling things off. Even the thought of calling things off is frustrating. Narrowing my ideals feels wrong. It feels like an enormous betrayal, one too big to tolerate.

It’s intolerable because it means that I’m limited. I’ll be stuck with a small set of meagre accomplishments, and I’ll be confined to them for the rest of my life. That’s the real problem, right there. If I fail now, I also fail forever. There isn’t any chance to do it over again. This life is the only one I’ll ever have.

It’s either success now or total oblivion, I think. I have to be constantly successful, all of the time. Falling behind is not an option. Falling behind means disaster, it means permanent defeat, it means having to accept failure.

I decide I have to go faster. I have to go faster and that means I’ll have to work harder. It feels like there’s no other way. Every moment must be devoted my goals — every hour, every minute, every second. I’m running out of time.

272. When We Cannot Know

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0800

After something has gone horribly wrong, we want to make sure it won’t happen again. We start looking around for explanations and we consider each possibility carefully, exploring all of the factors that might have led to the disaster.

In most cases, we eventually figure out what caused the problem and we fix it. But when some of the causes were human beings, this might not be possible. What we want then is to understand why the people involved acted in the ways they did, so that we can prevent future harm through education, incentives, or better rules.

But human beings often make decisions based on flawed or at least limited reasoning and trying to understand even one of us can be a real challenge. To attempt to understand the decision making of a group or an entire society is even more difficult. The scale of the problem sometimes means that many explanations are plausible with no single one being more or less likely than the others.

Our tendency at this point is to give up. But we don’t give up by accepting that we cannot know what actually happened. We give up by declaring one of the explanations right and giving that explanation our full backing. We do this because the alternative of leaving the problem unexplained is intolerable to us. It is intolerable because of the overwhelming worry that doing so would mean we cannot prevent the disaster from recurring. We would much rather be confident in a wrong explanation and feel safe than admit that we simply cannot know.

The worry we feel is a kind of suffering so strong that it pushes us to accept the belief that we understand something we actually don’t understand. With greater awareness, we can recognize the attachment that produces this suffering, and begin to free ourselves from it. We then become more capable of seeing and accepting that we cannot know, and we will be less likely to fall for simplistic solutions that are often far more dangerous than a mere lack of knowledge ever could be.

271. Good And Bad

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0800

The world of our experience is not uniform but filled with differences. We perceive many of these differences and take note of them. This looks more round than that. This feels smoother than that. This sounds higher pitched than that. This tastes sweeter than that. This smells more floral than that. We are obsessed with differences, and we form categories to group similar objects together based on the differences we perceive.

As we categorize, we also cannot help wonder which categories are better than others. We like what is beautiful, useful, or a source of pleasure. We impose our judgments on the objects we encounter and we produce a ranking of categories. Some things are simply better for us than others, so we prefer those things over the others. In this way, our obsession with differences is also an obsession with hierarchy.

We project our judgments of what is best onto the world and perpetuate them through the norms and systems we create together with others. Often we do not see this process happening because it seems natural to us that we should shape the world to be how we want it to be. But in doing so, we also risk greatly limiting ourselves.

As we categorize and rank the objects of our experience, we learn to ignore everything we value least and we stop ourselves from becoming fully aware of those things. We end up seeing only the part of the world we like, which makes it impossible for us to see even that very clearly.

To be capable of seeing the good we must also see the bad, not merely as part of the category “bad” and therefore as something separate from us, but in its entire nature and connection to everything else, including us. It is by seeing the interdependence of all things more clearly that we begin to develop a more accurate picture not just of the world but also of ourselves.

Many of the things we do not like or label “bad” are not out in the world but inside us — things like our pains, our worries, our sufferings. We must allow our attention to reach these entities too, to uncover all of the parts of the self and all of the parts of the world around us.

270. Unwanted Conclusions

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0800

You are watching a film and you have become engrossed in its story. The plot is exciting, the characters are compelling, and the stakes feel significant.

Your attention is mostly on the film itself, but you’re also thinking about what you’re seeing and hearing. You cannot stop yourself from thinking any more than you can stop yourself from feeling. Thoughts and feelings simply arise when they must.

One of the things you’re thinking about is the approaching conclusion of the film. You think you can see where the story is going — to a place where the protagonists have overcome their difficulties. You’ve developed this expectation partly because of other films you’ve seen, but also because you want it to come true. You care about the characters and you want to witness their success.

When the story takes a sudden turn, you naturally find yourself feeling anxious about your desired outcome. When it later becomes clear that success is not the final destination of these characters, you feel disappointment, grief, and perhaps even anger. You’re upset because you feel the characters didn’t deserve the fate they have been given.

In response to your feelings, you start thinking about alternatives — events that could have gone differently in order to resolve the story in a more satisfying way. You think about the choices the characters made and where they might have gone wrong. You think about how you would have acted in their shoes in order to avoid the unwanted conclusion. All of these considerations feel urgent and necessary.

You need to come to terms with the film in a way that makes sense of the lives of the characters and your own life as well. This process can be unsettling, bothersome, and even frustrating. You would never have felt this way had the film concluded in the way you expected.

You are suffering but you are also learning many things. You’re learning about the kinds of lives people can have, about their motivations and choices, about possibility and risk. You are also learning something about yourself, and it is perhaps this growth in your awareness that is the most important conclusion of all.

269. Making Meaning

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0800

You’ve found meaning in a particular idea. It feels valuable and important to you. You tell me about your idea and the meaning you’ve found in it. I listen carefully to your words, but I do not share in your conclusion. I cannot see the meaning of your idea. For me, the story you’ve crafted around it doesn’t seem real or plausible.

I tell you about my doubts, supplying what I believe to be a convincing argument against your idea and its meaning. I do this because I want you to be free from delusion. I want you to see the reality of your idea as I do.

But in truth, all that’s happened here is a disagreement. Your experiences and values have led you to feel that your idea is meaningful, whereas my experiences and values have led me to feel that it isn’t. Neither of us is correct, regardless of the arguments or evidence we can muster for our own side.

In attempting to undermine your idea, I’ve missed something important. I’ve decided your idea is delusional while forgetting that my own beliefs and values are just as delusional. I’ve fallen into the mistaken belief that it’s possible to live without delusion, which is itself a further delusion.

We cannot live without our delusions any more than we can live without our desires. Just like our desires, our delusional beliefs arise because we discriminate between good and bad, and doing so is just part of what it is to be human.

By trying to deflate the meaning of your idea, I’m acting as though my beliefs and values are superior to yours. But the entire project of meaning-making is always profoundly human, it always originates in us, and if it has any further foundation it isn’t one we can directly access. It follows from this that I cannot know whether my values are actually superior to yours or to anyone’s.

To attempt to deprive another person of meaning is to impose my own subjective understanding on them. It is to be deeply attached to the fictional reality constructed by my own beliefs and values, which means it can only perpetuate the cycle of suffering.

268. A Drastic Change

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0800

He finally managed to get away from it all. To be free from everything and everyone. He has two weeks in another world. He feels loose and playful. He suddenly has so much time on his hands, and he finds himself imagining all of the things he could do on his trip.

But instead of actually doing any of it, he decides to do nothing at all. He wants to enjoy the rest and relaxation he has earned. Even so, his mind continues to work. He discovers that he has interesting thoughts and ideas that he didn’t seem to have before. He begins to carry a notebook with him wherever he goes, writing everything down and making plans for his return.

The future now feels promising. It offers options and possibilities, new pathways that he couldn’t see before. He has realized that he needs to make big changes. He cannot possibly return to his tired old life. He can’t go back because he has been transformed into something more.

He feels wholly refreshed, as if he’s been given a new life. Everything is now exciting and he finds himself doing things he wouldn’t ordinarily do, talking to people he used to ignore, and pursuing activities he once thought too risky.

At the end of the two weeks, he can hardly recognize himself. Still, he knows he must be the same person he has always been. He knows he’ll have to continue doing many of the things he used to do and live in a way similar to how he used to live.

When he returns home, these facts are made perfectly clear. For he has also returned to his responsibilities, and he slides easily into the grooves of his old life. There is so much he has to do and his days are once again dominated by obligation.

The plans he made before now seem impossible — nothing more than the fantasies of a person who doesn’t actually exist. Why did he think he could change his life so drastically? Doing only what he feels he must, his efforts leave him completely exhausted. There’s simply no time or space to do anything differently.

He is forced to accept the crushing realization that he hasn’t changed at all. He’s stuck with himself, the person he has always been. To truly transform seems to require something more, something he has not discovered and cannot yet imagine.

267. Rational Motivation

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0800

When I have a reason to do something, I’m more likely to do it than another thing I don’t have any reason to do. But often there will be several things that I have at least one reason to do, and I’ll be forced to make a choice about which reason takes priority.

I might then appeal to a hierarchy of reasons to figure out which reason is most important according to my values or beliefs. Depending on the ordering of this hierarchy, I may or may not do the thing that is best in this moment. This matters most when one of the competing reasons is a moral reason. If I choose something other than the morally best option then it seems I’ve failed to be motivated in the right way. I end up doing something other than what I ought to do.

This problem is especially salient when the moral reason is defeated by a reason that is insignificant but nonetheless compelling, such as when the chosen action will add to my personal pleasure. This might happen because my values are not as strong as I think they are or because my reasoning is poor. But regardless, it’s often the case that even the most important reasons can be defeated by mere whim.

Compassion does not operate in this way. It cannot be defeated by reason because it is not motivated by reason. Compassion arises immediately through attention to what is happening in and around me. I choose to act from compassion because I feel intensely that there is genuinely no alternative acceptable to me.

Compassion makes its demands with the force of necessity. I see need and I must respond to it, in exactly the same way as when I feel hungry, I start looking for food. Reasons can be motivating and they often are, but compassion is relentless. Once a need has been seen, either in myself or in another living being, compassion will stop at nothing to have it met.

266. What It Means To Be Free

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0800

You are learning to stand on your own. You are learning how little you need and how much you need. You are learning that your needs are different from your desires. You are learning that your desires can pull you away from what you need. You are learning that the things you hate or fear or even just dislike can do the same. You are learning that you can’t get rid of your desires or your aversions. You are learning that they exist because you believe some things are good and other things are bad. You are learning that every belief is also a kind of delusion. You are learning that beliefs can pull you away from what you need. You are learning that it’s easy to become attached to the things you believe. You are learning that sometimes you don’t even realize you’re acting based on a belief that is also a delusion. You are learning that your reasons for doing something are not always your actual motivations. You are learning that your desires and aversions can be interpreted as beliefs and vice versa. You are learning that you need to become more aware of the world and yourself. You are learning that you sometimes do things and only later come up with reasons for doing them. You are learning that you do this in order to explain and justify yourself within the system of rules and norms in which you have been raised and now live. You are learning that this system is useful but also arbitrary and constructed. You are learning that you do not have to follow its commands but that it’s sometimes beneficial for you to do so. You are learning that freedom is different from what you thought it was. You are learning that to be free is to be liberated from attachment and to act from compassion towards yourself and others. You are learning that you can be free regardless of what other people say or do to you. You are learning that you are as responsible as any other person for everything that happens. You are learning to stand on your own.

265. Beginnings And Endings

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0800

You want to create a new artwork but you can’t seem to get started. You’re worried about beginnings and endings. You aren’t sure where to begin or how you’ll reach an end result that makes any sense.

You don’t want to start because you’re concerned that what you would make will be incomprehensible. You want your ideas to fit together into a consistent and unified form. You want the meaning of your creation to be obvious to you and to anyone who sees it. You want it to be clear and powerful from beginning to end and never confused or muddled.

You don’t want to start because your current position doesn’t feel like the true beginning. It feels like there’s somewhere else — a place that should come before or after where you are — and you don’t know how to get there. But the only place you can ever start from is where you find yourself.

You’re always in the middle, always in the midst of things. This looks like a problem, but it’s only a mirage. You can start where you are and explore in all directions. You have much exploring to do, but exploration takes place through the process of making — it isn’t something you can do in advance. It will happen as you work with your medium to bring your ideas into reality.

It’s from the middle that you must begin, and from there you’ll make your way towards the edges. As you do so, you’ll discover the beginnings and endings that are possible for your creation. You’ll see which meanings are already apparent and which are missing. But above all, you’ll create something tangible and this will be your most important achievement.

It is by creating that you learn how to create again. The practice of art making is just like any other practice in that you learn mostly by making mistakes. Your mistakes will show you new possibilities and it is from them that your future creations will be born.

264. Solving Problems

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0800

When I’m facing several complicated problems at once, my attention can easily become unstable. I feel like I need to address every problem at the same time, and as a result, I’m not able to solve any of them very well.

In a world of constant connectivity, it can seem like every problem is always present and in need of my immediate attention. But this is never true. There is always more time than it seems, but I’m unable to see this because I’m under the control of attachment.

I’m deeply worried about my unsolved problems and the potential for them to create an even worse situation for me. My aversion to this is so strong that I’ve become attached to it, and my attention is now dominated by the demands of my various problems. As a result, everything I do becomes tense and tightly controlled as I try to manage even what is totally unmanageable.

When I have a free moment, I use it to investigate my problems further, or I try to forget about them entirely by occupying my attention with something pleasurable. Both of these behaviours are signs of distraction, where I’m trying to sooth the symptoms of attachment so that I suffer less.

By trying to fight against my aversion and the suffering it is producing, I only make my attachment to it stronger. I verify its importance by giving it my focus, even when I don’t need to do so. What I actually need is to allow concern to be present without remaining attached to it. I need to allow feelings of worry to arise and depart without trying to fight them or escape from them.

When I’m free of attachment, my attention is open and free, and this means it can go where it’s most needed in the moment. In this state, I can stay calm despite facing problems, and I can see that there is time to do what I must. I also become capable of taking the compassionate and creative actions necessary to find solutions to my problems without being overwhelmed by worry.

263. Always Questioning

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0800

What she wants most is to understand herself. She’s always thinking through her experiences, always questioning herself and everything that happens to her. She wants to see what is true in her and what is false. She wants to know why she does one thing instead of another. She wants to comprehend the whole reality of the person that she is.

Sometimes she thinks about these things too much. When she’s aware of this happening, she forces herself to stop. Her deepest questions have to remain unanswered, and this bothers her. Her own self seems to belie explanation, as if it were somehow beyond her possible understanding. She doesn’t know if things will ever become clearer, but she continues to look everywhere for answers.

She doesn’t trust her own desires, because she doesn’t know where they come from. She trusts her fears even less, for they often seem to get in the way of what she needs to do. She has endless doubts about most things, and not just things in her, but those out in the world too. She wishes there were something solid to support her, some dry ground she could stand on, instead of constantly flailing about in the sea of doubt.

But her wish has gone unfulfilled. She has been forced to rely on her own resolve instead. For she refuses to allow her doubts to restrain her fully. She refuses simply because she gets so frustrated with it all that she forces herself to take action.

The source of this decision to act is a mystery. It seems to come from nowhere at all, yet it must originate in her. She doesn’t understand how each particular choice is made. If it’s something about her that causes it, then why is she the person she is and not someone better? Why is she not more courageous, more grateful, more caring than she is? Why doesn’t she live normally instead of questioning every last thing?

Of course, she has no answers. She only knows she has to be what she is. There is simply no choice about that. She cannot abandon her questions any more than she can abandon herself.

262. Technological Change

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0800

Every new technology revives the worry that we might have gone too far. We become concerned that our new creation has taken something away from what it is to be human and deprived us of meaning and purpose. It is only with time that we see that while we have lost something, we have also found new sources of meaning, in addition to the material benefits that the new technology has produced.

There are always those who would prefer to return to a simpler form of life, one that is not mired in the complexities of advanced technology. But any such return would hinder human creativity, for the expansion of our tool set is also a kind of creative growth. Our creative abilities expand as we become more aware of ourselves and the world, and technological innovation is an inescapable part of this process.

As we learn about our world and its ways, we discover new paths of creative expression. We always follow these paths, regardless of the potential risks, for it is by doing so that we develop new capacities to effectively meet our needs. What typically prevents needs from being met is not technology but the rigidity of human-imposed systems that do not allow our new tools and their products to be made available to those who would most benefit from them.

It is precisely our lack of awareness of the normative world that allows these harmful systems to continue, and it is their dominance that makes new technologies dangerous. When we lack awareness, our new creations can easily be used to further injustice, even when our intentions are good.

Regardless, any attempt to limit technological change will fail for the same reason any attempt to limit creativity will ultimately fail. Human creativity always transcends any possible limitations that are placed on it, which means our world is continuously being recreated.

Change can be scary, but we should not try to avoid it for that reason. Instead, we must do everything we can to raise the awareness of ourselves and others. By doing so, we can create the systemic changes necessary to ensure our new technologies are used for compassionate ends and not to perpetuate injustice.

261. Understanding Pain

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0800

No one likes unwanted pain and most pain is unwanted. When we are experiencing pain, we usually want to get rid of it as quickly as possible.

Some of the pain we experience is wholly unnecessary. It is caused by choices that we or other people have made and it would not have occurred otherwise. This includes the pain caused by systems and institutions human beings have created and support, which can inflict incredible harm on our minds and bodies.

But there are also pains that are not like this, pains that are simply part of what it is to exist as a human being. Some of these pains are caused by maladies and diseases that are outside of our control, but that we can sometimes alleviate using medicines and treatments. Others are akin to the pains we feel when we’re training our bodies — the aches that accompany growth and development. These pains arise from doing what is worthwhile but difficult, from pushing ourselves further than we would usually go.

In general, pain is an indicator that something difficult is happening for our bodies. The difficulty we’re undergoing is sometimes harmful, but not always. To act from compassion, we need to be aware of the wide variety of pains a human being can experience. This awareness comes from attention to our own experiences and from listening carefully to the experiences of others. Becoming deeply aware of what causes harm and what does not is essential for compassionate action.

Compassion aims to meet the needs of ourselves and others and often this means doing everything we can to reduce unnecessary pain. Compassion cannot directly eliminate pain in the same way as it can eliminate the emotional suffering that is produced by attachment. But acts of compassion do help to expand our awareness, including our awareness of which pains are unnecessary and how we can act creatively to prevent those particular pains from recurring.

Acting from compassion can sometimes also mean that we will experience pain. Even the growth of our awareness can be uncomfortable and occasionally painful. Helping to meet the needs of others can sometimes involve doing things that are painful for us to do. To understand that these pains are not to be avoided is an essential part of what it is to be aware.

260. Time For Creativity

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0800

When I’m feeling anxious about my ability to meet my immediate needs, it can feel impossible to do anything creative. I might think that it’s only when my needs have been fully met that I’ll be comfortable enough to be creative again. But the time for creative action is always now. It’s by thinking and acting creatively that I can best address my needs and solve the problems I’m facing.

The anxiety I feel over my needs is no different from any other kind of anxiety. It’s also no different from any other kind of suffering that distracts me from taking creative action. Distraction is possible because my attention is being manipulated by attachment. I’m completely focused on my specific problems instead of allowing my attention to be open and free.

It’s precisely this freedom and openness that allows for creativity. When my attention is restricted to a narrow set of concerns, my imagination cannot cooperate with my intelligence to create something new. Newness also means risk, so I might believe I should avoid it in order to not encourage further anxiety. But liberating myself from anxiety cannot mean waiting for anxiety to end, for it might never end if I do nothing about it.

Liberation can only be achieved by changing my relationship with the intentions that are distracting me. I have to see how my own attachments are producing the anxiety I’m experiencing, as it is by seeing this relationship clearly that I also gain the ability to break free from attachment and the suffering it produces.

When I have space from my intentions, I can breathe, I can be open, and I can be free — all of which enables creativity. When I act creatively, my actions are rooted in compassion and I help myself towards meeting my own needs, including those that are so deeply troubling me.

259. What I Should Do

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0800

There are countless things I should do. I should exercise at least three times per week. I should say “thank you” when someone helps me. I should put the “e” before the “i” when I’m spelling the word “weight”. I should drive slowly near the elementary school. I should tell my friend I’m going to be late. I should get at least seven hours of sleep each night.

Some of these shoulds feel more important than others, but the source of their force is always me. It’s always my choice as to whether or not a particular should will be enforced. This is true even when there are others who will impose a penalty on me if I don’t follow the rule or norm, for my desire to avoid the penalty is yet another should, namely “I should not do anything that will get me punished.”

The force of should arises from my own reflective judgment. I’ve judged that it’s in my best interest to do something, so I tell myself that I ought to do it. These judgments arise through the values I’ve acquired from my own experiences. With different experiences, I might judge differently. This means that some of the things I judge I should do, you might judge you shouldn’t do, or vice versa.

My judgments are about the world I desire, the world I want to avoid, and the world I believe to be true. These intentions combine into the shoulds that tell me what I ought to do to bring about the desired world and avoid the undesired world. The fact that the force of should is rooted in my desires, aversions, and beliefs is a good reason to be skeptical of it. For if I become attached to these intentions, I might feel I should do something contrary to what I or another person needs.

Compassion is concerned not with “should” but with what is needed and only what is needed. This means it often demands more from me than my own values or beliefs require. To be able to notice this, I must allow myself to carefully examine all of the things I feel I should do and question their necessity.

258. The Fog

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0800

I am surrounded by a thick fog. In every direction I look, the fog is impenetrable. I can see only what’s right in front of me, and even that is difficult to discern. When I recognize something and feel confident I know what it is and must be, it’s quickly swallowed by the fog again, and I’m left wondering where it went or if it even existed in the first place.

Everything I know and everything I have is continually slipping through my fingers and vanishing into the fog. It is in this condition that I know I must exist and live.

Once I had the feeling that the fog was clearing somewhere ahead, so I went there, I built a home, I made myself comfortable, and I began to devise plans for the future. Time passed in relative peace, but one day the fog started to roll in again. Even what I thought was clear and obvious was again plunged into doubt and uncertainty.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve learned to follow the fog better. I can now see how it moves and changes, how it comes and goes. But still it regularly surprises me. Experience says the best thing is to stay still, not to make any sudden moves. This makes it less likely that I’ll encounter anything unknown or hostile.

I’ve settled into a defensive position, in the hope of protecting what little I have left. But this has also meant that I’ve stopped trusting. I’m haunted by an overwhelming cynicism about the world that feels impossible to overcome. I’ve been betrayed by the fog too many times to be capable of hope.

This life of quiet isolation is more peaceful, but it lacks movement, meaning, joy. I’d like nothing more than to feel joy again, but the fog keeps following me and it is relentless. There’s no way to escape, no way to get what I want and also remain safe from the dangers that lurk nearby.

Still, I try to understand the fog. I devote as much time as possible to studying it. I want to see if there might be a way to control it, or maybe even bring it to an end. The secrets of the fog are not easily uncovered. With attention and patience, I continue to look. But lately I have the growing suspicion that the source of the fog has been me all along.

257. Anxiety To Conform

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0800

We want everyone to conform to the norms of society because we are deeply concerned for our safety and the safety of our loved ones. A lack of conformity suggests the possibility of social disruption or at least change, and we are suspicious of this because we cannot know what such an uncertain process might mean for us. We push for conformity and we enforce it by ensuring those who do not conform are reprimanded, ostracized, or otherwise punished.

Fear of harms that could arise from a changing world is an automatic reaction to the possibility of danger. It would be foolish to expect this fear not to arise. But when we project our fear into the future, it can transform into an intention to avoid and oppose any action that might encourage change. Attachment to this intention produces anxiety — the perpetual worry that change will corrupt the order that is keeping us safe.

This worry only grows in strength when we are regularly told that conformity is the only way to avoid the changes we most dread. Sometimes it becomes so strong that we develop the belief that even the smallest deviation from our norms will lead to total ruin. Dominated by this intense anxiety, we fall back on hierarchies, we obey the commands of authority figures, and we enforce our rules on others with brutal precision.

If someone sees injustice in our harsh behaviour, we quickly label them an outsider in need of punishment. This is especially true when we know deep down that the naysayers are right. We can see the wrongness of our own actions, but we are too profoundly controlled by our own anxiety to change course.

In this situation, it becomes nearly impossible for us to act from compassion, even though it is compassion that we most desperately need. When we receive compassion, we are given temporary freedom from our anxiety. This is the opportunity we need to stop reacting to our immediate circumstances and see that a better way forward is possible.

256. The Joy Of Compassion

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0800

When I’m aware of my needs and the needs of the people around me, it feels necessary for me to take action to meet those needs. This is the action of compassion, which arises directly from awareness of need, and which works to reduce unnecessary pain and suffering.

When I take compassionate action, I help to meet my own needs and the needs of others. Having one of my own needs met can be a source of joy, for it gives me both fulfillment and release from concern over that need. Helping to meet the needs of another person can be sometimes even more joyful, as it grants me a sense of purpose and value.

The joy I feel from taking compassionate action can be accompanied by the whole spectrum of emotional experience, including feelings of excitement, pleasure, frustration, sadness, and sometimes even pain. But joy is powerful and it supplies the fuel to continue acting from compassion regardless of the problems I face.

One of the biggest problems is meeting the enormous need for awareness. We all need awareness in order to bring an end to our own suffering, but when our attachments are strong we are in the grip of suffering and expanding our awareness will be difficult.

To be compassionate, I need to apply all of my intelligence and creativity towards developing means to greater awareness in myself and others. This activity is also profoundly purposeful and thus a further source of joy. Helping others towards awareness means showing them something new and encouraging their own curiosity to drive them deeper into an investigation of their own experience.

As the awareness of the people around me expands, they begin to act more compassionately towards others, and so compassion itself grows. Incredible joy can be realized by helping others become involved in the compassionate effort to solve the problems of need that we all face together.

255. Caught In A Net

Tue, 20 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0800

You want to understand the world as well as you can, so you’re always reading. You read thick academic books, books about science and technology, books where experiments, models, and data are used to produce hard, satisfying conclusions.

You’ve learned a lot by doing this, but you’ve also been wondering about the justification of science itself. You want to be certain that the results you’ve discovered are reliable and won’t soon be replaced with entirely different conclusions.

So you start reading philosophy. Here the concerns seem more primary, more focused on the issue of what it is to be a subjective being trying to understand a world. You quickly find yourself reading not about science or its justifications, but about knowledge and its possible foundations. This feels necessary, for how else could you truly understand anything at all?

You want to be able to hold everything together at once. You want to see how the parts form a single, coherent whole. But the more you read, the more complex the problem of knowledge seems to be, and you’re no longer certain there are any final answers. You keep reading and reading, but it doesn’t feel like you’re making any progress.

You’re caught in a net made of arguments and reasons. You could stop reading today, but you’d still be stuck in the net. For the the net is no longer only in the books you’re reading. It now lives inside you. Even if you stopped reading entirely, the problems you’ve become aware of — the problems that plague knowledge of any kind — are lodged so deeply inside you that they cannot be ignored.

You want to break free because you can see you’re only getting more and more tangled in the net with each passing day. You need tools to cut yourself free, but you cannot seem to find them. Your goal is no longer understanding, but freedom. You want the possibility of stopping. You want the possibility of freedom from philosophy, from argument, and even from reason itself.

But there is no stopping and there is no going back. It’s too late for that. You have to find your own way out of the net. It is a process you must undergo. The tired cliché is true: the only way out is through.

254. Blocked Empathy

Mon, 19 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0800

When I see someone suffering, I feel the need to help them. I feel this is necessary not only because I rationally understand that their suffering is no different from my own, but because I feel their suffering as my own.

It is out of the awareness that all suffering is shared that I try to respond from compassion to a person who is suffering. The first step in such a response is usually to communicate. I need to better understand the other person’s situation in order to see the source of their suffering.

But sometimes, in the process of trying to do this, I might notice that I’m not connecting very well with the other. For whatever reason, further empathy is blocked. This happens because I have my own attachments to particular beliefs and aversions that can occupy my attention and prevent me from feeling the experience of the other as my own. It also means I’m suffering myself, even though I might not recognize my own suffering in the moment.

To be capable of seeing that I’m not empathizing fully, I need to remain sensitive towards myself even when I’m giving most of my attention to another person. Hopefully, I will then realize that my current awareness is not enough to assist the other in a meaningful way. To ignore this signal and force an attempt at compassion can easily produce a negative result. I might end up harming the other person rather than helping them.

The most compassionate response I can offer in this situation might simply be to listen and offer encouragement. Sometimes the most compassionate thing I can do is to get out of the way, and allow the other person to connect with someone who can empathize and offer the help they need. Compassion demands that I try to eliminate unnecessary pain and suffering, but this does not mean that I will personally be able to help everyone I encounter.

253. New Ideas

Fri, 16 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0800

It had been weeks since he’d had an original thought. Everything in his brain had been living there for ages. There were no new arrivals. He was stuck. Every day it was the same worries, the same desires, the same ideas. His mind had become solid, worn down with lines tracing the paths of the same thoughts and feelings that kept recurring.

He thought the problem was that he wasn’t seeing anything new, and this meant he couldn’t think anything new. With new stimulus, new ideas would emerge. He started going for walks around the neighbourhood, paying close attention to everything he saw. He started reading books that went beyond his usual interests. He started asking people questions he wouldn’t ordinarily ask. He started watching alternative films with strange premises and even stranger titles.

He did all of these things, but nothing changed. His mind was still as solid as before. He longed for the feeling of genuine novelty. He remembered this feeling well, for it used to excite him enormously. To think of something entirely new was really one of the best feelings in the world.

He wondered if he wasn’t getting anywhere because he was trying to force the matter. Maybe it was better to leave the problem alone, and a solution would arrive on its own. So he started going about his usual routines, still trying some of his new activities, but without the same intentional vigour. He tried his best not to think about the problem at all.

A long time passed without any noticeable change. But then one evening, lying in bed and unable to sleep, he had an idea. A marvellous new idea! It had arrived seemingly from nowhere, as though he had been touched by some kind of divine inspiration. He played with it in his mind, carefully exploring its many implications.

Then, without warning, a second idea arrived. Perhaps it was born from the first, but he was too excited to think about this. Two new ideas was a bounty greater than he could have hoped for.

But before he could consider the second idea in full, a third appeared. Three new ideas was almost too many for him to hold. He needed to write them down. He could already feel his new treasures leaving his mind as quickly as they’d arrived.

252. Learning The Rules

Thu, 15 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0800

Education is a process of learning the rules. While we also learn many facts about the world we live in, what we are mainly taught is how to value and judge correctly. We are taught rules of reason and logic, of grammar and mathematics, of art and science, and so on.

We are often explicitly told the rules, but we mostly learn them through practice. We are shown a way of solving a problem or expressing an idea and we perform that method until we develop a habit of following the rule. Through this process of education, we are inculcated into our society’s shared normative structure, which is composed of all of the rules that make our society functional.

Our education is complete when we are able to adequately self-police ourselves according to the rules we have been taught. We then know how to measure and calculate, how to put words together to communicate, and how to reason from evidence to a conclusion. In each case, we can produce the expected result when we are given a certain set of inputs. Education thus makes us into more mechanical beings. The rules we learn help us perform functions that are socially useful and that promote order. We become comfortable with these rules and follow them — usually without question — in order to fill the roles we are expected to fill.

As we become more aware of how our judgments and values operate, we start to notice that judgments based on strict adherence to rules sometimes cause us to act in ways that are less than compassionate. Compassionate actions are intuitive and creative, so they frequently go against the rules, which are fixed and mechanical. Our shared normative structure is often too rigid and overbearing, causing it to become a source of anxiety that distracts us from compassionate action.

We might recognize that compassion is necessary, but still worry about the consequences that will come from compassionate actions that break the rules. But compassion remains the only path to joy for ourselves and others, and we cannot allow it to be hindered simply because we will also face consequences.

251. An Impractical Life

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0800

Our lives are dominated by practical concerns. We make choices based on the likelihood that they will cause our material situation to improve. We optimize ourselves around variables we can measure, maximizing the quantities we value and minimizing those we do not. We look for practical reasons when we need to justify our decisions to ourselves and others.

We do these things because they are prudent and they help us move closer to our desired goals. We measure our successes and failures in units of practical value that we call wealth or status or fame. We want our lives to include all of the things we want and none of things we hate. We sometimes even see everything in terms of its practical value, to the point that we see value itself as having a practical foundation.

To instead seek out what is impractical might seem almost quaint, as though it were for someone else — a different person living in a very different world. Sometimes we sense that there might be more to our lives than the practical, but this idea gets pushed out by the chorus of voices telling us to focus always on what’s practical.

A consequence of this is that it can sound like madness to insist there are moments when we must completely ignore the practical. Yet it is precisely by going beyond the realm of the practical that we become capable of discovering another kind of value, a value that does not depend on this or that, a value that cannot be quantified because it is immeasurable.

We sometimes catch glimpses of this impractical value. We see it in the artworks that move us, in the beauty of the natural world that takes our breath away, in the friends and family members that we appreciate and love. Even so, we find ourselves doubting its worth. We feel we cannot trust it because we cannot explain it. We cannot find a way to rationally justify it within the structure of our practical world.

The result is that we fail to give this other kind of value the consideration it warrants. We never fully consider the possibility of an impractical life, a life focused not on instrumental goals and material concerns, but on impractical acts of giving, compassion, and love.

250. Exploring Discomfort

Tue, 13 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0800

There’s something bothering me that I can’t understand. It’s a thought, or it’s a memory, or maybe it’s an intuition. When I try to think about it, it seems too complex to describe, too faint to see, too indistinct to capture. The feelings that surround it are nebulous and imprecise. I want to see what it is, but I don’t even know where it begins or ends, or what form it might take.

Beleaguered by my inability to reach the thing, my only hope is to express everything that surrounds it, and see what happens. Through the effort of creative action, something will appear. What that something will be, I cannot say, but this does not mean it’s not worth the effort. By attempting to express myself, I create an opportunity for the thing that is currently beyond my understanding to become real.

As I create, I’m forced to make choices. I see what I’ve already done and I add to it or subtract from it as I feel necessary. I layer on more and more of what is in me with each choice, and through this process, form and content begin to appear.

By expressing myself through art, I make my discomfort real, and I allow myself to see it for the first time. Perhaps by seeing it I’ll also learn more about it, or perhaps not. For if the object I create is truly new, I might not know how to grapple with it. I might not even see what value it could possibly have.

If I’m lucky, I’ll see some truth and beauty in my creation, and maybe then I’ll realize what I was trying to understand. I might also discover that it has not one but multiple meanings. This newly revealed multiplicity can inspire me to create further, in order to explore this new space of possibility.

Just as my creation can change my understanding, it can also benefit others. For they too might see some truth and beauty in it, and through this discover a new realm of meaning for themselves. In this way, every creative act simultaneously helps me and others towards a greater awareness of both self and world.

249. Harsh Judgments

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0800

Where my values are strongest, my judgments will be harshest. When I see someone behaving in a way that feels not just wrong but repugnant, I cannot accept it. It’s contrary to everything I believe is right and good, and so I feel obligated to respond.

My response might be nothing more than a verbal reprimand to the wrongdoer. Or I might want to seek out some kind of punishment for the wrongdoing, to remind the other that their actions have real consequences. In extreme cases, I might even want to banish the wrongdoer from my community, in order to keep it safe from harm.

I feel justified in choosing these responses because I believe my values are the right ones. But the problem with harshly applying my own rules is that I also reduce the set of people with whom I can find commonality. I limit the scope of my possible community by preemptively disallowing its expansion. By doing so, I can end up harming not just outsiders, but also the existing members of my community, casting them out when they make mistakes or simply when they choose differently than I would.

I might proudly claim that I’m merely maintaining the high moral standards of my community, but this will only serve to further entrench me against outsiders and cause me to ignore compassion. I must recognize that all of the norms and rules I support are contingent entities. They might be more just or more rational than the norms of others but they are still only conventions and not ultimate truths.

I must accept that others are often unaware of the harm they are causing and that helping them develop their awareness will require me to tolerate deviations from my own rules and values. This does not mean I cannot also have rules I enforce strongly, where contravention will not be tolerated, but it does mean I need to try to keep that set as small as possible. I need to do this just to gain the opportunity to spread the awareness that can prevent the wrongdoing that upsets me from continuing.

248. A More Truthful Response

Fri, 09 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0800

How do you feel? This question was one she had always struggled with. To offer up a canned response like “fine” never felt right. It didn’t feel right because it wasn’t wholly true. She wasn’t just fine, and saying so seemed to lack honesty.

Honesty was important to her, but whenever she would try to conjure up a more truthful response, she found she couldn’t locate any words that were up to the job. There were always so many feelings present in her and there didn’t seem to be any way to summarize them into a sentence or two.

Just because someone cared about her did not mean they wanted to hear an entire diatribe about her current emotional state. And really she didn’t want to inflict such a lengthy report on anyone. She wanted to offer a response that was both accurate and honest, while also being succinct.

Surely this was not an impossible task, but every option that appeared in her mind felt too ambiguous to communicate anything of substance or value. Perhaps she was overthinking the problem. This was a real possibility, for overthinking was an unfortunate habit she had developed over the years.

She decided to stop thinking and listen to herself. But she heard nothing. Nothing seemed to be alive inside her. Nothing was offering anything for her to say. But then she realized this was just a cop-out, an attempt to escape. She had to listen more carefully.

There were feelings inside her, a veritable multitude of them. They were saying things but not in any language. How could she communicate what was not in language? She pondered this for a moment before realizing that she needed to stand up.

Then she began to move. She followed her feelings, creating movements with her body that expressed them precisely. She moved her arms, her legs, her head. This felt like the appropriate response. She was dancing. How does she feel? Like this.

247. Beyond The Ordinary

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0800

You find yourself thinking more and more that life is just too difficult. You’re questioning your existence, your purpose in this world that seems to lack any substantial value. You’re wondering if there’s nothing more to life than this painful struggle that never seems to end.

You’re having these thoughts and feelings because you are suffering greatly. You’re suffering under the weight of something you cannot see. It has occluded your vision so perfectly that you cannot even guess what it might be.

Sometimes it’s that your desires are so strong and multiple that they’ve come to dominate everything you see and do. Sometimes it’s your aversions that capture you, causing you to go through life in a constant state of fear and worry. Sometimes it’s your beliefs that are shaping everything you see into something it isn’t, forcing you to live in a world of illusions. In every case, it’s your attachment to something that is degrading your experience of life.

In order to loosen an attachment, you first need to be able to see it. If you can see it, you can also see past it, towards the possibility of being free of it. But when the thing you must see has become part of your vision, any investigation of yourself will be hindered. Your ordinary experiences are already being moulded and modified by the very thing you cannot see.

To make any progress, you need to go beyond the ordinary. You need to expand the range of your experience by opening yourself to everything that is new. This, in turn, creates new opportunities for your desires, aversions, and beliefs to exist in the world, which gives you a chance to recognize them as objects separate from you.

But this approach will only work if you pay close attention to your experiences and to the thoughts and feelings they bring to the surface. Above all, you must be ruthlessly honest with yourself. Any attempt to lie about what you see in yourself will only guarantee that your attachments remain hidden, which means your suffering will continue without end.

246. Nihilism Is Nothing

Wed, 07 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0800

We like nihilism for the same reason we like ideology and religion. All of these things give us a way to escape uncertainty. Just as ideology provides us with certain truths about our political situation, and religion provides us with certain truths about our spiritual situation, nihilism provides us with certain truths about our existential situation.

Nihilism tells us nothing has value and by doing so it frees us from our worries about the value of things, the value of others, and the value of our own lives. By making everything worthless, we allow ourselves the strange comfort of knowing that nothing we do can possibly matter. Freedom from meaning is also freedom from responsibility, and in this there can be a kind of morbid excitement.

But just like any dogma — whether ideological or religious — there can be no genuine certainty about any of nihilism’s claims, for they rely on foundations just as uncertain as anything else. Skepticism is such a powerful antidote that it can defeat not only any possible dogma, but also the most severe nihilism.

It follows that to use skepticism as a justification for nihilism or any kind of cynicism is absurd. For all that skepticism can do is to show us that everything is ultimately uncertain and there are no foundations to our knowledge. The conclusion that follows is not that there is no value but that we cannot be certain of value.

That we can and do value things and people in our ordinary lives does seem to lend value some reality through us, but we cannot be sure that our value judgments have any foundation beyond the fact that we make them. Still, we live in a world of human-created conventions and our values are real and influential in this world.

From the standpoint of the ultimate, we are stuck with interminable uncertainty. We cannot escape our uncertain subjectivity and arrive at the certain objectivity we so deeply desire. The only ultimate reality we have is emptiness, where everything is nothing but also something, uncertain but also possible. And it is precisely this possibility that can be a source of hope. For it means ultimate goodness is possible, and through our willingness to see it and respond to it, we also have the opportunity to create it in the world.

245. Filling The Gaps

Tue, 06 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0800

A fragment is always a part and never the whole. There is always something left out. That a fragment arrives with gaps can be unsettling. The text might appear to say both more and less than what it actually says. It’s able to do this because you fill the gaps as you read. You do this automatically, whether you are aware of it happening or not.

You fill the gaps according to your normative understanding of the world. This understanding is a product of your experiences, of everything you’ve been taught and everything you’ve discovered. It is the vast collection of rules and reasons you have learned throughout your life.

When you encounter a fragment, you have to do something about the gaps in the text. You cannot simply allow the gaps to remain, because then the fragment would say everything and nothing. You must fill them in for the text to make sense in the context of your normative understanding, so you do.

The result is that a fragment always has two authors: the one who writes and the one who reads. What the fragment says is always partly a reflection of yourself. But what it reflects is not always what you expect, and it might even be something intolerable. As such, your reaction to the text can be intense and visceral, especially if it seems to say something you do not like.

But if you’re aware that you’re filling the gaps, then an alternative approach becomes possible. The fragment can be approached as a question. A question demands a response, but there are always many possible responses. The question that a fragment always asks is: how does this text fit with your present understanding?

In this way, every fragment provokes inquiry into yourself. You are asked to see if you can make this text work with your current self. If you cannot find a way to do so, then there is a problem. Not for the text, not for the author, but for you.

The problem is always your own understanding. It must be flexible enough to accept everything as it is, including every possible fragment. If you cannot find a way to do this, then you learn something important. You learn that your awareness is still narrow and you are far from the end of your suffering.

244. The Root Of Oppression

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0800

When I’m attached to my desires, I produce suffering for myself and others. Suffering arises because my attention and actions are fully directed towards the fulfillment of my desires. In such a state, I’m unable to see what I or others need and I cannot do anything to meet those needs.

The suffering that arises from my unmet needs can cause me to redouble my efforts to get what I want, out of the mistaken idea that I can escape from suffering by fulfilling my desires. Not only do I deprive myself and others of the care and attention they need, I also compete with them out of the belief that I must in order to stop suffering. I might even directly harm other people by lying to them or manipulating them to get what I want.

These lies and manipulations are not always short or simple. They can be systematized into rules and structures that give me and others like me advantages over other groups, helping us fulfill our desires more easily. Unquenchable desire transforms into a thirst for power, and power constructs harmful hierarchies of dominance and oppression.

With some awareness, I can recognize that a power structure that seemingly benefits me is harmful overall and become motivated to dismantle it. By doing so, I help to eliminate an oppressive hierarchy, allowing for equality to be restored along this axis.

But even if I were capable of removing all of the existing power structures, I would not have eliminated the root of oppression. For this is the same as the root of suffering, the root of all unnecessary pain. It is attachment itself that causes oppression, which means that new dimensions of oppression will keep popping up like weeds in fertile soil until this root is removed.

I must learn to see that my desires are not me. I cannot allow myself to be shackled to them as this is how the cycle of suffering both begins and continues without end. I must help others discover how these same mechanisms also operate in them. It is only through greater awareness, both in myself and others, that the root of oppression can finally be seen and eliminated.

243. Folding In On Yourself

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0800

The weather looks calm and sunny, so I ask if you would like to join me for a walk. You tell me that you’re too busy right now, that you’re in the middle of working on something. I ask if you might have time later. You tell me that you’ll have to see how things go, that you can’t know in advance how you’ll feel later. I’m forced to accept your uncertain answer, as I can see there’s no point in arguing with you.

My suspicion is that you won’t have time later, because you’ve become preoccupied with your work. Taken by itself, this is not a problem. I can go for a walk by myself or do something else. The real problem is that this seems to keep happening.

You never seem to have time for anything. You seem to be quietly receding into the distance, growing further and further apart from me as your attention remains fixed on your work. You seem to have become more distant from everyone else as well, pushing them away, almost fending them off at times, so that you can have your private space where you can do what you want.

It’s what you want that seems to matter and nothing else. What you call your work is really just what you want to do. There’s no space between you and your desires. In a way, you seem to have become your desires. Are you in control of them or are they in control of you?

You’re so in your head that you’ve stopped seeing the world around you, the world of other people, people like me. You’re folding in on yourself, gradually closing down, and there looks to be no end to the process. You’re so much smaller than you used to be, and you shrink more and more every day.

How long will it take before you’re not here at all? How long before you’re permanently lost to your interminable obsessions? How long until you exist completely in your own little world and not in this one, with no way for me or anyone else to reach you?

242. The World Is You

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0800

Everywhere you look, you see yourself. You’re looking out at the world, but you’re seeing yourself reflected back at you. This happens because what you see depends on your perspective, and your perspective is shaped by the rigid structure of your own attachments.

Your attachments are to intentions — to particular desires, aversions, and beliefs that you have. This can include any of the things you know, your values, the rules you enforce on yourself and others, the institutions and traditions you support, and more.

Intuitions and feelings can temporarily alter the shape of your perspective, but they are not as stable or dominating as your attachments. The world is always the world as you see it, so the world is always showing you the structure of your own attachments. You’re blocked from seeing any further because this structure is opaque. It lets through some of the light but not all.

You also see yourself in the world for a different reason. It’s because the world is literally you. To recognize this in every moment requires great awareness. It means understanding that the distinction between you and the world around you is not final or binding. It means seeing that world you interact with as an individual body is also a continuous extension of yourself. That you cannot exert direct control over its every limb does not make it less you.

To expand your awareness is to learn how to feel the whole world, to feel it is you and you are it, which means your perspective will change. The structure that was once opaque then becomes more transparent. Your intentions will still exist and influence you, but their hold on you will be limited. For now you are free, and your perspective is one of much greater possibility.

To see the world as possibility is to see yourself as possibility. So much is possible for you in this moment and in every moment. Freedom is possible, creativity is possible, joy is possible. But you cannot reach these things if you do not first become capable of seeing them in yourself.

241. What We Deserve

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 08:00:00 -0800

When we do something helpful, we expect to be rewarded. When we do something harmful, we expect to be punished. We see these outcomes as what we deserve to be given from others. If we’re punished when we’ve done nothing wrong or we’re not given a reward we’ve earned, then we complain to others and demand justice.

We keep track of what we deserve and what others deserve. We feel it’s wrong when another person is given something they don’t deserve. We complain that the reward or punishment they’ve received is not merited. By doing this, we protect and enforce the norms that make up our concept of deserving.

Deserving is an extension of our more general concept of reciprocity, wherein we respond to benefits given to us with benefits, and we respond to harms given to us with harms. An intricate balance of giving and taking is supposed to ensure that everyone ultimately gets what they need.

A problem arises when someone is given something they need but do not seem to deserve. As there is nothing meriting a reward, it can feel like such a gift upsets the usual balance. To give unconditionally simply because there is a need might even feel absurd. We cannot see why we ought to do that, and we might complain when we see it done.

If someone can get something simply because they need it, then our norms seem to be at risk. For why would anyone participate in reciprocity if their needs are already being met? Why would our own merit deserve a reward when deserving itself has been undermined by unconditional gifts? These concerns are pressing and they can cause us not only to oppose unjustified rewards in general, but to avoid giving any such thing to the people around us.

The result is that we bar ourselves from compassion and we perpetuate our own suffering. For compassion is always freely given when need is seen. It requires no merit, as it is neither a reward nor a punishment. It is, in fact, entirely orthogonal to the concept of deserving. To act from compassion is to respond to need solely out of the awareness that it is necessary for needs to be met in order for everyone to live free of suffering.

240. The Necessity Of Compassion

Tue, 16 Dec 2025 08:00:00 -0800

Compassionate action can be difficult and demanding, so it’s reasonable to wonder why we should want to become more compassionate. From the perspective of ordinary self-interest, perhaps the answer is simply that we shouldn’t. What we actually want and need is to suffer less and to live more joyfully.

An examination of our suffering quickly reveals that it arises from attachment. We’re human beings, which means we reflect on our experiences and we form desires, aversions, and beliefs that combine to produce ideals that we can easily become attached to. When these ideals are not achieved, we suffer in the form of stress, anger, anxiety, shame, despair, and so on.

Understanding how attachment operates in our own unique experience is not easy. We have to investigate both the self and the world relentlessly, in order to discover what we’re attached to and how these attachments produce our own suffering. As we pay more attention to our experiences, our awareness grows and our suffering shrinks. Noticing this, we aspire to expand our awareness further, in the hope that our suffering will cease.

But we soon discover that suffering does not begin or end with our own individual bodies. Our new awareness reveals that the distinctions between living beings are not nearly as clear or final as they might seem. The suffering that exists in others is also our suffering, and it can cause us to feel just as much anguish as our own attachments.

We then find ourselves compelled towards compassion. We choose it not out of desire or obligation, but because we must choose it. If we hope to end our own suffering, it is necessary for us to act from compassion towards others and help them develop their own awareness.

In the process of doing so, we also learn more about the world. We discover that the deficit of awareness is greater than we thought and as a direct result, compassion is all too rare. Our dire situation means that we need to be as compassionate as possible in order to catalyze the growth of awareness in others.

We also discover that our own awareness is never total or complete. We must continue developing it without end, and become even more compassionate than we already are. When compassion spreads, in ourselves and others, we all gain the opportunity for freedom from suffering and the possibility to live with greater joy.

239. Finding Courage

Mon, 15 Dec 2025 08:00:00 -0800

When you see an injustice happening, you might not have the courage to speak up. The personal risk of saying something can feel too great and you don’t want to deal with the backlash. In some cases, what you get for bringing attention to an injustice might even be financial ruin or physical violence.

But if someone else speaks up, you might then feel the risk of getting involved has been reduced or at least spread out. It now feels possible for you to add your voice, to courageously join in opposing the injustice. To find your courage, you needed someone to show you that speaking up was possible, which helped you see that your aversion to risk could be overcome.

In a similar way, art can supply us with courage. Art shows us possibilities — ways of being and feeling and living that are different from our own. It shows us through photographs and films, through plays and performances, through songs and poetry. It shows us that it’s possible for us to be and say and do things we did not think achievable. It shows us that our current form of life is not the only one available and that we could live differently.

The artist, by creating the artwork, takes some of the risk for us. The risk is that what they create will not be seen as valuable, that it might even be intensely criticized, sometimes to the point of personal harm. History is littered with examples of artists being persecuted because of what they dared to express.

By blazing new paths, artists grant us an opportunity to see that what we once thought impossible is truly possible, and by seeing this, we enable and expand our own creative capacities. It is by fully applying our own creativity that we begin to take those courageous and compassionate actions that will bring immense joy to ourselves and others.

238. To Become A Machine

Fri, 12 Dec 2025 08:00:00 -0800

He expected an organized and productive day. He expected to do everything he had written down on his list. He expected this would be no problem at all. Provided there were no emergencies, no interruptions beyond his control, he would be able to do it. All he had to do was put his head down and concentrate on his work.

He expected success, but success did not arrive. It did not arrive despite his attention being perfectly focused, despite the absence of interruptions, despite everything going right. It did not arrive because tasks that should have taken him an hour ended up taking two.

He cannot explain why this happened. In the past, he has completed at least this much work in a single day, so he knows he’s capable of it. But today he was not successful. He feels frustrated by this, because he can’t see what the problem is — beyond the obvious fact that the problem has to be him, the person he was and is.

Was he just less focused than he thought? Was there something tucked away in the recesses of his mind that was silently distracting him? Was he simply more tired than usual? He has no meaningful answers to these questions, and this frustrates him further.

He is frustrated because his future expectations of productivity could be just as wrong as they were today, and how can he plan for that? How can he construct an accurate schedule if there’s no way of knowing how long each task will take?

He wants precision. He wants control. He wants to function in way that is both reliable and efficient, in a way that produces guaranteed results. He wants to become a machine.

Sometimes he is this machine, but he wants more. He wants to be this not just sometimes but always. He decides he has to push himself harder. He decides he has to tune his every action to be more purposeful and effective. He decides he has to manifest even greater control over everything he does. Only then, he believes, will he be able to obtain the success he desires.

237. Responding From Awareness

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 08:00:00 -0800

When I finish reading a provocative text, I might feel an urge to respond it with a text of my own. I want to communicate my response in words, just as the original text reached me through language. To do this, I interpret the text through the lens of my existing normative understanding and then I craft a new text that better fits with that understanding.

I might claim success if I construct a response so powerful that it logically defeats the argument of the original text. I might even feel a certain happiness in my ability to do this well. But by prioritizing my own text, I also cut myself off from the possibility of learning from the original text.

To learn, I would have to allow the text to operate on me, not merely as an instrument of language and reason, but as a record of human experience. I would have to investigate the experience the text describes and consider whether I might have experienced something similar. I would have to inquire into how the text could still be correct even when it contrasts so strongly with the truth according to my own normative understanding. I would have to question my understanding itself, to see if it really is as robust as it feels to me.

In doing these things, I’m still responding to the text, but I’m doing so through the lens of my awareness. Here, the text pushes my investigation of experience forward and facilitates the expansion of my awareness itself. It’s always possible that the text will not be helpful in this way. But even so, no written response from me is required.

If there is any value in a written response, it would be because the original text has consequences outside the world of language. It would need to have the power to meaningfully change something for myself or others. But even then, the necessary response will be far more powerful if it originates from a place of awareness.

To respond well is no easy matter. It requires patience, consideration, humility, and the courage to keep myself always open to experiences that differ from my own.

236. Our Shared Reality

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 08:00:00 -0800

When I see a beautiful sunset, I can point it out to you and know you will also enjoy it. Not only does the sunset exist for both of us, we’re also likely to judge its beauty in a similar way. But we don’t always make the same judgments. I might enjoy eating spicy food, while you do not. Here, I judge the taste of a spicy dish to be pleasant, while you judge it otherwise.

It might not matter so much whether we like the same food, but our ability to agree is important when we need to make decisions about our shared future. I might judge that the most significant facts lead to one conclusion, whereas you might feel other facts are more salient and support a different conclusion. Usually this is not a problem, as we can simply discuss the merits of the facts until we reach a conclusion that we can both accept.

But if we cannot even agree on what is a fact or what is true, then we might not be able to make any progress. Here, it can feel like we’re living in two different realities. It can feel like I cannot bring you to see the world as I do and you cannot bring me to see it as you do.

In truth, this is always the case. We are always living in our own subjective realities. It’s just that the similarities of our reported experiences have led us to mistakenly believe we’ve transcended our subjectivity and arrived at the objective world. But true objectivity is always out of reach. We are always only seeing the world from our own point of view.

We judge the world differently because our values differ. What’s good for me might not be good for you. Still, there are always places where our values overlap, and this is also where our realities overlap. It is here that we must work on finding common ground.

As there is so much of our human experience that is shared, it’s almost impossible for us to agree on nothing. We must always start from where we agree, and work towards further agreement. A shared reality is not guaranteed, but rather something we must continuously create with others.

235. The Limits Of Language

Tue, 09 Dec 2025 08:00:00 -0800

I’m standing before a great work of art, an unquestionable masterpiece. I cannot recall the name of the painting or the artist. I could read the small card beside the frame to get this information but it doesn’t matter right now. What matters is my experience of the artwork — the whole complex of perception and thought and feeling that constitutes what it is to see this painting.

That it is me seeing it cannot be ignored. For it is my own unique set of past experiences that shapes my present experience. No one will ever share this exact experience with me. Even the person standing next to me right now is not experiencing this painting in the same way, for my past experiences are not theirs and vice versa.

If I were to attempt to describe my experience, I would discover that I’m not able to do so. I could talk about the details I’m seeing — the lines, the shapes, the colours. I could talk about the careful juxtaposition of forms to create a composition with a sense of energy and completeness. I could talk about how the brushstrokes are in some places gentle and slight, while in other places they seem to betray an almost impossible weight. I could talk about how the painting creates an overpowering feeling inside me — a feeling of elevation and joy, a feeling that I’m now somehow more than I was before, a feeling that I have joined with the gods and am no longer a mere mortal.

I could go on and on like this for hours, talking about every imaginable aspect of my experience, and still I would never fully describe the experience itself. An unlimited number of words in any combination would still fail to capture the whole of it. The experience itself is always more, always beyond any possible description.

This inability to describe is not a failure but an incredible success. For it means we do not have total dominion over the world around us. There is always something we cannot delimit or direct. The greatest tool humanity has ever created — language — is entirely insufficient when compared to the greatness of experience itself. There is always more, always more, always more.

234. Two Illusions

Mon, 08 Dec 2025 08:00:00 -0800

We want to know how the world works because such knowledge is practically useful. When we know how things work we become more capable of manipulating the world to meet our material needs. The unquestionable power of knowing how each part works logically leads us to a desire to know how the whole works. So we start looking for a system that can coherently bring all of the parts together. The system we desire is a narrative connecting past, present, and future through a complex array of causal links.

Our attachment to this desire for a unified theory leads us to also become attached to two illusions. The first is that we believe the elements brought together by our system are genuinely separate entities and not aspects of a singular whole. Without hard distinctions between the parts we cannot construct a narrative, so we naturally see these distinctions as primary and essential.

The second illusion is that we come to see both the entities distinguished and the relationships between them as permanent and unchanging. While we might allow for change to happen within the system, we make certain parts of the system fixed by calling them unalterable constants or laws of nature.

Burdened by these two illusions, it becomes almost impossible to fully understand our experience of the world and ourselves. The suffering we feel occurs because we believe ourselves to be wholly distinct from other people and objects, and because we believe some of these entities must be permanent and lasting when they are also impermanent and subject to change.

The solution to this problem is not merely to adopt the belief that non-distinction is somehow more true than distinction, or that impermanence is somehow more true than permanence, for this would just be to fall into another set of illusions.

To break free from our attachments to distinction and permanence is to see these features of our experience as no more or less real than their opposites. It is to accept that our experience is profoundly paradoxical and contradictory in all of its facets. It is to allow ourselves the emptiness of not this and not that, and by doing so, to grant ourselves the opportunity to transform our suffering into joy.

233. Never Settle Down

Fri, 05 Dec 2025 08:00:00 -0800

She knows she’ll eventually have to settle. She knows this because it’s what always happens. Her thoughts get so far ahead of her that she imagines herself having a future so perfect and beautiful and true before considering whether any of it is realistic. There are so many things she wants, simply because her ideals are so lofty.

She knows she won’t achieve everything and she’ll have to settle for something less. How much less she does not know, but she’s hoping for at least something better than what she has at present. And she knows she’s not the only one who’ll have to settle. Her friends also have dreams they probably won’t fully attain. They too will have to accept whatever small good they can reach.

To settle is not the worst thing, she thinks. The worst thing would be to abandon her ideals entirely. To stop working towards something better just because she knows she isn’t likely to get all the way there. She’s learning to accept this, but it’s not easy and frequently painful. It’s difficult to keep pushing forward while also having to settle so often.

What she will not accept is that she has to settle down. Under no circumstances will she accept that. She could not survive a boring life of quiet and peace. There are things she must do and she intends to do as many of them as possible. She won’t get everything she wants but she’ll make real and tangible progress. Some of her progress will be made out in the world and some of it will be made inside her. She knows that change has to begin in her own self for it to also become real in the world.

She will keep pushing herself forward. She will become more than she already is. She will keep moving, changing, growing — always and in each and every moment. She will keep doing these things until the day death snatches her from this world.

232. The Spectacle Consumes Us

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 08:00:00 -0800

The spectacle consumes our attention. We see major events happening around us and we cannot look away. The events themselves might not impact us directly, but we know they will eventually produce problems for our community and our future.

We are unable to stop ourselves from watching every change in the emerging situation and every action taken in response to it. We feel we must focus on these things, for it is here that the problem seems to be located. We believe power originates at the top, and we think any possible solution must also be implemented at the top. Our sociopolitical structures reflect this understanding, and they frequently demonstrate how the decisions of a single person with power can have an enormous impact.

But concentrating our attention on the problem at the highest levels leaves us with little of it for anything else. We become completely distracted, and our actions become scattered and ineffective. We end up stuck, reduced to mere spectators watching a distant story unfold. We cheer when events seem to go our way, and we rage when they do not. All of this is nothing but impotence.

If our attention were open and free, we would notice that we have the ability to create real change in ourselves and the people around us. It is here, in our immediate surroundings, that we have the opportunity to develop our own power. In our local communities, we can find others who share our values and build new organizations, not to foolishly oppose elements of the spectacle and thus become it, but to address the real problems that produce it.

Doing this is no easy task. It means freeing ourselves from the anxiety that pulls our attention to things we cannot possibly influence. This anxiety is a form of suffering that arises from our own attachments, so liberating our attention requires learning about our attachments and the suffering they produce.

The work of freeing ourselves from the spectacle begins in ourselves. If we cannot make changes there, then we cannot possibly make changes out in the world. It is when we are more aware and more free of suffering that we will see how to deploy our creativity and compassion to work more cooperatively with others and become a powerful force for good.

231. Liberation From Suffering

Wed, 03 Dec 2025 08:00:00 -0800

To become free of suffering, I first need to see how it originates. But this is not as straightforward as it might seem. I cannot simply understand rationally what it means for suffering to arise, in the words of my language. I have to investigate my own experience of suffering and observe how that unique experience arises from its sources.

These sources are the intentions we call by the names of desire, aversion, and belief. I must see the suffering that arises, for example, from a specific desire. When I can see how my attachment to that particular desire causes a particular kind of suffering, for example, stress, then I’m beginning to see it fully.

Once I’ve seen the source, it’s logical to think I can also eliminate it: if the source of my suffering is a desire for something, why not simply stop desiring that thing? But I cannot possibly get rid of all of my desires, and any one of them could easily become a locus of attachment.

I must allow the sources of suffering to exist, while also becoming liberated from the suffering they can produce. The only way to do this is to alter my relationship with the sources. I cannot allow myself to remain attached to them. I cannot allow myself to identify with them, to see myself as the things I desire or believe. I must come to see myself as the empty subject of experience, an entity separate from the objects of my intentions.

Still, this is all just words. To actually do this in practice is an enormous challenge. It requires my attention to be so free and open that I can see the entire process of how suffering arises from the vast web of attachments in me and in others. It is allowing for this openness and freedom of attention that is the main task of expanding awareness.

As my awareness grows, I will experience moments of freedom from suffering. This happens because I’ve become liberated from an intention I was once attached to by seeing its connection to suffering. With further attention and the awareness that comes through it, my ability to remain liberated will continue to improve. I may never reach total freedom from suffering, but I must still work towards it, both for myself and for the benefit of all living beings.

230. Change Is Primary

Tue, 02 Dec 2025 08:00:00 -0800

As we experience the world, we naturally get used to it. What was once novel becomes commonplace. What was once unknown becomes predictable. We adapt our actions to our new understanding and we develop habits that allow us to navigate the world with greater ease.

Eventually, we might come to feel we’ve experienced everything and there is no longer any novelty left in the world. We might then begin to live mostly in our memories, the only place where joy still exists for us. We might even become so profoundly bored that we start to tire of life itself.

But while this kind of cynical defeat is possible, it’s not the only path available to us. For as we experience more of the world, we also become more aware of its complexities and nuances. We begin to see what was formerly hidden and we discover the importance of change. We learn that there is always something yet to come and that what currently exists is never permanent.

Rather than seeing the world as a perfectly predictable machine, we begin to see it as a place of radical possibility. What we once thought impossible is now seen to be possible in ways we had never before imagined. We might still get bored with parts of the world, but it is always with the parts and never the whole. The parts that bore us are those that are mechanical and repetitive and that offer little possibility of change.

As our awareness expands, we learn that change is primary. There is always something new arising in the world, always something we have not yet seen or understood. Not only is nothing truly commonplace, there are also more ways for us to create joy and beauty than we ever thought possible.

Far from our memories being our most cherished possessions, it is our imaginations that take flight to lift us to new heights of possibility. From these new heights, we discover the practically unlimited range of creative actions we can take towards greater joy for ourselves and others.

229. Relationship Harmony

Mon, 01 Dec 2025 08:00:00 -0800

To have a relationship with another person is always a challenge. It is necessarily so because you have your desires, aversions, and beliefs and the other person has theirs. While there is often significant overlap, there will also be many differences. Perhaps they want something that you do not want, or you believe something that they do not believe. When these differences come to the surface there will be tension between you.

The presence of this tension will cause you and the other to worry. You are worried about the security of your relationship and its future prospects. You want the relationship to align with your beliefs about what a relationship should be, while the other wants it to align with their beliefs. If the tension becomes overwhelming, you might begin to resent the other and want the relationship to end. Or the tension might relax, as the two sets of desires, aversions, and beliefs gradually converge through mutual compromise towards a relatively stable equilibrium.

But compromise sometimes means abandoning cherished values, and what if you or the other cannot do this? Is the relationship necessarily doomed? Only if you are deeply attached to your values and beliefs. If both of you are able to see that these things are not your true identity then your differences will not cause the relationship to collapse. For if you understand that you are not your attachments, then neither is the other person theirs.

Seeing this means fully accepting the other as they are, and appreciating them regardless of any differences in beliefs or values. Through acceptance, another kind of equilibrium becomes possible. It is the equilibrium of loving compassion, a harmony that goes beyond attachment, beyond values, and beyond differences. It is a harmony built on care, on mutual support, and on profound empathy between human beings.

228. Looking And Looking

Fri, 28 Nov 2025 08:00:00 -0800

My shoes sink softly into the sand as I stroll across the beach. The bay is calm today, and there are no significant waves, only slight surges of water that wash over the sand before retreating back to the sea.

I’m watching the world when I see you up ahead, sitting on a large boulder. I’m far enough away that you haven’t noticed me. You’re staring out at the water, blank-faced and unmoving. You do not know me and I do not know you. We are two separate beings in our own separate worlds.

I continue to walk, but I notice my attention drifting from the squawk of the seagull, from the dried seaweed covering the sand, from the coolness of the air, towards you on the rock. You are unchanged in your stillness, silent and peaceful.

You must be thinking about something, I guess. Perhaps it’s just the landscape in front of you, or perhaps it’s a memory, something that happened to you, or someone, a person you were close to, a loved one who is now gone.

Or maybe there is no such person or memory. Maybe there is nothing at all on your mind. Maybe you are not even thinking. Maybe you are experiencing a singular feeling, a feeling so reassuring and comforting that it has embraced you, the way the water gracefully embraces the sand. I cannot know this. I cannot know anything at all. But still I have the inescapable sense that you are doing something important at this very moment.

I change course before I get too close, in order not to disturb you. But even after you’re gone from my sight, even after hours and days and weeks have come and gone, I still remember you sitting there in peace, looking and looking.

227. Awareness Through Compassion

Thu, 27 Nov 2025 08:00:00 -0800

If I’m unable to see the reality of my own experience, then I’m less able to act from compassion. I need to be open to the totality of the world around me and to all of the thoughts, feelings, and perceptions arising inside me to even have a chance of seeing clearly.

For my awareness to expand, I need to pay attention to everything that exists. I need to question my understanding of it and of myself, and allow for the possibility that there is more than I’ve already seen. As my awareness grows, my sensitivity to myself and the world around me improves. I notice changes in myself and my environment more easily, and my intuitions tend to guide me towards more compassionate actions.

Anything that inhibits awareness from expanding will also inhibit compassion from arising. But the reverse is also true. Whatever inhibits compassion also inhibits the growth of awareness. For every compassionate action helps to develop the awareness of the person it is directed towards. This happens because compassionate actions meet needs, and when our needs are met, our suffering subsides, and our attention becomes more free to explore.

While awareness begins in the ordinary course of life, it broadens through the compassion we receive from others and the self-compassion we offer ourselves. It follows that the growth of awareness is restrained when there are norms and systems that oblige us to act in ways other than what is most compassionate.

To contravene these norms and systems might be the best option, but this is not always possible without attracting penalties that could hinder future compassion. Sometimes these penalties are nothing more than social disapprobation, but in other cases they might involve formal punishment through structures of authority and power. By reducing the range of compassionate action, these systems inhibit the growth of our awareness and contribute to keeping us trapped in a cycle of endless suffering.

226. The Emptiness That Is You

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 08:00:00 -0800

There are many subtle ways of binding yourself. You might have a secret desire so powerful that you feel you must fulfill it or not live at all. You might have an aversion to a certain kind of experience that arises regularly and operates quietly throughout your life. You might have a belief buried so deep inside you that it feels like a fundamental part of your being. All of these attachments prevent you from being free, from seeing clearly, and from living joyfully.

It’s easy to fall under the control of attachment, to feel that a particular want or fear or belief is really you, and that there isn’t anything else that could be you but these things. But nothing could be further from the truth. The objects of your attachments are just products of life — outcomes of your discriminating values functioning in the world. What is actually you is none of these things.

You are the subject who perceives, who feels, and who thinks. You are something that does, not something that is. You are the emptiness that is left behind when your attachments are loosened and your desires, aversions, and beliefs become merely objects of experience that arise and then pass. This emptiness terrifies you because it is so immense, vast, and interminable.

On some level, you already know that you are this emptiness. It feels real and present, yet it is also nothing at all. It is both and also neither. Its paradoxical nature makes it even more terrifying, but it’s precisely your emptiness that allows truth, beauty, and goodness to arise through you. When it is properly seen, emptiness does not leave you with the dread of nothingness. Rather, it pushes you towards compassionate and creative actions that will bring you joy.

To see clearly is your responsibility. It is nothing less than the ceaseless aspiration towards greater awareness of both self and world. By seeing how attachment to your own desires, aversions, and beliefs produces suffering in your life, you also learn how to be free of it. And then you can allow yourself to be this powerful emptiness that is also an unfathomable fullness.

225. To Become Better

Tue, 25 Nov 2025 08:00:00 -0800

We generally try to follow the rules because we value the order, predictability, and safety they provide. We also know that a significant deviation from the rules could result in consequences that would make our situation worse.

But strict rule-following can also be harmful. By emphasizing conformity to rules above all else, we tend to become more rigid and mechanical in our actions. We learn to see the path delineated by the rules as the only one available to us, thus limiting our expression and creativity.

Even more importantly, strict rule-following is harmful because it gives us the wrong idea of goodness. It leads us to believe that we become better people by conforming more closely to the rules and by disciplining ourselves and others when we fail to do so. But any set of rules can only be a proxy for goodness and never goodness itself. Our rules are human creations and thus they also exhibit and magnify our flaws. Rather than guaranteeing goodness, conformity can sometimes impede the possibility of goodness.

To become truly better, we must learn to act from compassion. But compassion does not follow any rules and its demands are often unpredictable. Compassion arises from our intuitions of what is needed and necessary in the present moment, which means compassionate actions are frequently bespoke and arbitrary. A person acting from compassion will sometimes also need to take risks that directly oppose what is required by the rules.

This can be counterintuitive when we’re accustomed to rule-following, because it means we cannot simply follow predetermined guidelines. We must instead respond thoughtfully to every unique situation we encounter. We must act with empathy and care towards all others, including those who have harmed us. At the same time, compassion does not roll over for wrongdoers — it will be tough when it must be tough.

Compassion works to meet needs and expand our awareness of ourselves and the world, and it does so regardless of the personal cost. It is through the awareness that compassion brings that we begin to act more and more from compassion and in support of true goodness.

224. Language Is Political

Mon, 24 Nov 2025 08:00:00 -0800

If a text appears even slightly political, we approach it with certain expectations. We expect it to take a side, to strongly support one position and argue forcefully against the alternative. We see it as a combatant in a battle with clearly-defined boundaries articulated through centuries of political discourse.

In this discourse, there are always two sides, the good and the bad. The conflict between the two sides is constrained to this binary. Always the argument is for the good side, whatever that might happen to be. Every verbal and factual resource is mustered to tear down the bad side and prop up the good one. The intention is to defeat the bad side by showing it leads to nothing less than moral collapse and ruin, while demonstrating the good side is, in fact, right and good. We’re deeply familiar with this, so we approach such texts with our guard fully raised.

But there are also countless texts that do not take a side and do not enter into this arena. These texts we might label apolitical, for they seem to be about something other than politics. We approach such a text very differently. In particular, we’re more willing to hear it out than if the text were explicitly political.

It is exactly our openness to an apolitical text that gives it power. It seems harmless, which makes it capable of forcing us into contemplation. It can undermine our existing beliefs, operate silently on our values, and subtly shift our opinions. By doing these things, it can foment political change at a much deeper level.

The truth is, of course, there is no such thing as an apolitical text. Everything written is the expression of the writer’s values. Every text contains a way of seeing the world and explores what that perspective means. This happens because language itself is normative and therefore value-laden. To truly escape from the political would require us to stop using language altogether.

223. Fifty-One Words

Fri, 21 Nov 2025 08:00:00 -0800

He wants to write but he cannot find the words. He has already written three sentences, exactly fifty-one words in total. He knows this because he has counted them twice. Fifty-one words and nothing more. The fifty-second word is not forthcoming.

Whatever spring of imagination supplied his fifty-one words seems to have gone dry. He cannot help but feel despair at this realization. How can he write anything if there are no words available to him? He is trying to build a path to some unknown place but he has already run out of bricks.

This feeling of dry absence is worse than staring at a blank page. While the blank page taunts with its emptiness, it also allows for infinite possibilities. But now he is saddled with fifty-one words that feel significant. They are evidence he has begun something and he ought to keep going. But he cannot.

He shouldn’t even be thinking about this. He should be thinking about ideas, concepts, the language he needs to reach his reader. He tries to clear his mind, to locate some modicum of focus. He stares intently at the words before him. But nothing happens.

After a moment or two, he realizes he’s actually thinking about a phone call. An old friend is supposed to call him later today, someone he hasn’t spoken to in ages. He’s worried about this. Part of his worry is that he’s always so awkward on the phone. He’s also not sure the two of them will get along like they used to. So much time has passed and he knows he has changed.

In the midst of worrying about this, he notices his attention returning again and again to a single word. For whatever reason, it seems to stand out from the others. The word is “bereft”. It seems perfectly ordinary, yet he cannot pull himself away from it. Bereft of what? Time, satisfaction, money, love, resources. Any of these would be a legitimate answer for him.

He realizes this does not matter. What he wants is to write and he cannot. He can do anything but write. But surely this is not true either. He can actually only do one thing. He must follow himself wherever he goes.

222. Dominant Moods

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 08:00:00 -0800

A bad mood can be so strong that it dominates you. It changes the way you see the world by colouring it in a darker light. What was once fun and exciting can quickly transform into nothing more than a frustrating annoyance.

By changing your perspective, your mood also changes you. It shapes your behaviour, it modifies your speech, it alters the way you look. It can do these things because the way you are is less a response to the world around you than it is a response to your own self. This can be helpful, because it means you can solve challenging problems by approaching them with determination and optimism. But it can also be detrimental, like when you become stuck in a profound sorrow and you lose the ability to do anything at all.

Your mood is not under your direct control, but it has an enormous influence on you. You can try to shape your mood by modifying your environment, but even this is not always successful, because there are more moving parts to a life than anyone can manage. No matter what you do, you will at times have to contend with moods that undermine your ability to function as a caring and capable person.

The best response to a bad mood is self-compassion. You need to empathize deeply with all aspects of your present experience. You have to see your current needs and allow yourself to respond to them. This can be more difficult than it seems, for it means investigating your feelings and becoming more sensitive to their presence.

It is with awareness and sensitivity that you will begin to see what is needed for your mood to shift. Sometimes you need nothing more than a literal cookie. Sometimes you need someone to listen to your thoughts and feelings. Sometimes you need affection or intimacy. To understand what you need in the moment requires awareness, but it is only by looking attentively at your experience that awareness grows.

A compassionate response to a bad mood offers you the opportunity to let go of particular feelings, which in turn grants the possibility of migrating into another mood, hopefully one less stagnant and more open to creative action.

221. Compassion Is Self-Compassion

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 08:00:00 -0800

Compassion directed towards another person is also self-compassion. When I treat others with compassion, I also make the world better for myself. By helping others meet their needs and become more aware, they are freed from unnecessary pain and suffering, and they gain an opportunity to become more compassionate.

A more compassionate world is one that is more empathetic, more cooperative, and more loving. I benefit greatly from all of these things, both directly and indirectly. I benefit directly through the ways I’m better treated by the people around me, and indirectly through the more compassionate choices they make in their own lives and in their treatment of others.

Self-compassion is also compassion towards others. When I treat myself with compassion, I meet my own needs and I become more aware, and in doing so, I help to eliminate suffering. I do this not only for myself, but for others too, as greater compassion follows from greater awareness.

Compassion follows from awareness because one of the most important things I become more aware of is the unity of myself and the world. In addition to being distinct entities, the two are also one and the same. The self literally is the world and vice versa. Realizing this, it becomes straightforward to see that all compassion is always directed towards both the self and the other.

As I become more aware, I learn to see the world as part of me, and I incorporate more of the other into myself. Similarly, I learn to see myself as an integral part of the world, and I express more of myself to others.

It’s when I can see self and world as one that I will always act from compassion. Compassion is actually a kind of self-interest, where the self I’m interested in helping is not just this body that is mine but also the entire world. My concern is for both myself and the world as one, and I care for both as one.

220. An Endless Struggle

Tue, 18 Nov 2025 08:00:00 -0800

Making art means struggling with the problem of expression. There’s something you see and you need to share it with others. But you can’t communicate it directly, for you know your words will not be able to reach the thing you see. Your only hope is to somehow show it to others. To do this, you’ll have to create something new.

But creating is not straightforward, and the thing you make is not always capable of doing what you hoped. Your new creation might not possess the power it needs to be effective. This means you have to try again and again. Your efforts amount to a practice that gradually makes you more capable of expression. But it is experienced as a daunting struggle of regular failure and self-doubt.

There’s little that can be done about this beyond offering yourself compassion. Others might not understand what you’re going through. Unless they’ve experienced something similar, they might even find your struggle ridiculous. They might chide you for even trying and tell you to expend your efforts on something more practically useful.

But this is not a real option for you. You know you have to keep going. You know you’d never be able to live with yourself if you gave up. You need to create, so you will keep trying. You will choose the struggle of expression over and over again. Even after you finally create something beautiful, you will choose it again as you need to show us even more. There is no end to the struggle. It lasts as long as you try to express more and more of your vision.

The result is that all art is partly about struggle, about discovering the courage to overcome. This is shown through the existence of every last artwork, regardless of whether it takes the form of a painting, a performance, or a poem. Every artwork helps us become stronger, more courageous, more defiant beings. It helps us see that our struggle culminates in an even more beautiful world.

219. Community Benefits

Mon, 17 Nov 2025 08:00:00 -0800

To be in community with others means understanding you are part of a greater whole. It means knowing other people and being known by them. It means developing lasting relationships that are both caring and trusting. It means cooperating on common goals and sharing the burden of work. It means giving and taking both emotional and material support. It means having people you can rely on when things go wrong.

For many people, this kind of community does not exist. It has become so easy to meet our material needs through transactional means that community is now felt to be unnecessary. The social benefits of community are no longer believed to be worth the social burdens that follow from it.

Instead, we retreat into ourselves, living insular lives at a distance from others. We do this because we want to live in our own personal paradise — a place where we get everything we want and nothing we don’t want. But by acting on this desire, we deprive ourselves of the social contact and connection we need. Often we do not fully grasp our need for community until it’s too late. It’s when we find ourselves at our lowest point, after everything has gone wrong, that we most need community to support us.

As we become more separated from others, it becomes easier for malignant forces acting out of self-interest within a badly constructed system to cause us harm. We know that a people divided is easily conquered, but we push this fact to the back of our minds.

We don’t want the struggle that building community requires. We don’t want to deal with others who might disagree with us, who might want things from us, who might be different from us. We don’t want to give up any of our resources to help others, even if it might ultimately be to our own benefit. Through total surrender to our desire for lasting personal happiness, we also surrender our own humanity and the community with others we so desperately need.

218. The Deepest Self

Fri, 14 Nov 2025 08:00:00 -0800

Everything she shows others is carefully managed. She does not allow them to see any part of her that might lower her in their eyes. Problems and blemishes are kept hidden, tucked out of sight or covered up. She is an expert at hiding and covering, for she has been doing this her whole life.

She knows what people will accept from her. She knows what attracts them and what repulses them. Her surface is all happiness and cheer and fun, precisely because she knows this is what others most want from her.

Her deepest self is not like this at all. It’s filled with feelings she cannot explain, feelings that push her to do things she doesn’t understand. She keeps this self hidden at all times, for it scares her to imagine what people would think if they knew who she really was. There’s too much darkness there, too much pain, and no one likes that, no one wants to see it, and no one seeks it out. It’s better to keep it buried, deep inside her where it can cause her reputation no harm.

The others rarely show these parts of themselves too, and in truth, she’s not certain she could handle it if they were to give her more. She connects with them on the surface, their surfaces being similar to her own, carefully polished and poised.

Or at least, she thinks she connects with them. This is what most scares her. If so much of her is hidden, and so much of them is hidden, then what is really being connected? Who are the entities that are connecting? Are they real people, and is one of them her?

When she thinks about this for too long, her loneliness grows and she feels the darkness inside her expand. It seems inescapably true that there’s a significant part of the real person she is that is not connected to anything or anyone. And therefore, she is alone in the world.

To overcome this would mean showing herself — her real self — to others, but is this something she is able to do? To be vulnerable seems too much to ask of a person in a world as harsh and unforgiving as this one.

217. Anxiety And Attention

Thu, 13 Nov 2025 08:00:00 -0800

An intense feeling of anxiety can be overwhelming. It can become almost impossible for me to remain present and attentive to what I must do in the moment when I am totally consumed by worry.

To eliminate my anxiety, I need to see the attachment that is producing it and loosen myself from it. But when I’m burdened by the immense weight of the feeling, it can be incredibly difficult to do this effectively. I’m forced to contend with the feeling, which is merely a symptom of the problem and not the problem itself.

My first impulse is to react to the feeling. I want to do whatever will remove the unease and apprehension I’m feeling as quickly as possible. I might turn to some form of distraction, something that will absorb my attention so that I’m not able to think any further about my worry. Of course, this doesn’t help me do what I need to do. But my inclination to escape through distraction does contain valuable information: I need to shift my attention in order for the feeling to weaken.

One way to do this is surprisingly to look directly at the feeling itself. Rather than attempting to escape, I focus all of my attention on it. I’m not looking at the thoughts surrounding it, but at the anxious feeling itself. The purpose of this is to allow myself to notice the scale and extent of the feeling. When I’m overwhelmed, my anxiety feels huge and vast. But when I focus on it, it quickly shrinks into something smaller than before.

Another way to shift my attention is to draw it towards the body. Stretching, altering my posture, or even just scratching my head can help with this. The point is to pull my attention out of the dominating feeling of anxiety and back into the world. Part of being overwhelmed by such a powerful feeling is that I shrink into the narrowness of the self, and shifting my attention to the physical reality of my own body can help to counteract that.

These techniques can only provide temporary relief. I must remember that I’m not actually resolving my anxiety through them, I’m just giving myself enough room to function so that I can have a chance to properly address the source of the problem. More lasting relief will only come from loosening the attachments that are causing me to suffer from anxiety in the first place.

216. You Must Save Yourself

Wed, 12 Nov 2025 08:00:00 -0800

We want to live happily, yet we suffer. We reflect on our experience and we wonder why we must suffer. Why must life be like this? We recognize there is a problem but we do not grasp its nature. We think something is missing, something we need to find, something that will complete us. We think there is a secret we could discover that would guarantee us endless pleasure and happiness.

We’re told by others that our suffering arises from the way we live. We’re told that we need to look at the world differently. We’re told that we need to live a simpler life, with fewer concerns and desires. We’re told that we need to be more organized, more intentional, and more in control. But even if we do all of these things, we still regularly experience suffering.

It’s true that our suffering arises from our way of life, from our perspective, from the unnecessary complexity we create, and from our reactive and distracted behaviour. But these are only symptoms of the problem. The problem is that we are profoundly attached to the things we want, the things we fear, and the things we believe. We are so attached that we cannot see beyond these things and they become our entire identity. Our attention and actions are constantly manipulated by our attachments and as a result we become trapped in suffering.

To end your suffering, you must loosen your attachments. It’s by allowing your attention to be open and free that you become more aware of your desires, aversions, and beliefs, and the particular attachments you’ve formed to them. It’s also how you see the direct connection between attachment and the suffering you’re personally experiencing. As your awareness of these things improves, you start to become capable of breaking free from attachment.

The only person who can make you more aware is you. Others can encourage your awareness, they can provide you with opportunities to see more, but it is you who must allow yourself to look. The more of the world and your own self that you block yourself from seeing, the more you prevent your awareness from growing. You must let everything in. You must become more sensitive to all things. You must allow your awareness to expand and deepen. The only person who can liberate you from suffering is you.

215. Collective Action

Tue, 11 Nov 2025 08:00:00 -0800

Our best efforts are often defeated by systems that are unfair and unjust. Our success is often hindered by power structures that undermine equality and promote hierarchy. Our well-being is often reduced by laws that only benefit a small group. These factors easily combine to limit our potential happiness. And if we find ourselves on the periphery of society, they can sometimes make happiness a total impossibility.

The problem goes beyond any individual and so any possible solution must be implemented at a higher level. Systemic change is needed but it is only possible by working with others to make it possible through collective action. Engaging regularly in this kind of action requires great energy and attention. But oppressive systems often rob of us of these things. They do this by compelling unnecessary actions that physically drain us, and by manufacturing a neverending fight for survival that mentally drains us.

To make collective action possible, we must overcome these losses. The means for doing so is compassion, both for ourselves and others. Through compassion we work to better meet our own needs and the needs of the people around us. We also become more aware of how our attachments produce unnecessary suffering and we learn how to eliminate this suffering. This, in turn, allows us to save our energy for cooperative projects that can help us resolve our social and political problems.

With the benefit of awareness and compassion, we can discover joy in all of our experiences, including those that might be difficult or even painful. Joyful experience is not only pleasurable but also a source of fuel for further action and further joy. It allows us to exceed our apparent boundaries, including those imposed on us from outside. With freedom from suffering and the fuel of joy, systemic change transforms from an overwhelming obstacle into a problem we can creatively solve together.

214. Wants And Needs

Mon, 10 Nov 2025 08:00:00 -0800

We want pleasure but we need love. We want wealth but we need purpose. We want power but we need justice. We want righteousness but we need empathy. We want success but we need meaning. We want happiness but we need joy.

While our wants are often the main focus of our lives, we only rarely consider what we need. We set goals to fulfill our desires because we want the happiness that comes from getting what we want. We emphasize expediency, improving our material situation, and achieving our goals as quickly as possible.

We do not see any harm in prioritizing our desires. We take the happiness that results from their satisfaction as a sign we’re doing the right thing. But often our most pressing needs are in conflict with our most cherished wants. As human beings, our needs are not limited to things like food and shelter. We also need things beyond the material, like meaning, love, and joy. By focusing solely on our wants, our ability to meet these needs is severely limited. Our desires consume our attention and we manipulate our actions to achieve our goals, which prevents us from doing what is necessary to meet our needs.

If we can recognize the conflict between our wants and our needs, we can also transcend it. To do so, we must be skeptical of our wants and even of our own values. We do not have to abandon our values or desires, but we must not allow ourselves to become so attached to them that they become all of life. For it is when we live from attachment that we actively impede our own possible awareness and compassion.

To instead live from compassion will sometimes mean doing things we do not want to do, but that we see we must do, not out of duty or because of any outside authority, but because we feel the necessity of action. It is compassionate action itself that helps us eliminate suffering and create an endless bounty of love, purpose, justice, empathy, meaning, and joy.

213. What Must Be Said

Fri, 07 Nov 2025 08:00:00 -0800

I’m trying to tell you how I feel, but it’s impossible to find the right words. Everything that comes out of my mouth feels wrong, and I have to keep pausing to restate what I’ve just said. I’m anxious about speaking my mind because I cannot know how you’ll receive my thoughts.

I’m trying to formulate the perfect expression of my feelings, but the result is that I’m not saying much at all. My words won’t flow because I’m being far too cautious. I’m afraid of saying something I can’t take back or something I won’t be allowed to take back.

The problem is that my words do not exist in a vacuum. You’re hearing them and evaluating them. You’re judging me, even if you tell me you aren’t. For you do not have total control over your judgments. Some of them arise automatically, without any conscious choice. I will be judged, simply because I must be.

I can only hope you’ll forgive me if I happen to stumble into the wrong words, ones that are too clumsy, too rigid, too insensitive. Deep down, I have a sense of how I feel, and there might even be words for it, but those words feel too raw and dangerous. Instead I offer you ten words for each necessary one, in the vain hope I’ll make myself clear while also reducing the weight of the most important words.

I want you to know that I’m aware of your feelings and your needs. I want you to know that I’ve thought about what I’m saying and that my words have been carefully chosen. I want you to know that my words are significant and not mere musings. I desperately want all of these things, so I’m unable to focus on what I must do, which is to communicate myself to you.

I’m overwhelmed by my desire for clarity and my worries about speaking wrongly, so my attention is on these things instead. Everything would be much easier if I could somehow allow myself the freedom to say what must be said.

212. The Freedom To Reject

Thu, 06 Nov 2025 08:00:00 -0800

Rejection is always painful. It means learning that someone I’m interested in is not interested in me. Strong feelings necessarily arise. I feel grief over the lost possibility of a valuable connection. I feel sadness over the discovery that I am not what the other wants. I feel anger over being discarded like a useless object.

It’s almost impossible not to experience such feelings after being rejected. As I highly value the person doing the rejecting, I also value their judgment of me. And they’ve judged me unworthy of an effort towards a lasting connection.

I might feel a desire to lash out in response to this judgment, to declare that I no longer value them either, but I would only be deceiving myself. I do value them or I would never have sought the connection in the first place. I might try to brush off the rejection by claiming they couldn’t accept me because they already have too many friends or too many obligations. But a person will always make time for the people who are most important to them.

It’s simply part of life that there will be others who will not want to include me in their lives. This is a harsh truth I must accept. This doesn’t mean that the person who has rejected me is bad or that they have wronged me. For the other side of this truth is that I too would reject someone I do not value highly enough. I might try to pretend that this isn’t the case, or that I would find a way to include them, but this would just be another self-deception.

To reject someone is not to disrespect them or to ignore their humanity. It is simply to say that they do not fit with my current life and my current priorities. Everyone has the freedom to choose whom they would like to share their time with. To remember this when I’ve been rejected, and to recall the occasions when I’ve rejected others, is perhaps the best way to see that rejection is a necessary and ordinary part of life.

211. Changing The Game

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 08:00:00 -0800

When we think about how we can improve our lives, the range of our imagination is often limited. We have been raised and educated within the context of a given society. The options open to us seem predetermined by the ideals of that society and the existing lives of its members. Any possible change to the society itself seems unlikely or even impossible. We cannot imagine a major change, as we have never experienced one before.

We find ourselves trapped in a game with a limited set of moves. This is the game that corresponds to our society’s existing form of life. In deciding how to live, we feel forced to choose from the moves that are permitted within the game, and this places heavy restrictions on what we can do and be.

The task of art is to expand the scope of the game. It is to show us that there are possible moves that are not included in the official rules. It is to show us that the game is only a small part of a richer and more diverse world. The way an artwork does this is by showing us something that goes beyond the confines of the game. All art is a kind of fiction, an imagining of what could be but does not yet exist.

At the same time, the fiction an artwork presents is grounded in the reality of the game we are already playing. This grounding allows us to see how the new scope the artwork offers is compatible with most of our existing game. It shows us how our game could carry on in a slightly different way than it does at present.

The reality of the game is no different from the reality of the artwork. Both are true and false. They are two constructions — human-made artifacts — that arrange the pieces of human experience in alternative ways. Art creates tension between the fiction of our constructed society and the fiction of the artwork. It is this tension that prompts us to question our experience and to investigate how we might live different and better lives.

210. Dangerous Desires

Tue, 04 Nov 2025 08:00:00 -0800

There are things you want that you know would not be good for you. Having them would in some way harm you or your loved ones. You know what these these things are, and you know to ignore your desire for them. You’ve sought these things before and terrible consequences followed. Your memory of this keeps you on guard against yourself.

From your experience, you’ve learned that not every desire you have is a good one, and you approach your own wants with skepticism. You interrogate your desires, you examine them closely, and you consider the potential consequences of their fulfillment.

Still, you often feel pulled towards things you know would bring certain disaster. You battle this force constantly. You battle it by seeking distraction in anything that might take your attention away from the desired thing. You battle it by bribing your attention with things that are good for you. You battle it most often through nothing more than sheer strength of will.

For the most part, this works, and you manage to circumvent your most harmful desires. But sometimes what happens is that a new desire emerges, a desire for something you do not fully understand, and despite your careful consideration of it, you fail to discover the danger that lurks behind it.

Seeing no harm, you seek to fulfill your desire. You devote yourself to it, both in thought and action. You become more and more enamoured with the idea of its fulfillment. You start putting considerable time and resources into it. And then, after all this, you finally get what you want.

The wanted thing is everything you hoped it would be, but it is also more. It is precisely this more that you have not anticipated and you do not want. It is your worst nightmare come true. And it is this that will haunt you for the rest of your days.

209. Tension With The Other

Mon, 03 Nov 2025 08:00:00 -0800

When the other is still an other, there is a palpable tension with the self. The tension originates in the perception of the other person’s otherness. At the forefront of attention is the simple fact that the other is not the self.

Sometimes this tension results in feelings of repulsion or hostility. This happens when the other feels too foreign to the self and its values. But more often, the tension produces curiosity, the desire to know the other better and incorporate their otherness into the self. The other is not the self, so there is always something the other has that the self does not, and vice versa.

A mutual desire to know the other, to explore their perspective and experience, can lead to the connection of friendship. Sometimes the mutual desire is so energetic and exciting for both that it transforms into a more substantial attraction. It then enters the realm of the erotic, where the desire is not merely to know, but to consume and be consumed by the other, to join two beings into one.

As the other is gradually incorporated into the self, the tension relaxes and curiosity evaporates. While the other remains physically separate, their perspective and experience has now been largely added to the self. In cases of erotic attraction, this incorporation can be even more total, so that the other feels like an extension of the self. When the other is included in the self, there is also usually the familiarity, affection, and care that we call love.

But because the tension has now relaxed, the desire for the other might also fade. Since the other is no longer truly separate, their presence might be taken for granted. Any parts the self has not already accepted are usually those that have been rejected because they conflict with the self’s attachments.

A consequence of this is that a new tension can arise between the self and the other. But this tension does not produce curiosity or attraction but rather bitterness and resentment. The self believed its triumph over the other would be total, that it would achieve transcendence, but this did not happen. It failed to happen because of a lack of awareness. The self is unable to see how its attachments inhibit its acceptance of the other, and so an unbridgeable gap between the two still remains.

208. Hidden Treasures

Fri, 31 Oct 2025 08:00:00 -0800

He looks at her but she does not return his glance. Her eyes are aimed elsewhere, but where exactly, he does not know. She seems to be looking straight ahead, but there is nothing there but a blank wall. He decides she must be lost in thought.

He would like to know what she is thinking, but even more than that, he would like to know what she is feeling. He has noticed that she hides most of her feelings and shares only what passes through a narrow filter. He thinks most people do this, but she has taken the practice to an extreme. She hides almost everything, supplying little more than a carefully-curated portrait of herself. What is she actually feeling? This is the question he wants to answer more than any other.

He could just ask her. He has thought of this before, but he never actually does it. He is worried about how she will respond. He is concerned he will unleash something he will not be able to handle. But he cannot let such worries control him. He has to at least make an attempt.

What are you feeling right now? He hears his words more than he speaks them. He has committed himself now, and that is terrifying. She remains still for a moment, before turning to him and saying she feels tired. And what else? He speaks again, pressing forward. He knows that “tired” is the sanitized response, the one already waiting on the surface for a question like his. He knows there has to be more. She asks him what he means. I know you have more feelings than that. He almost cannot believe his own words. Where did he find the audacity to say such a thing?

She looks away again, and he worries he has upset her and she will not answer. But then a smile starts to bloom, quietly transforming her face. She tells him that she feels at peace, a peace she has only rarely felt before. He is happy to hear these words, to hear something genuine emerge from her at last. She says she feels relaxed and vibrant at the same time. He isn’t sure what that means, but he is delighted nonetheless.

He nods slowly to acknowledge her response, and he sits with her words. To be both relaxed and vibrant must be a truly serene experience. He wonders if he has ever felt anything like that, but he is not certain he has. He tries to imagine it, to place himself inside her idea. It feels strange but exciting. He can’t help wonder what other treasures she might be hiding from him.

207. Wanting To Feel Better

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 08:00:00 -0800

When I’m feeling down, I can also feel unable to do anything. There are tasks I need to complete, actions I must take to support myself and others, but I feel I can’t do them because my negative feelings are too strong. I logically infer I need to improve how I feel before I can take action. I feel it’s only when my emotional state changes that I’ll be able to start making progress.

But when this happens, I’m under the control of attachment. It can be difficult to see this, because the desire I’ve become attached to is both common and subtle. All I want is to feel better, and it doesn’t seem like this could actually harm me. But if I’m attached to this desire, it will produce suffering just like any other, as I will manipulate my attention and actions to reach the desired result.

It might not seem like I’m exerting any control over myself. It might feel like I’m only reacting to my current mood. But it’s precisely this kind of reactive behaviour that is indicative of attachment. When I’m reacting, I’m not responding to what is needed and necessary, which means I’ll continue to avoid doing the things I must for myself and the people around me.

To do what’s needed, I must break free of my desire to feel better. I must see that it too is not me, that it does not have to be fulfilled, and that I can take action regardless of my emotional state. When I’m free, I grant myself the opportunity to do must be done.

This does not mean I have to go on feeling bad. On the contrary, allowing myself to do what is needed and necessary is most likely to create the joy I desperately need. It also does not mean I have to oppose pleasure or try to avoid it. I can enjoy pleasure when it comes, but when it’s not present I won’t seek it out.

By seeing the reality of my desire to feel better, I also start to become aware of the suffering it can produce through attachment. When I can see this clearly, I will allow myself the space from this desire to be able to act as I must to help myself and others.

206. The Pain Of Failure

Wed, 29 Oct 2025 08:00:00 -0800

You put your whole being into everything you do. You do this automatically, because you care about the things you do and you want them done right.

To act in any other way would feel hollow and false. You cannot do less than your absolute best. If you did, you would detect the lie in your actions. It would be like you were performing a simulation rather than doing the real thing. You either give everything to what you do or you don’t do it at all.

You try your best so that you know any failure will not be the result of a lack of effort. When failure does happen, it’s devastating because you’ve invested so much of yourself and still you didn’t succeed.

When failure happens repeatedly, you begin to close yourself off. You begin to narrow the scope of your actions in order to reduce the risk of further grief. You become less active, which causes you to shrink into less. You fall into the stagnation of habit, a kind of repetitive non-life, where you go through the same motions day in, day out. These motions support your material existence but do nothing to supply you with meaning or purpose. From this numbness it becomes almost impossible to help another person or even yourself. Compassion stops being possible because you’ve cut yourself off from creative action.

To instead act boldly and keep yourself open to the world is a courageous choice. It means accepting that you’ll fail sometimes, and that it will mean pain. It will be painful simply because you care. To attempt to fight the pain or to block it will not be successful. These efforts will only cause the pain to solidify into an aversion to life that will push you towards stagnation and numbness.

You must instead accept the pain. When unwanted feelings arise, you must see them and recognize them, and allow them to pass on their own. In this way, you remain loose and attentive to the world, and then it becomes possible to act creatively and compassionately, even if it means pain once again.

205. Building Patience

Tue, 28 Oct 2025 08:00:00 -0800

When I discover something new, I want to understand it immediately. I want to know its position in the interconnected web of objects that is my rational understanding of the world. I want to be able to justify its existence and grasp its full meaning.

It’s because I’m able to do this for most of the things I encounter that I expect every new thing to be quickly assimilated. Any delay in my comprehension is experienced as frustration, as though something has gone wrong. With unlimited information at my fingertips, these expectations are regularly emphasized and enhanced.

I want the meaning of all things to be revealed at once. But even a cursory awareness of my relationship with the world should make it clear that this is an impossible demand to satisfy. Meanings are often lacking and there are even things I cannot understand at all.

My desire for immediate understanding is a kind of impatience that will cause me to ignore or discard those things I cannot quickly comprehend. But to ignore or eliminate parts of my reality would be to impede my own awareness. For my awareness to broaden, I must see everything as it is and I must let everything in.

I need to learn to be more patient with myself and the world. I can help myself do this by purposefully choosing activities that require me to slow down. A prime example is reading literature. Not only does a literary text force me to read carefully, it also reveals meaning gradually. Engaging with such a text is a slow process, but the understanding that can be reached through it is often valuable.

By practicing forms of experience that are necessarily slow, I become more patient. I learn that there are meanings that can only be revealed slowly and possibly only partially. I learn that awareness itself is a long and winding road — one that I’ll be walking for the rest of my life.

204. Order Through Agreement

Mon, 27 Oct 2025 08:00:00 -0800

We need rules for there to be order. Without rules, people could do whatever they want, and they might do things that would harm us or compromise our ability to live happily. When we have rules that everyone knows and follows, the actions of others become predictable, and this helps ensure our security and safety.

When we encounter disorder, we believe it should be resolved by creating a new rule. Once the new rule is formulated and proclaimed, we expect order to be restored. But creating a rule does nothing by itself. We also need some means of enforcing the rule.

Most of the rules we follow are enforced by ourselves and the people around us. Often we do not even recognize these as rules, they are simply what we know we should do. By holding people to account, we remind others to follow the rules. If someone fails to respect the rules, we might apply a punishment as an incentive for them to follow the rules in the future.

But adding a new rule is not straightforward. It requires others to agree with us that the new rule should be enforced. If such an agreement has not been reached, then the rule will be powerless and it might as well not exist.

This is true even when the rule is imposed by an outside authority. Imposed rules are often supported by institutional enforcement in the form of policing and a system of justice. But even these rules might not be followed when agreement is lacking. If there is no agreement supporting a rule it can be met with disregard, scorn, or even hatred.

The source of the power of rules is not found in the strength of their authority but in the strength of the agreements that underlie them. And we know this, because rules produced from the bottom up, like social norms, are often far more powerful and pervasive than rules imposed from the top down.

Order is not established through institutions and systems that impose control through force, but through agreements between ordinary people on what they must each do to create an environment conducive to their own success and happiness.

203. The Object Of Desire

Fri, 24 Oct 2025 08:00:00 -0800

She knows she sometimes has a strong effect on people. She has been told it’s because she’s attractive, but she doesn’t allow herself to believe this. When she’s around, people start to act strangely, as though they’re unable to simply accept her presence. Their attention turns to her and their actions become incomprehensible.

She doesn’t know if this lack of comprehension stems from her own inability to read people or if people are just stranger than she imagines. She assumes it must be some combination of the two, for she knows she often misses signals and everyone is weird in some way, even her.

She finds it almost impossible to understand people or their priorities. Why don’t they just say what they want from her? If they would be clear with her, then she would happily be clear in return. But instead things are always muddled and foggy.

She tries to be as direct as she can with everyone. She tries to say exactly what she thinks and feels. Except when she knows doing this would overly hurt someone. Then she holds it in. She doesn’t like doing this, but she knows it’s necessary. She doesn’t want to cause anyone pain, and she definitely doesn’t want to provoke anger.

She cannot handle people’s anger. She wants to keep the peace as much as possible. She wants everyone to be happy. But of course they’re often not happy. She knows this and she feels partly responsible for it. But she cannot possibly give everyone what they want, for what about her own wants? Do they not matter too? And what if what she wants most is to be left alone, to keep to herself, to keep all of her to herself?

She just wants to exist. As herself and as a part of her community, just like everyone else. But it seems she cannot do even this without also being an object of desire.

202. What Seems Meaningful

Thu, 23 Oct 2025 08:00:00 -0800

What has already been noticed becomes more noticeable. If I’m reading a book and an unusual word stands out to me, I give it extra attention, I ponder its meanings, and I might even look it up to explore its etymology. Having noticed it, I’m struck when I see it again later that day. I have not seen this word in so many years of reading and now I’ve seen it twice. When I then see it a third time, I begin to wonder if it might be haunting me.

Of course, nothing like this is happening. The repeated appearance of the same word is not significant. But because probability is so foreign to ordinary thought, it’s easy to mistakenly believe that highly improbable events are actually impossible. There’s no space in our set of expectations for events that are so rare as to almost never happen.

When the unexpected occurs, it feels meaningful. We tend to give meaning to anything that stands out from our ordinary experience. When this tendency to assign meaning is combined with our tendency to notice what has recently been the focus of attention, we can see patterns in what is no more than coincidence.

I came to believe there was something important about seeing the same word repeatedly when this was really nothing more than a series of random events filtered through my limited perception of the world. If this kind of experience were limited to mere words, it might not be so dangerous. But the same process can lead us to believe all sorts of myths, superstitions, and theories that have no foundation other than the feeling they must somehow be meaningful.

To create meaning is one of our most powerful abilities, but equally important is our ability to see through what merely seems meaningful but is not. It is through careful skepticism that we learn to see our reality more clearly, which in turn helps us accept the vast array of possibilities that could occur without any significance at all.

201. Writing Is Not Enough

Wed, 22 Oct 2025 08:00:00 -0800

We live in a world of endless writing. We write to each other constantly, texting, messaging, commenting, posting our opinions, our experiences, our ideas and dreams.

We trust that our written language is doing what we want, that it’s expressing the core of our thoughts and feelings, and that others will know and understand these things. We expect others to grasp our meanings, to comprehend our intentions, and to read our words in good faith.

Most of the time, something like this actually happens. Most of the time, the written word does its job admirably. But most of the time is not always. Sometimes our idea does not get across and is instead replaced in the mind of the reader by a different idea that was never intended. We are then forced to double back, to try to say what we’ve already said in a new way and hopefully with greater clarity.

Having to do this is naturally frustrating. It’s frustrating any time we are misunderstood by others. When we speak to each other in person, there is significantly less risk of this happening. For then there is also a metatext that accompanies our words: the intonation of the voice, the expressions of the face, the pace of speech, and so on.

All of this metatext is necessarily lost when we write. An experienced writer can control the rhythm, vocabulary, structure, and even the subtext of their sentences, and alter these variables to increase the accuracy of communication. But none of this is easy. It requires not only extensive practice, but also a willingness to continuously imagine the experience of a reader working through the text.

This degree of care and consideration is entirely unlike how we use the written word in our day-to-day lives. Here, we hardly even have time to read our own text before it’s sent off into the world. Is it really so surprising then that we might decide writing is not enough and it’s better to have a chat over a cup of tea?

200. At War With The World

Tue, 21 Oct 2025 08:00:00 -0800

It’s easy to fall into the habit of seeing myself in conflict with the world. All it takes is to see everything around me as separate from me and thus as something I must resist. I must resist it because it opposes my will and stands in the way of getting what I want. I then become alienated from the world and obsessed with myself and my desires.

At best, this develops into a bleak isolation where I’m imprisoned in the rigidity of my own mind, blocked from the possibilities of life, and barred from loving connections to other people. At worst, I become cynical about the world, and I see everything and everyone as a hostile threat to my security or even my existence itself.

The problem begins with my own judgment. The world is different from what I want it to be and I judge it to be deficient. There is nothing I can do about this judgment. A functional imagination will always see the possibility of a world better than the one that currently exists, and my judgment follows directly from the presence of this ideal.

But my judgment only becomes problematic because I allow myself to become attached to it. I hold it so tightly that it transforms into part of my identity and I separate myself from the world. I lose sight of all the world has to offer me. I cannot see its value because its value has been occluded by the attachment to my judgment of what the world should be but isn’t.

To loosen my hold on this judgment is to grant myself the opportunity to see that the world is bursting with value. It is full of beauty and truth and endless varieties of experience. And it’s the experience of beauty and truth that meets my need for these things and supplies me with the energy of joy.

Experiencing life makes me passionate about life, a passion that is also compassion. For compassion is a response to the need for connection between the self and the other, which itself enables the elimination of suffering and the creation of joy. The world has so much to offer and so much I need, if only I will allow myself to see it.

199. Poems Are Possibilities

Mon, 20 Oct 2025 08:00:00 -0800

A poem reveals something about our experience that we might not otherwise notice. It does so by using language in a way that forces us out of the ordinary world and into another realm that we cannot fully grasp. It expands our library of meanings and helps us see that there is more to life than we might have thought.

The language of the poem magically lifts us out of language and into the heart of being. The impact of this cannot be fully described. But something does happen, and we are moved by each and every poem that captures our attention. We see something new, and when we see it, we become something new, as well. We might not perceive this change immediately, as it might take time to emerge, but it happens nonetheless.

Poetry, in this way, shapes us into more aware and compassionate beings. But its ability to do so can be impeded. It can be impeded by the poet if they use language that is too obscure, too insular, or too far outside the scope of our present understanding. Such language makes it difficult for us to experience the poem’s full effect and undergo the transformation the poet is offering us.

More often though, it’s the reader who impedes the power of the poem. We do this when we fail to give it sufficient attention, when we read carelessly or hastily, or when we allow our judgments to dominate. To judge a poem prematurely is harmful because it blocks us from experiencing its possibilities. It locks us into one particular meaning when there are always others to explore.

Every poem is possibility more than anything else. Like any artwork, it helps us expand the scope of seeing and imagining, it helps us go beyond what we already know and are. It is precisely this transformation, this transcendence, that makes us more aware and more capable of seeing all that it is and can be to exist as a human being.

198. The First Step

Fri, 17 Oct 2025 08:00:00 -0800

I can’t stay quiet for this to work. Getting to know someone means speaking to them. I have to keep talking. But to keep the words flowing is a struggle. Every silence fills me with dread because of the chance I might not escape it. I’m constantly scanning my memory for information and anecdotes to share. Sometimes there’s nothing forthcoming, not even a question to ask, and I panic. But then I’m rescued by the grace of the other. They offer up some words of their own and I’m instantly relieved. I try to keep every thread running for as long as I can but I always run out of string. Then the silence returns and so does my anxiety. I can think of questions to ask but they feel somehow inappropriate. They’re either too direct or too strange and my standing in the conversation feels far too perilous to venture such an attempt. I’m worried that saying something wrong will cause the other to pull away and then what? How could I possibly recover? Every word feels like a risk because I cannot know in advance how it will be received. I try to stick to simple subjects, to topics both inoffensive and pleasant. So far this is working but the conversation is also overwhelmingly boring. When would be a good time to inject some excitement? I don’t know and I’m bothered by this absence of knowledge. Perhaps there is no good time. Perhaps I just have to take the risk even though it’s scary. There’s no way to know where the other’s boundaries lie without testing them. But am I prepared for rebuke? Will I be able to withstand harsh criticism? I might withdraw so deeply into myself that I’ll be forced to abandon the conversation completely. But still I can’t shutdown in advance out of mere worry. The other seems so kind and friendly that such a devastating response seems unlikely. They would probably laugh off any unwanted words without a second thought. But hopefully that won’t be necessary. Hopefully they will not only accept what I say but also respond to it amicably. I would like this for it would mean we’re growing closer. But I can’t get there without trying. I have to take the first step. There is no other way.

197. To Live Without Thinking

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 08:00:00 -0800

To live without thinking feels dangerous. We’ve been taught to always think about what we’re doing in order to avoid harmful mistakes. We’ve been taught to carefully monitor ourselves to ensure we follow the norms of our society. We’ve been taught to review and evaluate our performance to know where we stand and how we should improve.

Reflection on our past and future actions is important for these and other reasons, but we also know there is such a thing as too much thinking. We can easily overthink a problem and become trapped in rumination, which prevents us from making a decision and taking necessary action.

We often need to disengage from rational processes of categorization, evaluation, and comparison in order to clear the blockage that is preventing us from changing our situation. By putting aside the conceptual world of reason, we are then able to better focus on the active world of experience. This means allowing ourselves to function freely and without being hindered by excessive self-monitoring and judgment.

We might think we will necessarily become more careless if we inhibit rational thought, but this would be a mistake. If we are aware of and sensitive to the people and things around us, then we will always respond to the world with care and compassion. We will do this directly, without having to think or analyze. We will feel deeply the necessity of engaging with others in a way that is empathetic and considerate of their needs.

This does not mean that our actions will be perfectly compassionate in practice. Mistakes will still happen, and we’ll need to reflect on them in order to continue expanding our awareness of ourselves and others. But rather than seeing the absence of thought as certain danger, we can take it as an opportunity for freedom from self-judgment and the anxiety it often produces.

196. The Only Way Is Trust

Wed, 15 Oct 2025 08:00:00 -0800

For a community to function, we have to trust that our agreements with others will hold. We have to believe that others will be where they have agreed to be and will do the things they have agreed to do.

To believe the opposite would not be practical. It would mean we would have to monitor other people constantly, just to ensure they uphold their agreements. We would always be worried that the other is about to betray us. We would retreat into ourselves, relying on nothing but our own perceptions, judgments, and feelings. We would quickly become paranoid about others, about our community, and even about the world itself.

This is bad enough, but a lack of trust can have even more dire consequences. For when we do not trust, we also encourage others not to trust, and this mutual lack of trust encourages everyone to betray their agreements. We would then try to be the first to cheat, because that would give us the advantage over the other. This would happen not just in material transactions but also in our personal relationships.

If I do not trust you, then I encourage you not to trust me, and the foundation of our relationship is corrupted. For the foundation is nothing other than reciprocity: what you give to me, I must give back to you. If you give me your trust, then I face a choice. I can trust you back, or I can decide that you cannot be trusted and monitor everything you do. But if you discover my lack of trust, then the relationship collapses, as I have not returned what you gave to me.

I might claim it’s not prudent to trust someone I don’t know well, but this does nothing. It is precisely the willingness to disregard prudence that makes trusting possible in the first place. And the simple fact is that I have failed to return your trust, which was freely given to me. The only way for the relationship to work is for me to trust that you will honour our agreements, despite the uncertainty I feel.

195. The Aesthetics Of Love

Tue, 14 Oct 2025 08:00:00 -0800

To love someone is much more than merely to have an interest in them. I might be interested in you only because you have something I need, and I might seek you out just because you can fulfill some practical function for me. But love is not practical. I do not love you because of something you do for me or because of something I can get from you.

My love is based on something beyond what you do or what you have. Its foundation is the beauty of your being — a unique beauty that only you have. This beauty is not limited to your physical form. It includes everything beautiful in the totality of your being, everything from the way you smell in the morning, to the kinds of jokes you tell, to the way you say the word “butterfly”. It includes all of these things and it is also always more than I or anyone else can describe. I see your beauty and I cannot ignore it. I can only answer it with love.

I can try to justify my love by giving reasons why I love you, but they always fall short. They fall short because love is always more than what language can capture. I can try to grasp at words that explain it but I will always just be rationalizing my love and never quite reaching the thing itself.

I can never explain my love because I cannot fully understand it. The beauty I see in you is all I can point to, even though my attempts to explain that beauty will also fall short. For that beauty too is more than any words that exist. It is more than all of language itself.

This overflowing beauty that is yours means you are always more than I can pin down. You are a being that transcends. It is your existence as this beautiful, transcendent other that pulls me towards you, that causes me to watch you, and learn about you, and love you. Others might not see your beauty, but I will show them. I will show your beauty to all of the world by loving you now, and tomorrow, and forever.

194. Socially Necessary Pain

Mon, 13 Oct 2025 08:00:00 -0800

At some point in life, we will all have an experience where another person causes us to feel emotional pain. These experiences are sometimes as ordinary as someone making too much noise at night causing you to lie awake in frustration, and sometimes they are as heart-wrenching as someone telling you they no longer want you to be part of their life.

Experiences like these happen because we’ve collectively agreed that there are pain-causing actions we must be freely allowed to take in order for the social organism to function well. In the case of noise-making, we’ve decided that strictly policing rare occurrences of loud noise would too greatly restrict our freedom to enjoy ourselves. In the case of social rejection, we’ve decided that it’s a fundamental part of human relationships that we each have the freedom to choose whom we have them with.

Participation in society means we will all occasionally experience pain. To be well-adapted to this truth is to accept it as a necessary part of our social experience. Feeling pain is never enjoyable in itself, but there is still an opportunity to respond to it with compassion. In particular, we can offer ourselves compassion by accepting our own feelings and giving ourselves care, while also finding compassion for others — including those who are the source of our pain. At minimum, the latter means not lashing out in anger at those who act in ways that are socially allowed but also painful for us to bear.

We must keep in mind that there will also be situations where we will be the ones causing pain, and that the alternative to such pain would be much worse. For the only real alternative would be to isolate ourselves completely, to detach from the social fabric and escape from humanity altogether. But that would be no life at all. It would mean not only eliminating the joy of experiencing others, but abandoning the compassion for others that our own experience constantly compels us towards.

193. The Lost Image

Fri, 10 Oct 2025 08:00:00 -0800

He wakes earlier than usual, feeling energized and well-rested. His eyes adjust quickly to the bright light pouring in through the single large window. It’s mid-summer and the sun is already well above the horizon.

He rises from the bed and dresses purposefully in his usual work attire. Opening the window, the crisp air of the morning fills the room. He feels refreshed in every way. He feels his body is capable and his mind is prepared.

He goes over to his desk and sits down. There’s a fresh page in front of him, blank and ready. He placed it there last night, with hope. He stares at the page, and in its emptiness, he sees a faint image. He begins to write down words describing it, what he hopes will form the skeleton of a poem. He feels he’ll see the image more clearly when he has the right words for it. The concreteness of his words will give the image reality. Of this, he feels certain. This is how writing always goes for him. The idea is vague and remote at first, and the words help him see what it must be, what it always had to be.

He’s jotting down words with great focus when he hears a screech of tires followed by a loud bang. He’s startled by this and drops his pen. He rushes over to the window to see what has happened. On the street below, a car has hit a lamp post. He wonders how this is possible. There’s barely any traffic this early in the morning. He watches as the driver emerges from the car looking befuddled, as though he too cannot understand what has occurred. He considers calling for help, but the driver is already talking to someone.

He watches for a moment longer, until he’s satisfied the situation is under control. Then he returns to his desk. He looks at the words written there. They don’t seem to say anything at all. He tries to recall the image he saw in his mind and he realizes with surprise that he cannot. Where did it go? He had it just a moment earlier.

Strange, he thinks. Strange how there was something and now there is nothing. Strange how he had begun the day with such great promise and now he is stuck. He looks at the page, hoping for some hint that might revive the image, but still there is nothing. He decides there’s nothing he can do. He will have to wait for it to return on its own.

192. A World Of Exaggeration

Thu, 09 Oct 2025 08:00:00 -0800

Everything you see is an exaggeration. This is because you are only seeing one side of things, while the other sides remain hidden. When you see only one side, you automatically expand that part to become the whole, filling in the blanks using your existing understanding. You might do this so well that you convince yourself you’re actually seeing the whole. But this is never the case. There is always more to reality than your current awareness can capture.

It might seem like the solution to this problem is to spend more time observing before making a judgment about the things you see. This is helpful, as it’s more likely you’ll see some of the hidden sides. But still you will not have seen the whole. This is true no matter how long you look at something.

To infer from this that you should not bother looking at all would be a terrible error, for observation is always valuable to expanding awareness. Instead, what you must understand is that what seems like a conclusion or a final answer is never truly final. There is always more than what has been revealed. That it might never be shown to you is not important. What is important is to always remember that you do not possess ultimate knowledge of anything.

This means allowing for doubt, for the existence of more, for the possibility that what you’re seeing is not the whole truth. You might think this will make you anxious and indecisive. But what actually produces anxiety is the desire for certainty and attachment to this desire. You can feel this desire as a need, as though you cannot live without knowing for certain, as though you cannot make a decision without it.

Understanding that this attachment causes you to suffer anxiety is the first step towards recognizing you are always perceiving a world of exaggeration, a world of parts that are never whole. To liberate yourself from the desire for certainty is to allow yourself to act without anxiety and do what is needed and necessary in this moment, despite the fact that you cannot see it all.

191. Creativity Is Compassion

Wed, 08 Oct 2025 08:00:00 -0800

Creative action is compassionate action. Every creative act makes explicit something that was previously unseen, and in doing so it helps those who encounter it see more of their own self and the world. By engaging with an artwork, we undergo a wholly new experience, which grants us an opportunity to become aware of what we have not already noticed. What is created by the artist is not just a physical artwork, but a broader awareness in the audience of what exists and what is possible in life.

Compassionate actions are actions that meet the needs of ourselves or others. We all have a need for greater awareness, as it is through awareness that we discover how to break free from our suffering and create joy in its place. Every creative act is therefore also an act of compassion, because it helps to expand our awareness.

Similarly, every compassionate action is a creative action. When we act to meet the needs of ourselves or another person, we directly support creation by enabling the creativity of that human being to continue to exist and thrive in the world. When we share our awareness with others, we help them towards the liberation from suffering that enables the possibility of even greater creativity.

Compassion in all of its forms and creativity in all of its forms help to broaden the awareness of others. This does not mean that every creative or compassionate act intentionally aims at expanding awareness. We might act out of the desire to express ourselves, out of concern for the welfare of another, or even out of the belief that we are obligated to do something. But regardless of our intentions, if an action helps to meet the needs of ourselves or others, then it is always both creative and compassionate.

190. The Search For Style

Tue, 07 Oct 2025 08:00:00 -0800

The artist’s concern is always style. It is the style of an artwork that most grants it aesthetic value, and it is this value that we most appreciate. The artist wants to develop a style that is beautiful so that the works they create will be popular and loved.

But the artist only ever has one style available to them. It’s the style that emerges directly from the sincere expression of their aesthetic intuitions. These intuitions arise out of the totality of the artist’s experience. This includes the works of other artists they have seen and their own history of art making, but it’s also more. It is all of the events of the artist’s life, all of their feelings and thoughts and perceptions, all of their memories and dreams, all of their judgments and values. In other words, the artist’s unique style is a reflection of their own composite humanity.

In this unique style, the artist is most able to be creative and expressive of their awareness. But the artist might worry that their style will not be appreciated, that it will not be popular or even understood. In response to this, a strong urge can develop to imitate styles that are accepted or trendy, simply out of the desire to be relevant.

But just like any other desire, the desire for popularity, relevance, or fame can be dangerous. Attachment to it means the artist will spend their time trying to be something they are not and trying to create something not truly their own. While they might achieve some limited success, they will be blocked from pursuing the path that would allow them to reach new heights of creative expression.

An artist is always the most original and creative when they lean into their own style as much as possible. Doing this requires great honesty and courage, for it means revealing the self, and there is always a chance that an artwork expressing a unique self will be rejected by others.

Rejection will mean the determined artist will have to continue refining the expression of their style, or devise a way of linking it to past styles or movements, which is no easy task. The risk here is not trivial, but still the artist’s unique style remains the best path to novel creations that are both exciting and aesthetically groundbreaking.

189. Stuck In The Past

Mon, 06 Oct 2025 08:00:00 -0800

You can’t stop replaying past events. You keep wondering if there might have been a better way, if you could have done something differently. Perhaps if you’d made a different choice, you might be in a much better place, somewhere more whole, peaceful, and happy than where you are now.

You wonder about this because your life feels lacking, and this lack worries you. You feel you’re missing something, and this missing element has made your life inferior to the one you’d imagined for yourself. You know you once had this missing thing and you don’t understand how you lost it. You went from a world of bliss and endless possibility to whatever this is. All you know is that this is worse, and you cannot shake that feeling.

So you keep thinking and imagining, visualizing alternative lives that don’t exist, ones where you’d have the thing that’s now missing. You realize this exercise is pointless. It’s pointless because you can’t change the past. You’re stuck where you find yourself. Any alternative is now lost. You realize this and still you can’t stop thinking about it.

You wonder if all this thinking might serve some other purpose. You wonder if it might help you live this life you’re now living. You wonder if it might show you how to get that missing thing back again. You don’t know if this is true, but you want to believe it, just so that you’re not wasting your time by always looking backwards.

Perhaps it goes without saying that you’ve tried to stop. You really have, but no degree of mental fortitude seems to be enough to prevent thoughts of the past from arising over and over again. You feel there’s nothing you can do but wait for the day when it ends on its own. Then you’ll finally leave the past and return to the world of the present. That day cannot arrive soon enough.

188. To Be Always More

Fri, 03 Oct 2025 08:00:00 -0800

She is standing alone when a man approaches and says hello. He looks altogether harmless, so she returns the greeting. They’re at a social event and meeting new people is what you’re supposed to do.

He tells her that he likes her earrings. She smiles and thanks him. He asks her if she’s enjoying the event, and she says that she is. She doesn’t ask any questions in return. She’s terrible at thinking of questions. The burden thus falls to him.

He asks her what she does. This causes her demeanour to change. Her eyes narrow and she stares at him for a moment. Then she answers: I’m no one.

She thinks this is the best answer she can provide. It’s certainly better than trying to talk about what she actually does, for these are the kinds of things that would not satisfy this question. To her, it seems to demand an answer in the form of a profession or career that can be easily understood, judged, and ranked.

She used to tell people that she’s an artist, but then she would inevitably be dragged into talking about the kind of art she makes, how long she has been making it, and so on, all with the underlying implication that she should not be doing any of this, which would eventually culminate in a question about whether or not she makes any money.

None of that, in her opinion, is worth talking about. Is anyone really going to learn anything substantive about another person by asking them how they scrape together the means necessary to survive in this miserable world?

The question also seems to also carry the implication that she is about to be reduced to a label, and there is nothing she likes less than to be reduced. She wants to expand, to be always growing. She wants to be unpredictable, to be always more than anyone can define. Being no one seems to supply the emptiness that fits her needs.

She looks at the man still standing before her. He seems entirely stunned by her response, and unable to continue. Oh well, she thinks, there are plenty of others here for him to talk to.

187. Productivity And Compassion

Thu, 02 Oct 2025 08:00:00 -0800

When I feel I’m not making enough progress, I can easily become frustrated. This is especially true when the source of the delay is my own carelessness. I’ve been doing something other than what I should be doing, and now I’m behind schedule. Often the problem is simply that I’ve been distracted by something that has taken my attention away from my task. Seeing the amount of time I’ve lost, I judge myself harshly.

My response to this judgment might be to force myself to do what I’m required to do. This happens because I believe I must control myself in order to accomplish the task that I believe is important. My attachment to these beliefs causes me to treat myself like a machine that must complete a certain amount of work over a certain amount of time. As a result, I withhold compassion from myself, my needs go unmet, and I suffer.

If I held my beliefs about productivity more loosely, I could allow for the possibility of compassion. But this would also mean allowing my attention to be open and free, which might mean I concentrate less on my task. Liberated attention goes where it is most needed, and this might not be the same place as my schedule says it should go. Practical reason itself is concerned with completing goals within a given system of rules and structures, but it is precisely the requirements of such a system that can produce suffering.

By allowing my attention to be free in the way necessary for compassion to arise, I will likely make less progress on my task. I will suffer less, but I might also find myself at a material disadvantage. Still, with the energy saved from reduced suffering, I gain the new possibility of creative action that can help me solve my material problems without incurring further suffering.

186. Words Say Too Much

Wed, 01 Oct 2025 08:00:00 -0800

The problem with language is that it always says too much. This is especially true when we’re trying to talk about how we feel. Our words come out sounding like a solemn declaration of fact, as though the emotions we’re describing are substantial, permanent, and unchanging, when they might be none of these things.

Perhaps our words only describe how we’re feeling at this one moment in time. Perhaps the feeling will have vanished in the next hour, the next day, or the next month. Perhaps the feeling doesn’t have the mass our words seem to grant it. Perhaps it is only meagre and small.

Not only do we often not know the intensity or future duration of the feelings we’re experiencing, we also sometimes aren’t sure we’re experiencing them at all. For our awareness of ourselves is not perfect, and it’s easy to unintentionally say something false. The certainty of words does not seem to fit with the uncertainty of ourselves.

Realizing this, we might try to avoid words entirely. We might instead attempt to act out our feelings, in the hope of signalling to others what lives inside us without giving it the weight of words. If we do still venture into the domain of language, we do so with our guard fully raised. We know we’re at risk of saying more than we want to say, and so we use a wide range of modifiers to lessen the impact of our nouns and verbs.

The task of accuracy is never an easy one. It’s a fight with language itself, a battle we must wage merely to communicate, and it often goes awry. This is why we frequently regret what we say. It ends up being heard in a way we never intended, the words carrying far more meaning and permanence than we wanted to convey.

Sometimes we try to overcome this by talking at length, by using more words to deflate the ones that feel too strong. Even then, we’re never quite sure we’ve said the right thing. If the other comforts us with a reassuring echo of our message, we might be satisfied. But still there remains the interminable worry that language has already done more than we asked.

185. Endless Desire

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 08:00:00 -0800

You have a desire you cannot completely satisfy. You might be able to partly fulfill it, either now or in the future, but it will continue to exist because it is endless. You want more and more of the thing and you’ll never be fully satisfied with only some of it.

But there will come a day when you can no longer even partly fulfill your desire. Then you’ll be forced to admit you’ve done as much as you can, and this is as far as you’ll go. The desire will stick around even after you realize this, and you’ll have to accept its lack of further satisfaction for the rest of your life.

This is part of the tragedy of being human. The temporary nature of our existence means we are unable to achieve all of the things we want to achieve. There will always be something more we must leave undone. There will always be something we want that we will never have. We can rejoice in the things we do have, the desires we’ve fulfilled, and the successes we’ve achieved, but this only distracts us from the pain of loss, and does nothing to lessen it.

As long as you remain attached to your desire, the impossibility of its total satisfaction will continue to produce suffering for you. Fighting the desire or trying to ignore it will not work, for this just reinforces its importance and solidifies your attachment to it. The desire itself cannot be purged. It will always exist because you greatly value the thing you desire.

It is your relationship with your desire that you must change to end your suffering. You must examine your suffering itself, and see how it is rooted in your attachment to the desire. When you can see this connection fully and clearly, you will understand that attachment produces the very real pain that you feel, and you will no longer be willing to tolerate the attachment. You will recognize that your desire is not you, and you will finally allow yourself to break free from it and the suffering it produces.

184. Rules And Rebellions

Mon, 29 Sep 2025 08:00:00 -0800

When there is a rule that feels wrong or harmful, we might rebel against it. A tension has formed between us and the rule. The rule says we ought to do something, but we can see it’s better to act in another way. Our first response is usually to complain about the rule, in the hope that others will agree with us and then the rule can be changed or removed. But if this fails, we might decide to disregard the rule, and behave as though it no longer exists.

Any such rebellion will not go unnoticed by others. Every rule has vociferous defenders who think it’s absolutely essential. They will not only criticize our disobedience towards this particular rule, but disobedience in general, claiming it is nothing less than the incitement of chaos. The defenders are not entirely without reason. They believe that all of our rules are at risk if one is so easily disregarded, and they act on that basis.

But removing a single rule could never produce consequences so significant. Even if an entire set of rules were eliminated, the extensive normative structure that exists beyond the area of tension will remain stable and intact. Our vast web of social, ethical, and linguistic norms will not be damaged, simply because the agreements upholding these norms are not in question.

To claim that chaos is imminent because change is needed is a great exaggeration. Our normative agreements are all interconnected, but this is not a point of weakness, it is one of strength. Our social norms depend on our ethical norms and our linguistic norms, and vice versa. Total failure of the normative web is not only improbable but unprecedented in the history of humanity.

The historical record also reminds us how difficult it is to make rapid changes to our rules and norms. Change has always been gradual and slow. The best approach to rebellion then is not to double down on the existing rule, but to accept it as a call to investigate. By discovering where the tension lies, it then becomes possible for us to forge even stronger agreements with others. Rather than falling into chaos, we progress towards a more stable order with greater harmony between the parts.

183. Until I No Longer Can

Fri, 26 Sep 2025 08:00:00 -0800

Another hour has vanished. I stare at the clock in disbelief, but the time is correct. An entire hour is gone, and I have done nothing. Time is passing quickly not because I’m fruitfully occupied but because I’m completely distracted.

My mind is in the grip of a single thought and all of its efforts are directed towards examining, exploring, and investigating that thought. It is the thought that something is missing. I do not know what this something is or even what it could be. My inability to pin it down is part of the problem. When I try to locate it, I get nowhere. Everything I come up with only circles this unknown point.

There is something missing and I need it. I feel this need desperately, but how can I need something I cannot even identify? My desperation encourages further rumination, it provides me with endless motivation to go on searching and questioning. But I find nothing. I’m no closer to an answer than when I began.

This realization should deter me, but it doesn’t. Surely it would be better to give up and do something — anything at all — but I can’t bring myself to abandon the search. I’ve become obsessed with the problem, with the unknown thing that is missing. I’m obsessed because I feel like I cannot live without it, like my entire existence depends on discovering it.

A day is not long but terrifyingly short from this place of unlimited rumination, searching, and striving to reach what cannot even be located. The hours pass one after the other, and at the end of each one I’m still the same.

Despite the passage of time, my desire for an answer remains unperturbed. It seems bottomless, as though I could follow it deeper and deeper until the end of time itself, and still there would be more. If the thing I desire cannot be located, then the desire itself cannot be satisfied. I know this makes sense, but even logic cannot stop me. I will continue to seek the missing thing until I no longer can.

182. The Urge To Reciprocate

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 08:00:00 -0800

If you tell someone you like them and they immediately respond by telling you they also like you, there are two possibilities. The first is what you’re hoping for: they genuinely appreciate you and they feel the same as you do about them. The second is much less desirable: they have not considered their feelings, and when they’re forced to quickly do so, they return your words as nothing more than a friendly platitude.

The urge to return the sentiment is strong because of the belief that reciprocation is required. The other person does not want to seem ungrateful or otherwise lacking by failing to return what you have graciously given them. They want to maintain balance in the relationship, which they know is necessary to keep it healthy and viable. The intention behind an unfelt reciprocation is not to harm but to support the connection.

Even so, this kind of response can feel deceptive. It feels this way because your perspective is firmly rooted in the realm of the first possibility — that they really do feel just as you do. You’ve told them you like them because you greatly value them and what they bring to your life. When they then tell you the same thing, you’re already primed to believe your feelings are the same. And when it later comes out that this might not be true, it can feel like you’re the victim of a deception.

What might have been better for you is for the other to accept your feelings without indulging the urge to reciprocate (unless they actually do feel the same). But there’s no way for you to ensure they’re aware of this, so you have to be the one to create clarity. Directly asking the other to hold off from responding immediately at least gives them an opportunity to consider their feelings more carefully. Reciprocation arises out of a sense of obligation. By releasing the other from the obligation, you help to enable greater honesty in their response.

181. There Is Always A Choice

Wed, 24 Sep 2025 08:00:00 -0800

For every situation I find myself in, I’m faced with a number of possible options. It’s up to me to choose among them and decide what I will do. Sometimes it feels like there is no choice, or like the choice has already been made for me. I have to remind myself this is never true. There are always options. There is always a choice.

When it feels like there is no choice it’s because something is weighing me down. It’s influencing me so heavily that I feel I cannot possibly go against it. If I’m paying attention to the forces that are at work in me, I can notice when this happens and respond. I can allow myself to imagine alternatives. I can posit them as real possibilities. I can investigate what might happen if I were to choose one.

I might anticipate that one of the options will produce pain for myself or others. I might then want to discard that option because it feels too risky. But if the alternatives will also produce pain — particularly in the more-distant future — I must consider that as well. When I’m fully aware of the pain that might follow from all of my options, pain itself becomes less important, and I allow myself to choose based on other factors.

I might also want to discard an option because it goes against the rules or norms of my community. To be fully aware of the harm of breaking the rules can be challenging because not all transgressions are quickly forgiven. There is a real risk of lasting damage, and recognizing this might make me anxious. But if I let anxiety dominate all other considerations, I might fail to do the right thing. I might end up causing more harm simply because I’m worried about causing harm.

I need to be aware of all of these factors to make good choices. By seeing everything clearly, I help to ensure I’m not controlled by any single factor, and this makes it possible for me to choose to do what is most needed and necessary in the present moment.

180. Not Like Us

Tue, 23 Sep 2025 08:00:00 -0800

You’ve done something I consider wrong. Your actions aren’t criminal but I still find them reprehensible. I tell you that what you’ve done is wrong, but you ignore me and you keep doing it. I cannot accept this and I feel I must distance myself from you. You are bad and I am not. You are not like me at all.

You are someone I cannot work with. You are someone I can only fight. You are my enemy, and the best I can hope for is to defeat you and bring an end to your wrongdoing. I will work with others who are like me and who agree with me that you must be stopped. Together we will form a group to oppose you and anyone like you. For you are not like us. You are outside of what is included in us.

But you will not allow me or my group to impose our will on you. You will also form a group of like-minded people to oppose us and stand for what you believe to be right and just. Now the lines of battle are drawn and conflict is guaranteed.

Our disagreement has exploded into a disaster that risks consuming us in hatred and hostility. The problem began not with our clash of values, where you acted in a way you judged to be correct and I judged to be wrong. The problem began not with me reprimanding you or with you choosing to ignore me. The problem began the moment I decided that you were different from me and that there was an impassible barrier between us.

This is not true now and it is not true ever. We are all human beings, members of a shared world and participants in the shared project of life. To see distinctions between us as permanent and uncrossable is a mistake. Communication is always possible. Cooperation is always possible. Compassion is always possible. To act in a way that inhibits these possibilities is only to abandon ourselves to hatred and guarantee further suffering for all of us.

179. Creative Reflection

Mon, 22 Sep 2025 08:00:00 -0800

Every experience benefits creativity. An experience might inspire a creative impulse or a new project. It might combine with other experiences to influence the direction of future creative efforts. Or it might offer little on the surface, but bring forward an important insight through a careful investigation of its qualities.

In every case, the full value of the experience is only realized through reflection. To reflect is more than simply to remember the events of the experience as though you were reciting them to a friend. It involves a deeper exploration of the experience and all of its facets. It means looking carefully at the thoughts, feelings, and intuitions that arose both during the experience and afterwards.

By reflecting you not only relive your experience, you also observe it from a new point of view. You witness it as a third-person observer, and in doing so, you allow yourself to uncover more than what might have been apparent to you in the original moment.

Reflection is therefore a way of training the attention, a way of enabling ourselves to see more than we otherwise would. This is partly because our memories contain more than we realize, and what might escape notice in the moment can later reveal something valuable. But our memories are also imperfect. They contain gaps and it is only the imagination that can fill them. This gives us reason to be somewhat skeptical of the specific details they contain.

But the creative value of reflection is only enhanced by the imagination’s efforts. By constructing a more coherent and beautiful story than memory alone can provide, the imagination helps us see truths that would otherwise remain hidden. And it should be no surprise that aesthetic truths can be found even in the midst of what is partially fabricated. Works of fiction can be enormously helpful for understanding life, and this could not happen were they any less true than life itself.

Through reflection, we use all of our mental powers — thought, reason, memory, and imagination — to recreate our experiences. In doing so, we generate new material to further expand our awareness, which in turn allows new creative intuitions to be born.

178. An Odd Conversation

Fri, 19 Sep 2025 08:00:00 -0800

He has been talking to her for over an hour now. What began as nothing more than a simple conversation has gradually expanded into something else entirely.

The strange thing is that they seem to be talking past each other. He hadn’t noticed this before, but now it seems obvious. He makes a point about something and then she makes an entirely different point about something else. It’s as though they’re simply stating their separate opinions on the matter rather than actually conversing.

He wonders if she has also noticed this. He thinks she must have, for it seems unlikely she hasn’t. She is, after all, more perceptive than he is. And she’s smiling and animated, as though she’s thoroughly enjoying their talk. He is enjoying it too, or at least he was, before he noticed what was happening.

He wonders if he should alter his manner of speech to acknowledge her point before he says what he needs to say. Then there would at least be a place of agreement in the conversation, a centre for their shared thoughts to orbit. But maybe this is unnecessary.

He wonders if he should even be worrying about this. If she thought it was a problem, she certainly would have said something by now. Maybe the source of his concern is more that she doesn’t acknowledge the points he’s making. Maybe that’s causing him to feel insecure. But why should he be insecure? He doesn’t need her to tell him that his thoughts are valid. Nor does it seem like she needs his support.

So he decides to do nothing at all. He will allow the conversation to carry on as is. Neither of them will force the other to conform to their thoughts. Perhaps this is where their agreement is located, he realizes. For she must have gone through this same sequence of thoughts and reached the very same conclusion.

The truth then is that they are not separated. They are united, even though there is no obvious connection between their words. They have silently agreed that this is what their conversation will be, and now they can enjoy it. They can air their thoughts without judgments or counterarguments getting in the way. In the end, their talk is actually far more valuable than he imagined.

177. Action And Description

Thu, 18 Sep 2025 08:00:00 -0800

When you do something you’ve done thousands of times before, you do it without thinking. Your past experience of doing the same actions over and over has accumulated into a kind of memory that does not require conscious thought.

If someone comes along and asks you how to do what you’re doing, you might be able to come up with a list of actions they should follow. But when you do the thing, you do not follow this list or any list at all. Nothing like this is necessary for you to access your understanding of how to do it. For you, the next action in the sequence simply arrives when it must.

When the person who asked you for directions does not obtain the same result as you do, you might want to tell them that they haven’t followed your directions correctly. In some cases this will be true, but more often the discrepancy arises because there was something you unknowingly left out of your directions. It’s this extra piece that makes the difference between a good result and a mediocre one.

Through careful questioning and training, you might eventually be able to get the other person to understand the missing piece. But it’s also possible that you might not be able to locate the words to describe it. Finding yourself at such a loss demonstrates that your directions are an explanation after the fact, and they are not what you actually do.

The language describing your actions is never the same as the actions themselves. It is a representation and like all representations it is not the thing-in-itself. To be aware of this is to understand that there is always something that is not captured by language. It is to be reminded that there is no replacement for experience and the awareness it provides.

176. Overwhelmed By Anxiety

Wed, 17 Sep 2025 08:00:00 -0800

I’m worried about an upcoming event. You don’t think I should be worried, and you tell me you’re not worried about it. You give me reasons to believe my worry is unfounded. You carefully explain why the bad outcome I’m worried about is unlikely to happen.

Despite your determined efforts, I’m still worried. I’m afraid of doing anything that could increase the chances of a bad outcome. I want to retreat, I want to hide, I want to stay safe. This is frustrating for you, because you know there is no reason for this and I shouldn’t be afraid.

But my worry does not originate in reason and it cannot be dispelled by reason. My worry is instead rooted in a judgment I’ve made. I’ve imagined the future and I’ve judged that there is something bad that could happen to me. My judgment follows from my own understanding, memories, and imagination. No one can alter it, except me. My judgment might be correct or it might be wrong, but this does not matter.

The problem is that I’m holding my judgment too tightly. I identify with it, which means I see it as a necessary part of me. From this position, I cannot do anything but worry. I’m concerned about my choices because I don’t want to bring about the bad outcome. I’m overwhelmed by anxiety because of my strong attachment to the judgment.

Because I’m hyperfocused on the potentially bad outcome that might harm me, I block myself from any possibility of living well. I retreat into myself and hide from the world, when it is precisely the regular encounter with the world that I need to live joyfully.

To free myself from my judgment, I must loosen my hold on it. I must see that it is not me, but a separate object of experience. I must see that identifying with it produces the anxiety I feel. When I have space from my judgment, I will still be aware of the potential problem that is approaching, but I won’t be overwhelmed by it. I then allow myself the opportunity to do what is most beneficial to me and the people around me.

175. The Beauty Of Existence

Tue, 16 Sep 2025 08:00:00 -0800

We seek beauty because it seems to promise something beyond what we have already seen and what we already are. We seek beauty everywhere we can find it — in art, in literature, in the clouds and stars, in flowers and animals. But perhaps most significantly, we seek beauty in our fellow human beings.

Every human being contains a unique world created by the mere existence of a living, growing, reflective consciousness. We want to see these other worlds, we want to experience the beauty of them — a beauty that is different from the world we ourselves contain and inhabit.

We seek out others, we try to know them, we try to understand their essence and uncover their secret worlds. Seeking the other is the domain of the erotic, it is the hope for the transcendence of the self through unity with the other.

This unity is achieved through love, which is not just a feeling but a kind of action. It is through the act of loving that we come to grasp the other, that we surrender our own self to them and everything they are. If we are lucky, our love is reciprocated and transcendence becomes possible.

To love is to see everything in the other that is beautiful, to value it, and to act in care and support of it. It is to give the other the importance and consideration we give to ourselves. It is to cherish their inner world as much as we cherish our own inner world, which means we do not see it as merely imaginary but as real and meaningful. It is to feel sorrow when they feel sorrow and joy when they feel joy. It is to become together a greater being than the two individuals that form the union.

As this greater being, we move slightly closer to the eternal, slightly closer to the truth of our existence. We cannot go all the way, as total transcendence would require total unity — a union with all others, all people, all of life. Such a thing would require us to love without limit, to act with endless compassion for all living beings, and to appreciate the infinite beauty of all that exists.

174. Predicting Experiences

Mon, 15 Sep 2025 08:00:00 -0800

You’re thinking of trying something you’ve never done before, so you start looking for information about it. You want to learn as much as you can before you actually try it. You investigate every aspect and every detail until you have a strong understanding. Now you can imagine how it will go once you do it. You can see yourself doing it and you have an idea of how you’ll feel during and after. You’ve developed a complete prediction of your future experience and you believe this is what will happen.

Your prediction then becomes the framework for your future actions. What you do and do not do follows from what you have predicted will happen and how you think it will make you feel. If you think there is some part of the experience that will be bad for you, you will avoid it. Similarly, if you think there is a part you will enjoy, you will pursue it. What you will avoid and pursue follows directly from your prediction.

The result is that you limit your experience before you even get started. You’ve put too much emphasis on your prediction. You’ve taken it as a certainty when it’s really just a product of your own judgment. You’ve cut yourself off from potential benefits because of your confidence in the accuracy of your prediction. For it is always possible that you will respond quite differently from what you’ve predicted. What you predict will feel horrible might actually turn out to be a pleasant experience.

By elevating your prediction to certainty, you became attached to it. You began to see the boundaries of your experience as the boundaries of your prediction. This causes your future attention and actions to be more narrow and limited than they otherwise would be.

If you can allow yourself space from your prediction, if you can see it as an object separate from you, then you grant yourself the opportunity to act freely and without limitation. You can then approach your new experience with a fresh perspective, open to whatever comes to you, including the possibility of joy.

173. The Rebel

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 08:00:00 -0800

She was always getting in trouble for breaking the rules. As a child, she was regularly reprimanded, by both parents and teachers. She was a source of infinite frustration for them, as she always did whatever she wanted to do instead of what they told her to do.

Her “problem” was that she could not bring herself to do something simply because another person told her to do it. Their commands never seemed to carry any force for her, even when she knew she would be punished. The only time she did what someone wanted was when their rules happened to align with what she was already going to do anyway.

She refused to learn the ways and systems of others. She could never be obedient or submissive. Such things were simply impossible for her. She was instead labelled stubborn, intransigent, or even wildly reckless. This did not bother her. It actually emboldened her resolve to always and only do what she thought was the right thing to do.

Whenever she would prevail over someone’s ignorant rules she would feel righteous and vindicated. She would take it as evidence that she was justified in ignoring what other people told her to do. Of course, this was not always the case. Sometimes her rebellions caused far more harm than she ever expected. And so she eventually learned to distrust her righteousness. It made her wrongly think she was invincible and that others could not be hurt by her actions. She realized she had to be just as skeptical of her own commands as those of anyone else.

As she grew older, she learned when to rebel and when to play along. Playing along was really a way of saving her energy for another battle. In the safety of her own mind, she still opposed everything, subjecting it to endless doubt and criticism. The point of this, she thought, was to see what really mattered and what she could discard.

It was her skepticism that she eventually came to recognize as her most important ability. It made her attentive and conscientious, and it allowed her to see how everything could be different from what people said it had to be. But she never stopped breaking the rules. She just discovered more interesting and creative ways to subvert them.

172. Hidden Attachments

Thu, 11 Sep 2025 08:00:00 -0800

When I want something, I set an intention to get it. I then manage and control myself towards fulfilling the intention. My attention and actions become more narrow and rigid because I’m focused on my goal. When I accidentally do something that undermines my intention, I get angry at myself for lacking self-control. I worry about anything that might cause the object of my desire to become less attainable. And if I discover it actually has become unattainable, I might fall into despair.

I suffer in these ways because I’ve quietly become attached to my intention. This can happen for any intention I form, regardless of whether it’s a desire, an aversion, or a belief. I cannot live without intentions, as they are part of what it is to be a human being with the benefit of reflective consciousness. But at the same time, I cannot allow myself to become attached if I want to live free of the suffering I’ve experienced as anger, anxiety, or despair.

To break free of attachment, I must allow my awareness to develop, so that I can see the nature of my intentions and how attachment to them inevitably leads to suffering. It is with a broader awareness that I will begin to intuitively see how to act from compassion and not from attachment to particular intentions. But because my intentions are numerous and varied, hidden attachments can easily undermine the freedom of attention necessary for my awareness to expand.

In this situation, I have no choice but to use intention and control to help me. In particular, I need to set an intention towards greater awareness. I must be careful not to become attached to this intention because that would just mean more suffering. I have to use this intention as a way to protect my attention from attachments that are hidden below the surface.

Doing so means using short instances of control to create pockets of space where my attention can break free and help my awareness broaden. These pockets of space are similar in form to the emptiness that can be found through traditional meditation. Gradually, I learn how to allow for this space to exist without imposing control. As my awareness expands, my intuitions of what is needed and necessary grow stronger, and I begin to move through the world with compassion and without producing further suffering.

171. You Have To Change

Wed, 10 Sep 2025 08:00:00 -0800

The world is telling you that you have to change. It tells you in a multitude of ways. It tells you through the suffering you experience. It tells you through the consequences of your actions. It tells you through the words spoken by others. Change, they say, change to become more like us and everything will be better for you.

The world is not wrong about this. The more stubborn you are, the more pain it will dish out. If you do not pay attention to its signals, the world cannot treat you well. Sensing this, you feel compelled to conform, to abandon those parts of yourself that do not seem to fit. You want to optimize yourself for the world and its ways in order to minimize the pain you feel.

But this is a misunderstanding of your relationship with the world. For you do not exist merely to be what the world already is. You are alive and like all living beings you are an agent of change. You must sometimes impose yourself on the world in order to make the world better. The self that acts from compassion subtracts suffering from the world and adds joy in its place. The work of compassion sometimes also creates pain, but that is no reason to avoid it.

To fall in line with the world, to conform to its every facet, is to abandon the self completely. It is to abandon all that makes you a valuable and creative force for compassion. Do not grant the world power over you that it does not possess. While the world appears physically larger, it is not more powerful than the self. For the world and the self are actually the same thing, while also being separate. To see this is to understand the reality of your relationship with the world.

It is true that you will have to change, but it is because the world must change too. You change by becoming more aware of the self and the world, and by doing so, you begin to improve both through the creative effort of compassion.

170. A Real Artist

Tue, 09 Sep 2025 08:00:00 -0800

You’re an artist, or at least you thought you were. You’ve been making things for as long as you can remember. Always experimenting, always trying something new, always creating. Along with the making, you try to share your creations whenever you can. Sometimes people love them, and sometimes they don’t say much at all.

Your own feelings about your work shift constantly. Sometimes you feel an almost obsessive love for your creations. Sometimes you feel nothing but vague indifference. And sometimes you are your own harshest critic.

You wonder if people understand what you’re trying to do. You wonder if you just don’t have what it takes. You wonder if you should do something else. Something that could make you some money, for one thing. Something that would feel like less of a dead end.

Still, people are always saying you have talent. They tell you that you should keep practicing and improving your style. They tell you that you shouldn’t give up on your dreams. But you also have doubts. Won’t you end up in poverty for the rest of your life? Isn’t that too much to ask of a person? And is it really supposed to be this hard?

You imagine a real artist would just keep doing the work. You imagine a real artist would find new ways to help their art reach others. You imagine a real artist would find applause and success. On this standard, you’re not a real artist.

You’ve considered reducing your art to a hobby. But you know that means you won’t be as serious about it. You might even stop making things altogether. At the same time, you need money. A job that will pay you enough to survive. But what job? What does it look like? You’re forced to admit you have no idea what you could do.

You wonder if that means something. Maybe there is no alternative for you. Maybe this is what you’re supposed to be doing. Maybe it is this hard. You think about this regularly, but you never arrive at a conclusion. You can’t seem to survive as an artist but could you thrive doing anything else? You only have one life.

169. Goodness Is Generosity

Mon, 08 Sep 2025 08:00:00 -0800

When someone wrongs me, I might respond in a variety of different ways. I might return the harm in an attempt to quickly resolve the injustice. I might reprimand the wrongdoer and demand they do better. I might seek formal justice through the systems that have authority in my community. I might opt for a compassionate response that aims to prevent the wrong from happening again by helping the wrongdoer see the harm of their actions.

I might also choose to respond with some combination of these approaches. But this could undermine my effectiveness. If I respond with vengeance first, the wrongdoer might not be receptive to a compassionate response that comes later. I must immediately see how to respond in a way that will bring about the best possible result.

With the help of awareness, we can easily see that revenge will only produce more revenge, and that any attempt to bring down another person will only bring about our own downfall. We can see that casting blame hardens the other against us, and causes them to see us as their enemy. We can see that formal systems tend to rely on carceral solutions that only further injustice. Pursuing these paths will only perpetuate suffering instead of helping to eliminate it.

Part of being human is that we all will experience some degree of harm from others. That there is any goodness in the world means there are people willing to disregard the harm done to them and respond compassionately to it. They choose to absorb the wrongdoing rather than helping to perpetuate it.

Goodness is always like this. It is always taking in what we must receive from others and giving something better in return. Goodness is a kind of generosity. It is chosen out of the awareness that it is the only way for our lives, both individually and collectively, to get better — to become more caring and more loving.

Every time we act from compassion, we help others become more aware, and in doing so we generously provide another opportunity for goodness to grow and spread.

168. The Sound Of Sleep

Fri, 05 Sep 2025 08:00:00 -0800

The sound of seagulls chattering at dawn. A squawking call building gradually in the first, followed by the response of others forming a strident chorus.

The sound of the bathroom exhaust fan. A steady purr mixed with a pulsing rhythm, going on and on and on, until suddenly the switch is flipped.

The sound of a horn brought forth by an angry driver. First one small burp, then two more in quick succession, followed by the long, steady shout of total infuriation.

The sound of a small plane taking off, followed by an airliner high above. The whine of the prop struggling against turbulent air, followed by the soft roar of the jet soaring at altitude.

The sound of construction workers joking with each other on the sidewalk. A few murmurs, then a loud exclamation, followed by a clatter of hearty chuckles.

The sound of water running in the sink. The gentle white noise of liquid forced through the faucet, landing almost silently in the basin.

The sound of an expensive car, followed by the sound of a much cheaper car modified to be louder. Deep vibrations increasing in pitch to a fine-tuned whine and then a flutter, followed by the metal buzz of a broken blender blasted through a tuba.

The sound of the neighbours’ argument travelling through the vent. A jumble of verbs and nouns growing progressively louder before ceasing with a harsh finality.

The sound of a building’s fire alarm in the middle of the night. A shrill bleating that transforms into a ring that resonates long after the bell has stopped.

The sound of sleep.

167. Suffering And Solipsism

Thu, 04 Sep 2025 08:00:00 -0800

I go out into the world and I suffer. I suffer because it is too cold and the rain never ends. I suffer because there is too much work and so little time. I suffer because other people misunderstand me. I suffer because there is too much noise. I suffer because I have to respond to the endless demands of others. I suffer because everything is more expensive than before. I suffer because my friends are too busy for me. I suffer because people do not pay attention. I suffer because I desperately want everything to be different than it is.

All of this suffering causes me to stay home. I want to hide from the world. I want to be where everything is exactly as I want it to be. In my home, I am safe and protected. Everything that happens here is only what I want and never anything more. This is the only place I have peace.

The more I believe this is true, the more I isolate myself from the world. As I become more isolated, I concede more and more to my desires, my fears, and my beliefs. I become a kind of solipsist, living in the safety of my own created world. I become disinterested in the outside world and disconnected from other people. I focus only on myself and I start to lose sight of reality. I might even start to lose sight of meaning itself. I then find myself wondering why I am so lonely, why I crave social contact and intimacy.

The problem seems obvious when presented like this, but it is all too easy to forget that this can actually happen. When I isolate myself from the world, I become trapped in a kind of false individuality. It is the individuality of the solipsist for whom real life exists only in the self. I become a slave to my desires, I cower from my aversions, and I become delusional in my beliefs. Rather than escaping from suffering, I cause it multiply endlessly.

The only way out of the trap is to go in search of the other, to allow the world back in. For that to happen, I must grant myself the tiniest drop of compassion, just enough to help me take some kind of action to meet my need for the other. I must begin to reconnect with the world, for that is the only way I can become part of reality once again.

166. Finding Freedom

Wed, 03 Sep 2025 08:00:00 -0800

To be freed from a prison seems to offer great hope. We leave an environment of strict rules and order for one full of freedom and opportunity. We are now able to pursue the things we want. We now have a chance to find happiness. We now have an opportunity to become so much more than we were before.

We think happiness is likely because we expect it to follow from the satisfaction of our desires. When we were constrained by rules and structures, there was no possibility of such satisfaction, and so we suffered as a result. Now that we believe ourselves free, our desire begins to blossom.

Even the chance to obtain the things we want can be a powerful intoxicant. We start to seek out those things with a singular focus. All of our efforts are marshalled towards getting what we want. In such a state, we are controlled by attachment, and the end result is guaranteed to be further suffering.

Suffering might not arrive immediately. We might obtain many of the things we want, and feel great pleasure in those successes. But we will also quickly realize that these victories are not as solid or satisfying as we thought they would be, and we will be driven to seek more and more.

Eventually our desires will become too great to be realistically satisfied. We will run up against a wall that we cannot surmount. We will feel our life falls short of what it should be, and we will fall into despair. We might even find ourselves longing for the simplicity and security of the prison we have left.

But we cannot simply remain in prison. We cannot stay trapped in the rigidity of strict rules and overbearing systems and also live with the creativity and compassion that will bring us joy. We must instead discover how to be free from the domination of structure and from the domination of attachment at the same time. Only then will we be truly free to act purposefully and creatively towards a more joyful life.

165. Passion For Life

Tue, 02 Sep 2025 08:00:00 -0800

When an interest grows beyond the scope of mere curiosity it can transform into an obsession. An obsession forms because you want to possess the object of interest, you want to encompass it so fully that it becomes wholly yours. The intensity of your desire causes the obsession to be born and it quickly solidifies into a profound attachment.

It is attachment that makes an obsession dangerous. It causes you to lose sight of the world, to lose sight of yourself, to lose sight of everything that is not the object of your obsession. You become dull to everything and everyone around you. Your actions are directed only towards the obsession, with no energy left to respond sensitively to anyone or anything else.

You might argue you are only passionate about the object of your obsession, but passion is not like this. For passion is never directed towards anything specific. It has no goal or object. Passion, when it is present, arises in everything you are and everything you do. It is a way of orienting yourself towards the world. It is to open yourself to the whole of life and everything it has to offer. If you are passionate for anything it is for life itself.

To be passionate is to love life, and to live passionately is also to live compassionately. It is to broaden your awareness of experience and to help others broaden theirs. It is to take on suffering and to transform it into joy, even when it causes you pain and difficulty. It is to apply yourself to everything you do, with vigour, care, and sensitivity. It is to be free from attachment, including the attachment of obsession. To live each day with intense passion is perhaps the greatest achievement a human being could hope to attain.

164. Power And Responsibility

Mon, 01 Sep 2025 08:00:00 -0800

We know that great power means great responsibility. But in truth, our responsibility is always great, regardless of our power. If we are attentive and aware, we understand that we are responsible for all of the suffering that exists. We must be responsible, for if we are not then no one is. The suffering of an individual does not arise in isolation. One person’s suffering is connected to the suffering of every other, and we cannot completely eliminate our own suffering without helping others eliminate theirs, as well.

Seeing our responsibility and the need to eliminate suffering, we also see the necessity of acting from compassion towards ourselves and others. This means we use whatever power we have towards compassionate ends. The specific actions we take must reflect the power we have and the means available to us. To devote only a small fraction of our power to compassion would be to unnecessarily perpetuate suffering. When we are aware, the reach of our compassion grows as our power and means grow.

But when awareness is limited, there is a strong tendency for the opposite to happen. We instead use our power to hide from our responsibility, to isolate ourselves from the suffering of others, and to cower in the false safety of material security. We think this will protect us and the people close to us, but in reality we do ourselves enormous harm.

By guaranteeing the suffering of others continues, we also guarantee our own further suffering. Others will continue to produce suffering for us precisely because we have abandoned them to suffering. We secure our own personal safety at the cost of destroying any possibility of joy. For joy arises through compassion, through the effort of helping others meet their needs and become more aware so that they can eliminate their own suffering.

We might think the burden of compassion is too much for a single powerful person to bear. But there is a simple solution to this problem: the burden can be lessened by empowering others. By spreading our power to others so that they can work with us, we also spread the task of compassionate action. And since the responsibility is shared by all of us, it also makes sense for the power, the means, and the effort to be equally shared.

163. Empty And Full

Fri, 29 Aug 2025 08:00:00 -0800

He stands perfectly still and takes the deepest breath he can. His head is swirling with thoughts, as it always is. There are too many thoughts to manage, so he does not try to manage them. He lets them come and he lets them go. Now is not the time for thinking.

He lies down on the floor and takes several deep breaths before standing again. He lifts his arms high over his head, as high as they will go. Reaching up, the stretch burns as the tension is pulled out of his muscles. Accumulated stress has taken physical form and he is trying to release it. When he is finished with his arms, he stretches his legs, his torso, his neck and then returns to the floor.

Lying there, he tries to be as loose as he can presently be. He releases every muscle in his body, consciously examining each one for any tightness and then relaxing it. It is only when he feels he is fully loose that he surrenders. He abandons all control. His body is now free to do whatever it likes.

He remains stationary on the floor for a short time. Then he starts to take small movements, first in his shoulders and in his arms. His movements grow and expand until he is standing again. He raises one arm and then another, over and over. Next it is a leg, raised and then extended before being lowered. Then the other, but at a slightly different angle.

There is no order or pattern to his movements. He is not in control. He simply moves in the way his body feels it is necessary for him to move. His body is in a state of emptiness. It is not this nor that, but also both and neither. It is an emptiness of the body that is similar to the emptiness of the mind in perfect meditation. When he is totally empty, he is what he must be and nothing more.

He is not engaged in action but nonaction. His movements are not intentional. He is completely free of habits and learned responses. He is in total harmony with his body. He feels a kind of peaceful bliss as he quietly moves. He is part of the world, just as the world is part of him. He wishes he could be like this always, but he lets this desire pass, just as his hand passes over his head. He is completely empty and full of life.

162. Complete Honesty

Thu, 28 Aug 2025 08:00:00 -0800

Complete honesty is more difficult than it might seem. It takes more than providing an accurate description of the facts and events. It takes more than attributing actions and words to the correct people. It even takes more than carefully including everything that is known about the matter at hand.

Honesty requires me to be aware of the things I do not know, and to express my uncertainty fully. To do this requires great humility, for the biggest impediment to honesty is always the self. What I believe and want and fear can have a enormous influence on what I say and do. If I am not aware of these factors and their ability to alter my words then I will always speak something less than the whole truth.

But how can I become aware of what I cannot even see? I can investigate myself deeply, I can question my desires and beliefs, I can notice my aversions and anxieties, but I will still not have a complete awareness of myself. There will always be something more I cannot yet see, something just beyond my present awareness.

How then can I be honest when there is always something I am still blind to? The only way is to fully accept this fact. I must remain open to the possibility that my words will be less than what is needed, and I must communicate the uncertainty I see. I must recognize that any deficiency happens because of me, because of attachments I have that unknowingly impede my honesty. I must do this not to heap blame on myself, but as a way of affirming my commitment to honesty itself.

It is in seeing the possibility that my words are less than fully honest that I also see the necessity of expanding my awareness of myself. By allowing my attention to freely and openly investigate my intentions and attachments, my self-awareness will expand and my words will move closer to a more complete honesty.

161. A Method For Liberation

Wed, 27 Aug 2025 08:00:00 -0800

You know that your problem is attachment. You can’t help wanting things, and you easily become attached to these desires. You know this causes you to suffer in the form of stress, jealousy, anger, grief, anxiety, and so many other painful feelings.

You want to break free from your desires. You want to know what you must do to bring an end to attachment. You want to be given a list of actions, a method you can follow to extinguish your suffering. You want a method because it seems like this is all you need. Once you know what to do, you’ll be able to free yourself by carefully following the method.

But your problem cannot be solved in this way. Any method you could be given would not do what you need. You’d follow the method, expecting your suffering to vanish, but it would continue to arise. The only solution to your problem is the long and difficult work of expanding your awareness. For without awareness, you are too insensitive to yourself and the world to be able to see what you must do.

Awareness expands through open and free attention. You have to allow yourself to look at everything, both what comes from inside and what is found in the world around you. This cannot be done through control. You must allow your attention to be totally free, to linger when it must linger and to wander when it must wander.

As your awareness broadens, you will see how your desires operate. You will understand how you become attached and how this produces suffering. You will also begin to feel the suffering of others as your own. This is not a bad thing. Greater empathy is a sign your sensitivity is improving.

You will see that while your desires come from you they are also objects separate from you. You will see the necessity of creating space between you and them, in order to bring your suffering to an end. You will see how to do this without anyone telling you how. The method will be entirely obvious to you.

But suffering will continue to arise from your other attachments. You will need to keep looking and freeing yourself, over and over again. The need for awareness is not one that is likely to be fully met. You will need to keep expanding your awareness for as long as you live.

160. Let Your Children Run Free

Tue, 26 Aug 2025 08:00:00 -0800

You’ve been practicing your art for a long time. Your work is getting better, more sophisticated and more interesting. Or at least it seems that way to you. You know your judgment is far from objective, and it doesn’t mean others would think the same.

The problem is that you’re isolated. You’ve been working quietly on your own. Other than a few close friends, no one has seen your work. You feel a need for some kind of recognition. You don’t mean fame. You just mean someone to see what you’ve made and give their opinion of it.

You’re saying something with your work but there’s no one listening and no one responding. You know the solution is to share your creations. You cannot continue working in secret. But releasing your creations into the world is daunting. They are your children and you worry about their fate. What if no one likes them? What if they’re met with ridicule? What if the criticism is unbearable?

But there is no alternative. Your children are lonely. They need other people to survive just as much as you do. Without recognition, without the response of the other, they cannot grow into anything at all. Before you brought them into the world they were trapped in the prison of your mind, and now they’re locked away in the prison of secrecy. You know you have to set them free. They have needs just as you do, and one of those needs is freedom.

Still, the terrible possibility that your children will be criticized to death lingers. Sometimes it haunts you late into the night, keeping you from the peace of sleep. What comes of an artwork that is shared and then rejected? What comes of the artist? These questions are too much for you to fully ponder. Fortunately, the answers are unimportant. You know what you must do. You must allow your work to live and grow. You must let your children run free.

159. The Ability To Surrender

Mon, 25 Aug 2025 08:00:00 -0800

A person lacking in critical judgment hardens himself against the evidence his beliefs are false in the same way as a person who is lacking in empathy hardens herself against feeling the suffering of another as her own.

In both cases, the person retreats into the self and rejects the other, ignoring it or fighting against it. The alternative is to surrender — to allow the evidence to prevail over the false beliefs, and the suffering of another to prevail over the false peace of isolation. Through surrender, the self gains an opportunity to grow into more, precisely by accepting a part of the other.

Why is it that we can sometimes doubt the self and its judgments, while we sometimes stubbornly retreat into it? As always, this is a problem of awareness, and a problem of awareness is also a problem of exposure. A person who has become hardened against the other has not been exposed to the experiences necessary to put their understanding into doubt.

When our awareness is limited, we can easily become attached to our self-image. We then hide behind our pride and deny, deny, deny all that seems to threaten us. We construct a wall of lies to stand between us and the world, in the vain belief it will keep us safe from the demands of the other.

In many cases, further experience is all that is needed for us to discover the value of the other. But sometimes we have become so profoundly attached to our self-image that our attention is too narrow for experience alone to suffice. We will then continue to lie to ourselves, and remain unchanged in our beliefs.

Our only hope then is the compassion of another person. This must be someone who does not condemn us or look down on us, as these things will only cause us to react defensively. This must be someone who will approach us with honesty and demand our honesty in return. This must be someone who has surrendered many times and who is now able to confidently encourage us to do the same.

An encounter with a compassionate other can help us have the first experiences that liberate our attention just enough to see something more than we have seen before, and from there it again becomes possible for our awareness to grow and broaden.

158. Nothing Is Wrong

Fri, 22 Aug 2025 08:00:00 -0800

She has no idea what she is doing. She is fully aware of this and she has decided she is fine with it. What she’s trying to do is to make something, but she doesn’t know how to do this. There’s no plan or process to her actions. She’s only playing around, trying to see what might be possible in the medium, and what might be possible in her.

Nothing is wrong, everything is right. She keeps telling herself this as she plays. She’s making something. It’s emerging at this very instant. She can’t say what it is, only that it exists. She knows it exists because she can see it right in front of her. She’s following her intuitions, allowing them to shape her creation in the way she envisions it. Her vision is admittedly more lofty than her ability, but still she presses forward.

She has decided she’ll accept whatever she ultimately does. As she’s reminding herself of this, she makes a mistake. Strange to call it a mistake, she realizes. So strange that she begins to laugh. She’s so judgmental that she calls things “mistakes” even when she’s just playing, and in this moment, that feels hilarious.

Despite the numerous deviations from her vision, she refuses to become frustrated. Not with her creation, nor with herself. There’s no goal to reach, after all. Nothing is wrong, everything is right. She blends her “mistake” into the rest and it transforms into something else entirely.

Whether or not her creation is any good is irrelevant. She likes what she’s making. She is pleased by it. She takes a step back to get a better look and she finds her creation absurd but also wonderful. It’s a disaster, she decides a moment later, and then laughs again. Her negative judgments simply will not leave her alone.

She looks at it again. She tells herself just to look, without judgment. Nothing is wrong, everything is right. But she can’t stop having thoughts. It’s a wonderful disaster, she thinks. It’s beautiful in its own way. She doesn’t know what she’ll do with it, but that doesn’t matter. Only the joy of creating matters. And she hasn’t had this much fun in years.

157. Barren Of Possibility

Thu, 21 Aug 2025 08:00:00 -0800

We sometimes do things that are wrong and harmful. We do these things not because we are lacking in knowledge or intelligence, or because we are especially malicious or evil. The real problem is that we are lacking in awareness. We cannot see the reality of our experience, and so we cannot act well.

We see instead a world of distinctions, where everything is divided up into neat categories. And we are divided too, not just from other people, but also within ourselves. We want to think we are one person but we are many, with parts for each of our desires, aversions, and beliefs. Our parts are in perpetual conflict, each fighting for dominance over the others. We simultaneously want to get everything we desire, escape from everything we hate, and confirm all of our beliefs.

When we act wrongly we are not oblivious to what is happening. Deep down we sense that what we are doing is wrong, but this intuition is suppressed. It is suppressed by our attachment to the things we want, hate, and believe, which dangerously narrows our attention. Our attachment leads us to think there are actions we must take to reach happiness that are not only unnecessary but also harmful. We end up producing further suffering, not just for other people but for ourselves, as well.

But it would be surprising for us to act in any other way. For there is no harmony in our binary world of distinctions, there is no possible unity, and no possible compassion. There is, in fact, no genuine possibility of any kind. The sensitivity needed to see possibility is not present, and thus compassion is blocked. With such limited awareness of ourselves and the world, we are unable to see what we need, unable to empathize with others, and unable to create joy.

To call our harmful actions merely stupid or evil would only be to diminish our responsibility. We must see our reality more clearly and develop the capacity to recognize attachment and the suffering it produces. We must learn that open and free attention to all facets of experience is necessary to reach the compassion and joy we desperately need.

156. Proximity To Intentions

Wed, 20 Aug 2025 08:00:00 -0800

Intentions are a central part of life. I notice a leaky pipe and I set an intention to repair it. I want to swim on the weekend, so I set an intention to go to the community pool. I remember there is a penalty for filing a form late and I set an intention to avoid the penalty. I hear that a friend has received an award for excellence, and I set an intention to congratulate them. I discover an interesting book, and I set an intention to read it.

To live without intentions would be impossible. I am always setting new intentions because I am always reflecting on my past experience and planning my future actions accordingly. This is part of what it is to be human — a living being endowed with reflective consciousness.

But I must also recognize that intentions can be dangerous. When I become attached to an intention, I begin to identify with its object. I see its fulfillment as necessary for my own happiness. I then narrowly focus on achieving that specific goal, which means there is no opportunity for me to see what is most needed and necessary. And this means there is no opportunity for compassion and no opportunity for joy.

I must allow my intentions to exist as they are, while also not allowing myself to be so close to them that they consume my whole life. I must hold them at a distance, where I can carefully observe them and the ways I respond to them. When I have adequate space from my intentions, they are unable to directly control my attention or manipulate my actions.

With my intentions at a distance, I am open to change, to new information, to the world itself and all that is other. I am also open to my intentions themselves changing when I become aware of something new. It is this openness, this looseness, this freedom, that keeps me from suffering when my intentions go unfulfilled, when things go wrong, or when I am wrong. And when I am more free from suffering, I am then better able to see what is needed to create joy for myself and others.

155. Compassion Cannot Wait

Tue, 19 Aug 2025 08:00:00 -0800

In an ideal world, our every action would be reciprocated by others. Whenever we would give something to another person, someone would give something back to us in return. All that was given would be returned not out of obligation or duty, but out of the awareness of need. We would feel no lack, no rejection, no isolation and all of our needs would be joyfully met.

But we do not yet live in such a world. We hope for reciprocation, and we try to reciprocate when we can, but often little or nothing can be given in return. The socioeconomic systems we’ve constructed produce endless demands on our time and resources, preventing us from reciprocating fully.

Even so, the reciprocation of basic behaviours is the foundation of a responsible society. We hold each other to account in order to preserve the norms that give order to our lives. To fail to reciprocate in the expected ways would be to become an outsider — a person failing to uphold their side of the grand bargain.

At the same time, we sometimes resent the responsibility to reciprocate. It can feel like a burdensome obligation, particularly when it seems unrelated to our own needs. If others are not helping us, why should we help them? But this is a dangerous line of thinking, because it would mean reducing our own goodness to the bare minimum of what we’re guaranteed to get back from others.

Compassion cannot wait for reciprocation. It must be given without prompting and without any expectation of recompense. This does not mean compassion provides us with nothing in return, but rather that the benefit might not take the form we expect. Compassion often improves the world in an imperceptible way that nonetheless indirectly improves our own future experience.

It’s also possible that an act of compassion will be met with scorn, censure, or even violence. But it’s only through further compassion that we can eliminate the causes of harm. We do this by expanding the awareness of others, so that they can see the need of responding to compassion with compassion. In the end, it is compassion itself that will create the ideal world of total reciprocation.

154. A Helpful Provocation

Mon, 18 Aug 2025 08:00:00 -0800

You come across a quotation from a book and you are immediately frustrated by it. It seems to undermine an idea that is important to you, and so your reaction to it is both strong and negative. You judge it harshly, and you want to argue passionately against it.

But a quotation is only a fragment of a much larger text. To argue against it, you would first need to understand its broader context. On its own, a fragment is always only a provocation. And you already know this, because the quotation has just provoked your frustration and judgment.

A fragment might then provoke you to investigate the larger text of which it is a part. When you do so, you might discover a more nuanced and careful argument than you expected. Or you might find that the text is of a different kind than you thought — perhaps it is poetic or satirical in its use of language. Of course, you might also find that the text really is badly constructed, and then you will easily see how to create a clear and persuasive counterargument against it.

But this is not the only kind of investigation a fragment might provoke. It might cause you to investigate the relevant ideas and concepts in a novel way, revealing unforeseen layers of depth and complexity. It might cause you to investigate your own response to the fragment and the broader context of yourself. It might even cause you to realize something about yourself, to reach a new insight that is bold or surprising.

None of this is possible if you settle for immediate judgment and opposition. Proper investigation requires openness to alternatives, to new ways of seeing and thinking, to judgments other than those close at hand. To approach all ideas and people with openness and an inclination towards investigation rather than invective is to allow your awareness of yourself and the world to continually expand.

153. The Other Side

Fri, 15 Aug 2025 08:00:00 -0800

I’ve been working all day, but it feels like I’ve achieved nothing. Despite my best efforts, I’ve failed to produce anything of note. I feel miserable because of this. When tangible results are lacking, the effort itself feels like a failure.

I’m stewing in my discontent when I receive a message from a friend. They want me to come to dinner this evening so that they can introduce me to someone — a person my friend claims I’ll find interesting.

I should be intrigued but all I feel is an intense revulsion towards the idea of going out. I’m hungry but I’m not at all interested in meeting someone new. I haven’t been out in weeks, but it doesn’t matter. I want to shut down. I’ve wasted the entire day, and I feel completely drained. I want to be separate from this infuriating world that is the source of my anguish.

Meeting a new person is especially daunting. I need only imagine what they might do to me in my present state. They might judge me as I am in this moment, pathetically weak and diminished. I can’t possibly offer my best self right now. And first impressions matter, regardless of what anyone might say.

I’m tired but I’m not unconscious, and I can sense my own pessimism. Why do I think the new person will be so judgmental? They could just as easily be kind and generous. And it’s not very often I get to meet someone interesting. But my misery has made me averse to even the possibility of harm. In my current state, I might collapse under the weight of the other’s presence. And then what?

My worries are dominant. To release myself from them feels impossible. It would require a kind of energy and attention I do not have. To simply go there and try my best feels like a step too far. I tell my friend I won’t be able to make it.

I stay home, I hide, and I lose. What I lose is the possibility of something good. It’s this possibility that lies on the other side of my worries — a possibility I’m currently unable to appreciate. It is this same possible goodness that is lost every time I stop myself from reaching for the other. As I extend my isolation, I drift farther and farther from that good.

152. Forgiveness Saves

Thu, 14 Aug 2025 08:00:00 -0800

Imagine you live in a small town in a remote area, isolated from the rest of civilization. One day, a member of your community does something that significantly harms other members of the community. The wrongdoer recognizes their error and takes responsibility for their actions. But the community struggles to accept the apology. You are angry because you cannot understand how anyone could do this and you feel betrayed.

The community must decide what to do. You cannot send the wrongdoer away, for they have no other home than here. There is literally nowhere else for them to go. The only solution is to come to terms with what has happened and rebuild. The community can punish the wrongdoer, but eventually forgiveness must come. You must forgive because any chance of living happily with the wrongdoer depends on them being brought back into the fold.

The alternative would be to turn the wrongdoer into a permanent other, an outsider who is no longer welcome. But banishment will only lead to the community’s end. By dwelling in anger, the fractures will not end here. Others will do wrong in the future and be banished too, until eventually there is nothing left. The only way to save the community is forgiveness and reconciliation.

In the world we actually live in — a world of space and mobility — we often ignore this truth. When people do wrong, we send them away, ostracizing them from our communities and organizations. This is bad for them and it is bad for us. It’s bad for them not just because they have to find a new community, but also because they learn that mistakes lead to catastrophic punishments and they begin to hide their faults and errors. It’s bad for us because we do not learn the value of forgiveness, and we live in the past instead of the present.

We must understand that mistakes happen, sometimes even ones that cause irreparable harm. We must accept that we are fallible and learn how to rebuild when wrongdoing inevitably occurs. We must understand that we all have gaps in our awareness and that this means lapses in judgment will happen. Our best possible response to wrongdoing is always to work together towards greater awareness so that the harmful actions will not be taken again.

151. Paying Attention To Attention

Wed, 13 Aug 2025 08:00:00 -0800

In a world so vast and varied, there are endless things to see. Curiosity pulls my attention away from whatever is ordinary and towards whatever seems new or out of place. I investigate what I see, gaining knowledge about the world and developing a greater awareness of it.

My attention is especially drawn to the things I like — the objects of my desires. Conversely, my attention tends to flee from the things I dislike — the objects of my aversions. But when my attention is stuck between the boundaries constructed by my desires and aversions, the range and depth of my vision will be severely limited. There are important facets of my experience I will necessarily miss and this will inhibit the ability of my awareness to expand.

To open my attention, I must liberate it. I must allow it to be free to wander when it needs to wander and to linger when it needs to linger. To do this, I need to develop a higher level of attention — attention to the condition of my attention itself. But I have to be careful in doing this. Any kind of self-monitoring can be harmful if I become attached to particular beliefs about what I should be. Rather than imposing an ideal of attention, I simply want to learn to notice when the scope of my attention has become limited.

When I see that my attention is too focused and narrow, I can gently release it from its target and allow it to wander freely again. I have to remember that any attempt to control or force my attention to go somewhere will only work against its freedom. This means I need to examine the attachments that pull my attention in one direction or another. If I’m able to see how these attachments also produce suffering, then I will no longer permit them to manipulate my attention in this way.

It is by allowing my attention to remain as open and free as possible that my awareness expands. And when my awareness is broad, I’m sensitive to both myself and the world around me, and I can see what is needed to create joy for myself and others.

150. To Communicate A Feeling

Tue, 12 Aug 2025 08:00:00 -0800

To write a text that communicates information is relatively straightforward. Provided I understand the rules of grammar and the accepted meanings of words, I can write sentences that carry whatever information I want to share. The reader can extract the information from my text just by comprehending the literal meanings of its sentences.

But to share a feeling or sense that cannot be directly communicated, I need to expand my approach. I need to use language in ways that bend and perhaps even break the rules of grammar or the norms of meaning. I need to use metaphor to allow language to do more than it is literally able to do.

At this point, I enter the domain of poetry. This is the case even if the text I am writing does not appear to be a poem. For writing in this domain is an aesthetic practice. Here, a text succeeds only when its beauty conveys the intended feeling or sense to the reader. To get there, I have to use words creatively so that they coalesce into a form that stretches past their literal meaning. But I cannot break every rule at the same time, because this will only alienate the reader. If I take the reader too far from what they already understand, they will be unable to grasp any meaning at all.

To be successful, I must both contradict and match the reader’s expectations. I must take the reader into a mysterious labyrinth and risk their possible disorientation, while also providing them with reassuring imagery and structures that conform to the norms of writing. To do both of these things at the same time is no easy feat. I might begin with the reader’s attention, but it can be quickly lost if I fail to supply enough of what is needed.

When the interplay between mystery and norms is successful, a feeling or sense that exceeds the literal can be communicated through metaphor. And when it is most successful, the beauty of the text is enough that the experience of it also creates joy for the reader.

149. Political Questions

Mon, 11 Aug 2025 08:00:00 -0800

When we think about politics, we think of things like governments, laws, parties, elections, and so on. This is because we live in societies with political systems that put these institutions at the forefront. Our understanding of politics tends to orbit these concepts, and our political landscape is dominated by questions like what our government should do about a particular issue and who should win the next election.

But politics is much more than this. The practice of politics is fundamentally about determining the kind of society we want to have together. By focusing on technocratic distinctions between binary positions on narrow issues we completely lose sight of this much bigger issue. We get caught up in the details without questioning or even seeing the broad agreements that construct our political reality.

The most general political question of all is almost never asked. One way of stating it is: how should we act as citizens of a shared world? This might not even look like a political question, but it is fundamental to any possible agreement that might follow. For we can only agree on what we are going to do collectively if we first agree on how we ought to act. The most general question is thus not only political but also ethical.

It is our ethics that sets the the boundaries of what we can do together as a whole. When we lack awareness of ourselves and the world around us, we cannot expect our political systems to work in ways that do not produce more suffering, conflict, and violence. This means that to have a better politics, each of us must become a better citizen of the polis.

Once again (and always) the problem is a deeply personal one. We are the ones who are responsible, both individually and collectively, for our political systems. We must allow our attention to openly and freely explore both ourselves and our world so that our awareness continues to expand. It is only through greater awareness that we can create a better politics that is actively compassionate and works to reduce unnecessary pain and suffering for everyone.

148. The Well Of His Mind

Fri, 08 Aug 2025 08:00:00 -0800

He needs to be distracted at all times. His attention has to be completely occupied. If it isn’t, he will be overwhelmed by his own thoughts and feelings. Only when he is distracted does he feel somewhat calm.

In the absence of distraction, he starts to descend. He falls deeper and deeper into the well of his mind, and the darkness is soon too much to bear. Memories arise constantly, memories of horrors he wishes he could forget. Memories of lost people and things he has done, each accompanied by a judgment.

He judges himself harshly for his past, for all the wrongs he has done and all the good he has failed to do. He should be better than he is, but he’s not, and he cannot bear to sit with that thought. At times he feels his judgments as though they were physical entities, beings holding him tightly in their grasp and slowly crushing him. When this happens he is trapped, and he cannot do anything except wait for the terror to pass.

The only way for him to live is to immerse himself fully in whatever pulls his attention away from the past, away from his memories and his unrelenting judgments. He knows the judgments are not real, he knows they are only his creations, but still he can only flee. He is forced to go from one distraction to the next, each one only a temporary balm for his pain.

He knows this is no way to live. He knows he could do so much more if he were free. He knows he could finally become the person he is capable of being. He knows he needs to stop running from his judgments. He knows he has to sit with them and accept them until they lose their power and pass.

If he can let them pass, then there might be a chance for silence. And it’s silence that he desperately needs. Silence would mean true calm, a calm without distraction and without terror. But is this possible? Does he really have it in him to sit through the pain and find the other side?

147. Delusional Beliefs

Thu, 07 Aug 2025 08:00:00 -0800

Everyone holds a multitude of different beliefs. Some of these beliefs pertain to simple facts about the world, while others are more complex or even theoretical.

In the ordinary course of life, I will almost certainly discover that one of my beliefs is false. Realizing this, I should discard the false belief, and replace it with a different belief that is more true. But sometimes this doesn’t happen.

Sometimes the false belief is lodged too deeply inside me for it to be quickly evicted. I’ve somehow formed an attachment to this belief. I see it as part of me, and I cannot discard it because that would mean discarding myself. I know the belief is false, but it still influences my choices and actions. It does so in exactly the same way as a superstition might influence me even though I already know it’s fantastical.

When this happens, I’m caught in a delusion. I understand rationally that my belief should be given no weight, but I’m so attached to it that I’m unable to ignore it. When others learn of my struggle, they might try to help me by offering additional reasons to undermine the false belief. They might also try to supply me with alternatives that could replace it. In doing these things, they are trying to help me distance myself from the belief I identify with.

To identify with any belief — even a true one — can be dangerous because it means elevating my own subjective judgment above reality itself, which can easily occlude my awareness. Loosening myself from all of my beliefs is necessary to be fully open and attentive to all of my experiences.

By carefully investigating the beliefs I hold and their connection to suffering, I can come to see them as contingent objects and not as necessary parts of me. With adequate distance from my beliefs, I gain the opportunity to develop a more comprehensive awareness of myself and the world.

146. The Right Kind Of Help

Wed, 06 Aug 2025 08:00:00 -0800

You want to help others in every way you can. When you see people helping in a certain way, you feel you should help in that way, too. If you cannot do this, you begin to feel guilty of being less helpful than you ought to be. Perhaps someone even asks you why you are not helping in that particular way, with the silent implication that only that kind of help is important.

You want to do more, but more is simply not possible. You’re already stretched incredibly thin as it is. Still, you feel like a second-rate helper. You feel like the help you’re giving is not the right kind of help. You feel like your efforts are less valuable than those of others. But all of this is an illusion.

The illusion is produced by your concern about the real value of your efforts and your desire to do as much as you possibly can. You’ve become attached to these intentions, most likely because they align with your deepest values. Even though your intentions are good, they can still cause suffering if you become attached to them. You feel this suffering in the form of guilt and anxiety. By seeing your attachment and its connection to your suffering you can break free of it, and allow yourself to conserve your energy for the important work you’re doing to help others.

You must do good in the ways you are able to do good, and this will be different for every person. You can only help in the ways you are personally able to help. You will help in those ways that energize you and enable you to be as compassionate and caring as you can possibly be. And that is always the right kind of help to give.

If you’re already doing this, then there is nothing more that can or should be asked of you. You’re taking responsibility for the suffering you see in the world, and you’re working to eliminate it through compassionate action.

145. Openness To Change

Tue, 05 Aug 2025 08:00:00 -0800

We first learn how to use language through trial and error. By using words and watching the reactions of others, we discover a set of general rules about how and when words should be used. If we vary from these rules, we are quickly corrected by others. In this way, we become competent language users — insiders to the set of agreements that make language possible and practical.

Soon afterwards, we begin to encounter people using words in unfamiliar ways. The same rules we were taught to follow carefully are now being bent or even broken entirely. When we hear this new language, we feel an impulse to correct it or replace it with language that conforms to our rules. We might even complain to others about the new usage and seek confirmation that it is wrong.

But changes to the rules of language are always happening. The language we use today differs from that of our grandparents, just as the language of future generations will differ from ours. To absorb these normative changes, we must be flexible. The rules we first learned are not set in stone, and to use language well, we must accept that they can and will change.

To accept new usages, words, and grammatical structures is to see our own rules as mutable and to be open to their possible revision. Such a perspective is helpful because normative change is not limited to language. The very same process of change happens in every part of our normative world, including our ethical norms, aesthetic tastes, and social standards.

The more adaptable we become, the more capable we will be of accepting changes to the normative order we have learned to follow. When we are dynamic and flexible, we also become more open to the world around us, more imaginative in our vision of the future, and more creative in solving the problems we face.

144. The Dizziness Of Freedom

Mon, 04 Aug 2025 08:00:00 -0800

You are here and you are not. You are physically here, but you feel out of place. You’re unsure of how to act, of how to exist. You don’t know what to do with yourself. Time is passing but too slowly. You want something to happen, something that will clarify things, something that will show you what you’re supposed to do. But nothing happens. Everything is uncertain. There are no clues pointing to a clear answer. And you’re completely on your own. No one offers any hints. You want someone to save you but no rescue is forthcoming. Asking what to do is no use, for you’re only told that you can do anything you’d like. But you know this isn’t true. The subtext says otherwise. It says there are paths that are right and others that are wrong. You’re supposed to know which is which. You can see you’re being evaluated, even at this very moment. But you don’t know the criteria and they could be anything. Your strongest instinct is to flee. But it’s obvious you can’t run from life itself. You must manage. You must survive. You must contend. This is what you have to do no matter how uncomfortable it feels. For you also have to manage your feelings. You have to navigate your feelings and the world at the same time. You have to locate a path forward through time that gets you from here to there. The path will be narrow and it will be yours alone. The paths of others might look more appealing but they are not for you. Your path will be yours because you will choose it. And in choosing it you will become responsible for it. You will be responsible for everything you do and everything you do not do. Others will see what you have done and they will judge you. To be completely consumed by anxiety is to be always focused on your responsibility and the choices you must make. It is to feel out of place in every moment of life.

143. If Only They Would Look

Fri, 01 Aug 2025 08:00:00 -0800

The studio is always bright in the early morning. She loves when the light comes in like this — a blanket of sun that covers the entire room. It brings the space alive, transforming it from the grungy concrete box that it is into a real place populated by real people who make and share and live. People like her.

Illuminated by the sunlight, the paint-covered walls become intriguing canvases. She feels inspired and wants to pick up a brush and get to work. But today she cannot. There is someone coming to look at some pieces she finished months ago.

It always makes her nervous when she has to show her work to someone new. So often they only glance at it for a moment or two before politely thanking her for her time and rushing to the exit. She knows why this happens. Her work is challenging for the viewer. Some people even find it offensive. The objects and events she tends to portray are too much for them to handle.

She finds herself often wishing her audience had more patience for the work. She knows their feelings would change if they did. They would discover something true in it, something at least interesting if not exciting. She knows they probably wouldn’t buy anything, but still. If only they would look.

Sometimes she gets lucky. The viewer arrives and they are first surprised and then totally mesmerized. This excites her, mostly because it means she’s not entirely insane. It confirms that there is real value in her work.

A few years back, a man came to the studio with a stern face and few words for her. He looked carefully at each of her pieces, saying nothing at all. She thought for certain he was about to heel turn and march out of there. But he kept looking, staring really, even approaching some of the canvases for a close inspection. Eventually he uttered a single word: yes. She did not know what he meant by this. He continued to silently study her work.

In the end, he bought them all — every last one she had available. She couldn’t believe it. It was one of the best days of her life.

142. Expanding Empathy

Thu, 31 Jul 2025 08:00:00 -0800

As my own empathy grows, the lack of empathy shown by others becomes more noticeable. I start to criticize them for being indifferent towards what seems like obvious suffering. I see them as lost in their own ignorance, as unwilling to even try to understand. And if they are particularly callous, I might even go so far as to declare them enemies of all that is right and good.

But when I do any of these things, I fail. Whenever I choose blame or hostility towards another person, I work against the very empathy I claim to support. The lack of empathy and compassion shown by others follows directly from their present situation. As long as they are in the grip of attachment to desires, aversions, and beliefs, their attention will be restricted and their awareness will remain narrow and limited. In such a state, they cannot do anything other than perpetuate suffering.

If I react with blame or hostility to insensitive words or actions then I am also acting from attachment. It could be an attachment to the belief that people should be empathetic or to the desire for a more compassionate society. My own attachment causes me to suffer indignation and lash out at others.

Blame being unwarranted does not mean that a person is not responsible for the suffering they produce, but rather that the responsibility does not end with them. All of us together are responsible for all of the suffering we collectively produce. The compassion that follows from empathy demands the liberation from suffering of not just myself but all others, too.

There is no room for blame or hostility. These reactions only serve to sustain conflict and drain the energy and resources I need to help myself and others become free. It is by receiving compassion that others can become more empathetic and compassionate. Compassion follows from awareness, and awareness follows from compassion. Every act of compassion further spreads awareness and helps to free others so that they too can join this great project of liberation.

141. A Warning You Must Heed

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 08:00:00 -0800

You see how the world works and you want it to be different. You know there must be another way. A way that would be more equitable and just. A way that would greatly reduce unnecessary pain and suffering. A way that would provide more joyful and fulfilling lives for everyone. You want this better world but you aren’t sure how to create it.

You find yourself often thinking about the problem, but it always ends in frustration. There doesn’t seem to be anything you can do to create significant change in the world. You might be able to assist those at greatest risk in your own community, but at what personal cost? You would have to witness so much suffering, and even with immense effort you would only be able to alleviate a tiny fraction of their pain. Would you be able to handle that? Wouldn’t it slowly drain everything out of you, until there is nothing left?

You have no satisfactory answers. It feels like the available options would make life impossibly difficult for you. And you can see that the world offers a simple alternative. You can close your eyes to suffering. You can work a normal job with normal hours. You can become a cog in the machine. Isn’t this also a more peaceful way to live? And isn’t happiness a kind of peace? You can’t escape the feeling that your own life would be better if you just gave in.

But when you think about actually doing it — when you think about what that life would be like for you — you start to feel an anxiety so powerful it verges on panic. There’s a worry that will not subside, a worry that seems to originate in the depths of your soul. It’s the worry that you are about to make a horrible mistake, that you are not only at risk but in great danger.

This is a warning you must heed. It is telling you that to give up, to abandon yourself to the false peace of life within the confines of a rigid and harmful system, would mean an existence far too lacking in purpose and meaning to be tolerable.

140. The Cessation Of Suffering

Tue, 29 Jul 2025 08:00:00 -0800

The liberated body is sensitive to everything that happens in and around it, and it responds immediately in the ways it must. The liberated mind is aware and relaxed, empty of attachment and full of creative energy to solve the problems it encounters. Feelings and thoughts arise regularly but pass with ease. Intuitions born from awareness guide every action towards what is presently most needed. Desires, aversions, and beliefs are present, but there is no identification with them, as the harm of attachment is fully understood.

A being in this state produces very little suffering for itself. Even so, there is still suffering present in the world. It is the suffering produced by the countless others, and this suffering is felt no differently from the being’s own suffering. As such, the being responds with compassion to create the means for the suffering of others to be eliminated at its source.

To act from compassion is never a mindless effort. It requires careful thought and attention to details. It requires prudence and reason. It requires enormous creativity to express awareness in a form that can be communicated. To eliminate suffering, the being must utilize every tool at its disposal towards compassionate ends.

The whole organism must work together for the cessation of suffering to be achieved. The whole organism is not just the individual being but all living beings as one. It is when all beings attain the awareness necessary to bring their own suffering to an end that suffering ceases throughout the whole.

The work of compassion is complex and challenging but also endlessly rewarding. Solving the problem of suffering creates tangible results that can be seen and felt, and this provides a profound sense of purpose. It is through compassionate action that needs are met and joy is created. To live joyfully is nothing other than to act from compassion in each and every moment.

139. Excessive Skepticism

Mon, 28 Jul 2025 08:00:00 -0800

To respect the limits of knowledge, we must be skeptical. Skepticism reminds us to investigate the nature of all things, to see what holds up to inquiry and what might be unreliable. By questioning what we see and hear, we prevent ourselves from uncritically accepting what seems natural and necessary but is actually constructed and contingent. We reaffirm the uncertainty of our knowledge, and we stop ourselves from falling into the delusion that we know what we really do not know.

But skepticism can also become excessive. When our doubt is unrestrained, we begin to trust nothing and no one, and we become afraid of the world around us. If this fear and distrust becomes all-encompassing, we descend into the abyss of cynicism, where we cannot see anything as real or valuable — perhaps not even life itself. We must counter our skepticism with acceptance of the world. We must question what we see, but we must also believe and trust.

Skepticism can also be oriented inwards, towards the self. As with the world, skepticism of the self is valuable insofar as it encourages investigation of our thoughts and feelings, which helps us become more aware of ourselves. If we are overly certain about our judgments and values, we might become righteous and harm others by following mistaken beliefs. But if we are excessively skeptical, we might begin to lose faith in ourselves. We might become incapable of trusting our own choices, and we might even become incapable of taking action of any kind.

We must question everything but we cannot allow our questions to prevent us from doing what is needed. We must question and we must act. We must be skeptical of even our own skepticism, and allow ourselves to trust what we see and act on our present understanding, even though it lacks the certainty we desire.

138. I Do Not Need To Know

Fri, 25 Jul 2025 08:00:00 -0800

I’m outside, sitting on a comfortable chair. It’s a lounger, so I’m almost lying down. The sun is oppressively hot but I’ve positioned myself in the shade of a huge tree, so the temperature is pleasant. There’s barely any wind and only a wisp or two of cloud in the sky. By my side, I have a cold sugary drink and the novel I’ve been reading. I should be able to relax.

I was working too much and I thought I should take some time off. So here I am, trying to do just that. I guess this is what it’s like to relax. I’m not doing anything, and my mind is largely free of thoughts. No immediate problems or worries are bothering me. But I don’t feel good. I don’t think I’m doing this right.

How is this possible? I pose this question to myself, but I receive no answer. Only vague feelings are present. I have the sense that something’s not right. Perhaps it’s that I shouldn’t be out here lounging in the shade in the middle of the day. Perhaps it’s the fact that I’m stagnant, that my mind and body need to move. Perhaps if I were moving, I would feel better.

Now it’s obvious I’m thinking, and any possibility of relaxation has been lost. Do I really need to move or is it just that I’m unable to sit still? If it’s only activity for the sake of activity, isn’t that yet another distraction? And is that the kind of movement I really want?

I don’t think so. What I want is movement with direction, movement that does something and has value. What is that something? What is its value? I still have no answers for myself. I’ve got to stop thinking. It’s not helping me at all. I decide to listen to my body and see what it does.

I sit there, listening carefully, waiting for some clear indication. I expect it to come in a form I’ll understand rationally but it doesn’t. I simply find myself beginning to move without thought or intention. I’m already up from the lounger, I’m already going somewhere, but I don’t know where. I’m somehow confident I don’t need to know. This feels absurd to me, and at the same time, strangely exciting. In this moment, I do not need to know anything at all.

137. From Intention To Attachment

Thu, 24 Jul 2025 08:00:00 -0800

There are always many different things I could do. After considering the available options, I choose one over the others, which means I form an intention to pursue it. I then do whatever is necessary to fulfill my intention. This is an entirely normal way to go about life, but it can also be problematic.

The problem originates in my closeness to the intention. I might see it as not just something I would like to do, but as something I must do. This means I’ve become attached to the intention. I identify with it, and as such, I see its fulfillment as necessary for my own fulfillment. I become my own manager, carefully directing my attention and controlling my actions to satisfy the intention.

In this state, I’m distracted from my needs, so they begin to go unmet, and I suffer as a result. I feel unhappy where I am and I desperately want to reach happiness. But even if I achieve my goal, there will be no relief from suffering. For a new attachment can easily arise in its place. This might be nothing more than an attachment to the desire to preserve what I’ve already achieved, which can lead to further stress and anxiety.

I might see this problem from the start and simply decide that I won’t allow myself to become attached. But this solves nothing. All I’ve done is add another layer of intention, which I can just as easily become attached to. The only real solution is to release myself from the intention I identify with.

This might sound like madness because we are taught to focus on achieving our goals, and to discipline ourselves in order to attain success. But discipline and control mean attachment, and attachment means suffering. We might get what we want, but we also end up encumbered by suffering that hinders our overall success.

To release myself from an intention, I cannot use force. I need to see that the intention is not me — it is actually an object separate from me, the experiencing subject. I can only see this if I’m already deeply aware of myself and the world around me. This means I must be diligent about allowing my attention to remain open and free so that my awareness can expand. When I’m empty of attachment, I’m also unburdened by suffering, and that means I’m able to do what is necessary to meet needs and create joy.

136. The Missing Thing

Wed, 23 Jul 2025 08:00:00 -0800

There is something you can see that no one else sees. It’s missing from the world, but it’s real for you, and you think others should see it too. So you decide to make it into something real — you decide to create an artwork.

Your first attempt does not go well. The resulting work doesn’t seem to express what you’re trying to show. When you look at it, you can see the outlines of your idea, but others either can’t see it or they see something else entirely. You aren’t happy about this because you really want the missing thing to be seen.

So you try again. You come up with a different way of expressing your idea. This attempt goes better but it’s still not quite right. So you make another attempt. And another. And another. You continue making attempts until it becomes your practice.

Eventually you land on something that attracts a bit of attention. There are suddenly people interested in your work. And they seem to see some of your idea, too. But you want to reach even more people and so you keep trying. You keep practicing and creating more and more artworks, each a further attempt to show what is missing. In this way, you slowly fill the gap. You bring to our attention what we could not see, expanding our reality with each act of creation.

Every artwork is an advance, a step forward in the cultural technology that helps us more fully understand ourselves and our world. The perfect artwork would communicate an idea so directly and so widely that everyone would be able to see it and understand it.

You know you aren’t likely to reach perfection, but this won’t stop you from trying. Through your continued efforts you will create more awareness of the missing thing, and you will provide future artists with the materials they need to make even bolder creations. It might take a long time and the efforts of many others, but eventually what is missing will be made present and be seen by all.

135. We Will Do Anything

Tue, 22 Jul 2025 08:00:00 -0800

We will do anything to avoid the problem. We will devise countless means of escaping confrontation. We will put up walls. We will isolate ourselves. We will do whatever we must to limit meaningful contact with the other. We will cut off anyone who sees through us and anyone who sees more than they should. We will hide from others because they might force us to change and we want nothing less than to change. We want everything to stay exactly the same. We want to maintain our comfortable lives and we will go to great lengths to preserve them. We will use every tool at our disposal. We will say anything, do anything, just so that we do not have to consider the problem. We will spend hours, days, years looking for reasons to justify our lives and even invent them if none are readily available. We will lie and cheat. We will say whatever must be said to keep ourselves safe and secure. We will cast blame on others, not because they are at fault, but to highlight our own innocence in contrast. We will run from any talk of responsibility. We cannot handle even the possibility that we might be guilty. We will condemn anything and anyone if it gives us a chance to escape. We will even physically flee if we must. We will leave the room, the city, and maybe even the country. We will abandon everyone we know. We will create wholly new versions of ourselves. We will do this and more if it means we can get away from looking at the problem. We will try all of these things and still we will fail. We will always fail. We will fail because the problem was never anything we could run from, never something we could escape. We will fail because the problem has always been us.

134. Stubbornness As A Virtue

Mon, 21 Jul 2025 08:00:00 -0800

When someone refuses to do something wrong regardless of the personal consequences, we see their stubbornness as courageous. They are committed to doing the right thing even though they might be harmed, and this is exactly the kind of steadfastness we support and encourage.

When someone refuses to consider that they might be caught up in a misunderstanding, we see their stubbornness as ignorant. They are unwilling to accept that there might be more to the situation than they already know, and this is exactly the kind of closedmindedness we detest and condemn.

When is stubbornness helpful and when is it harmful? Both kinds of stubbornness arise as opposition to an outside force, an other that demands a particular action. In the first case, the opposition is aimed at the action itself because it is seen as wrong, whereas in the second case, the opposition is aimed at the awareness the action seeks to create. Stubbornness that resists awareness is harmful, while stubbornness that resists action is at least ambiguous.

It is ambiguous because we cannot know whether or not the person who stubbornly resists action is actually doing the right thing. No one can know this, because what is ultimately good is outside the scope of knowledge. It may very well be the case that the stubborn person is wrong, and that their seemingly courageous opposition is actually mistaken.

The best we can do is to look for signs of compassion when we encounter stubbornness. We can examine the honesty, openness, and sensitivity of the stubborn person, and their responsiveness to our concerns. This can provide some indication that the person is acting from compassion and not merely trying to assert their individual beliefs.

But most of all, we must be skeptical of our own stubbornness. For we are always the worst judge of our own righteousness. We must do all we can to be aware of others and to respond thoughtfully to those who suggest that our determined resolve might actually be harmful.

133. An Encouraging Smile

Fri, 18 Jul 2025 08:00:00 -0800

He says he’s struggling. He says he’s feeling lost. He says he feels like he’s wasting his life. He says he doesn’t find any meaning in anything. He says everything seems pointless.

She listens and nods as he talks. He looks at her with a pleading face, a face that still carries some hope. She asks him if he has ever tried meditation. He laughs, because it seems obvious that he has. Everyone has tried it, he tells her, but it doesn’t do anything.

She has heard this many times. She tells him that he might not notice the benefits, that they take time to appear, that the practice must be sustained to be effective. He says he understands this, but he doesn’t see why he should keep doing something that doesn’t produce results.

She tells him that he needs to trust himself. He asks if she means he should trust the process. No, trust yourself. It is your own body and mind you must trust. He says that he always follows the instructions perfectly, that he returns to the breath whenever his mind wanders away.

She tells him that to focus on the breath is only a technique that provides a place for the mind that is not a thought or a feeling. The idea is to release what arises, without holding on to it and without fighting it. He says that he already does exactly this. Now it is her turn to laugh. She tells him that he must be an expert, and it is only a matter of trust.

You will begin to notice the character of the thoughts and feelings that arise, she tells him. You will begin to see how they arise and what causes them. By loosening yourself from everything that arises you reach peace, a peace without time or distinctions, a peace completely empty and quiet.

And then what, he asks. She smiles at him. And then you will know what to do. He wonders why there is something he needs to do. She tells him that the result of practice is not a feeling or a thought but always action. He becomes even more skeptical. Is the point not to feel better?

You will feel better, she tells him. And you won’t even notice it at first. You will do something you never dreamed of doing and you will struggle at it, but it will feel right. It will feel like you are meant to do it and like everything now makes sense.

He says that sounds crazy. She tells him to try it anyway. He wants to ask more questions, but he isn’t sure what to say. She continues to smile at him. Even days later, he cannot seem to get that smile out of his mind.

132. Authority Is Insidious

Thu, 17 Jul 2025 08:00:00 -0800

If someone imposes an ultimatum on you, you immediately feel annoyed. They are threatening you with a bad outcome in an attempt to force you to do what they want. Even if you want the same thing as they do, you’re frustrated because you believe you could have easily reached an amicable agreement. But now you feel like you’re being coerced.

Every time an authority demands you do something, you are being given an ultimatum. You will comply with the authority because you feel the consequences of noncompliance would be too much to bear. You know you’re being coerced, but you feel there’s no real alternative. If you don’t feel this way, then the authority is not actually an authority. It is you who is the authority, for you agree with it and you would do what you are being told to do anyway.

To reject the authority is to reject the ultimatum. It is to declare that you will make your own choice freely, and that you will not bow to pressure. If you choose to act other than as the authority demands, then you are in rebellion and the authority will impose its consequences on you.

But at no point have you been forced to do anything. You either agree with the authority and do what it wants, or you disagree and you accept the consequences. In both cases, the outcome is your choice. The fact that there will be consequences is nothing other than the nature of a choice.

For there will be consequences even if you choose to accept the authority’s demands. One of these consequences is that you will validate the authority, and by doing so, you will encourage other authorities to impose their ultimatums on you. This happens even if you agree to do what the authority wants for your own reasons.

The problem with authority is that it is insidious. Once it gets started, it keeps appearing, imposing all sorts of obligations on you regardless of your feelings or choices. To rebel openly and regularly is not necessarily a sign of disagreement with the authority’s goals. It is rather a protest again the ultimatums that have been unjustly imposed on you.

131. The Power Of Reflection

Wed, 16 Jul 2025 08:00:00 -0800

A strong feeling is often short-lived. Someone harms me, and I immediately become angry. My anger is an intuitive response to what has happened to me. It’s also a signal that there is a problem that requires my attention. Once the problem has been resolved or removed, the feeling dissipates quickly.

But I might later reflect on the memory of what happened and form a concern that it could happen again. This concern is not an intuition but an intentional response. It’s a product of my reflective consciousness and it comes from my judgment of what happened and the potential I see for it to happen again in the future. If I become attached to this new intention, I will begin to suffer from anxiety, and this feeling will last for as long as I remain attached.

The fact that I form this particular intention might not be within my control. It can arise automatically from the knowledge that there is an ideal state — being free of harm and danger — that I want to maintain. What I can influence is the degree to which I identify with this intention.

If I’m able to see how my intention is connected to the suffering I feel, then there’s a chance for me to break free from attachment and the suffering that follows from it. If, on the other hand, I allow myself to remain attached, I will not only continue to suffer, I will also produce further suffering for myself and others as I try to escape from my distressing feelings.

Reflective consciousness is a powerful tool that allows me to do many things. I can distinguish between good and bad actions, perform complex reasoning, use language to communicate, plan for the future, and so on. But its power can also produce an endless cycle of suffering if I do not keep myself free from attachment to the intentions that reflection can automatically produce.

130. The Human Project

Tue, 15 Jul 2025 08:00:00 -0800

Every human being contributes something to the whole of humanity. We each have projects we have chosen for ourselves. Sometimes these projects are shared with others, like when we raise a family or work for an organization, and sometimes they are largely individual efforts where we help others indirectly. We each have particular goals we want to achieve and we do this through dedication to our projects.

The combination of all of our projects together has brought humanity to its present point. Most of our efforts never aimed at this specific point, and yet this is where we find ourselves because our individual contributions have built on each other. From an objective standpoint, it might seem like humanity is merely expanding its reach and understanding for no reason other than because it can.

But we are not limited to objectivity. We each exist in the world as a living subjectivity, a being that experiences itself and the world. The richness of our individual experiences today is the result of the efforts of all those who came before us, just as our efforts will ensure even richer lives for future generations. Each of us contributes to this shared project of expanding human experience, of changing the scope and scale of what a human being is and can be.

Our shared human project does not have a final outcome or goal. It is simply not that kind of project. Its purpose is instead found in its very dynamism. For as we change, the possibilities of the human project change with us. We are always becoming more than we previously could have thought possible. We have new experiences that were unimaginable for our ancestors. We are continually transcending ourselves and transforming into something new.

It is this process of transformation itself that is valuable. That our project has no known goal does not detract from its importance. We create humanity anew in each generation, and in doing so, we create the means for even more radically creative generations to follow.

129. Reasoning About Ethics

Mon, 14 Jul 2025 08:00:00 -0800

What should we do? This is the central question of ethics, and when we think about ethics we immediately begin to think about rules and principles. What rules are binding in our present situation? What principles should we apply? How do we decide which rules and principles are correct? All of this is open to discussion and debate. Claims will be presented, propositions postulated, and arguments for this and against that proffered.

But beyond the basics, very little will be agreed upon. There seems to be something too complex or specific about what is right and wrong in each situation to come up with a more general answer. And perhaps that is our problem. We quietly assumed that ethics must be reasonable, and that as a result it must be reducible to a set of rules or principles, but it is precisely this assumption we must question.

When we start to reason about ethics we tend to spawn more problems than we solve. Any set of ethical rules we devise has countless exceptions, and it quickly becomes impossible to account for all of the exceptions while also remaining consistent and not producing an unmanageable list of rules.

Rather than continuing along this path, we can instead look at ethics in a different way. If we allow that ethics might not fit within the narrow domain of reason then we will no longer feel obligated to reason about it. And perhaps it is simply the case that what is best in each situation does not diligently obey the rules of logic as we know them. Perhaps what is ethical can be deeply contradictory and even paradoxical in practice. On this understanding, when we start debating ethics we have already failed.

We fail because we get stuck in language, which is itself a game of rules and reasons. We become lost in the maze of words, endlessly seeking the final and perfect solutions to our ethical problems, which we can never find. We would perhaps do better to choose not to talk about what lies outside of reason, since it is outside of language, as well.

128. Something Like Transcendence

Fri, 11 Jul 2025 08:00:00 -0800

She wants to be alone. Other people have become too much for her. Out in the world, she feels like she is constantly wading through a sea of drifting bodies, each seemingly alive but really only going through the motions of life. She cannot stand this feeling. Everyone seems artificial. It’s as though they are not quite human.

Or perhaps it is she who is not human. Why is she unable to accept what everyone else accepts? Why does she feel everything that happens to her so deeply? Why does every experience resonate so loudly that it leaves her drained and damaged?

She constantly feels the need to get away from everyone. She retreats into the safety of her home. It’s the only place where she can be truly alone. She locks the door and lowers the blinds, eliminating any access the outside world might have to her. In the quiet darkness, she is able to be herself and to feel her existence more fully. Here there are no words, no images, no judgments. There is just her body and her mind and nothing else.

It’s not that she hates people, but that she cannot seem to handle them. They immediately overwhelm her with their gestures, their words, their behaviours. The things they find important are so strange to her. And her priorities are likewise not shared. But it’s hard to say what she truly cares about. It’s something like beauty, something like truth, something like transcendence.

There’s a part of her that cares about these things and it feels like the realest part. She wants this part to feel nourished and safe, but it takes heavy damage when she attempts contact with others. Contact would not be so painful if she could somehow connect directly with the realest part of them. But she never seems to get there.

Her encounters with others always end in feelings of frustration and alienation. But even more than that, she just feels sad. Sad not so much because of what anyone else does, but because of her own failure. So she stays in her sanctuary, away from everyone and everything. This tiny world of darkness is the only one she can understand and the only one she can bear to live within.

127. Judgments And Anxiety

Thu, 10 Jul 2025 08:00:00 -0800

When a friend is feeling anxious, I listen to their concerns and I do my best to empathize with them. If I judge the worrisome situation differently than they do, I try to make them feel better by showing them that the outcome will be better than they think. Sometimes this helps to lessen their anxiety, provided they come around to seeing things as I do.

My friend’s anxiety is a kind of suffering that arises from attachment. They have become attached to their desire to avoid a future outcome they have foreseen. This intention arose because they judged that this particular outcome will be bad for them. By showing them that the outcome will be better than they think, I provide them with a counter judgment. When they release their hold on the original judgment and substitute the counter judgment, the intention dissolves and so does the anxiety produced by their attachment to it.

I can also apply a similar strategy on myself. When I’m feeling anxious, I can locate the judgment I’m attached to, and try to imagine a counter judgment where there is a better outcome. This is more difficult than when I have someone else to confidently provide me with an alternative. My imagined counter judgment might feel too absurd for it to dislodge my original judgment and dissolve the problematic intention.

Even so, all is not lost. If I can’t replace my original judgment, I can still release my attachment to it by learning to see it differently. From my current perspective, the judgment is part of me, and I must judge the future outcome as I have. I see it this way because I’m the creator of the judgment and I’ve reflectively endorsed it. But an absurd counter judgment is clearly not me. I immediately recognize it is separate from me, like it belongs to someone else. And yet it is no different in kind from my original judgment.

Both the original and counter judgments are objects separate from me, the experiencing subject. I do not need to identify with either of them. When I’m able to adopt this perspective, I allow myself distance from both judgments, and in doing so I also release myself from the attachment and the suffering of anxiety.

126. The Importance Of Attention

Wed, 09 Jul 2025 08:00:00 -0800

We discover at an early age that it’s important to pay attention. By paying attention, we figure out how things work, and when we understand how things work it’s easier to get what we need. We gain not only knowledge but also stronger intuitions about life.

Awareness is our intuitive understanding of experience. It expands through attention to the experiences we have. By paying attention to the objects, events, and people we discover in the world, to the thoughts, feelings, memories, and imaginings that arise in the self, and to the relationships between all of these various things, our awareness continuously expands.

Eventually we also start to pay attention to the quality of our experience itself. Why is that we sometimes suffer and sometimes feel joy? We often don’t go very far with this question. We decide that suffering is something we’re stuck with and that joy will always be rare. We settle for the practical knowledge and basic intuitions we’ve gained, which are more than enough to meet our material needs. Our attention then tends to become limited to just these practical and material concerns.

But if our questions about suffering refuse to go away, we start to look around for answers. We continue to pay attention to everything that happens in and around us. By doing so, our awareness broadens further. We begin to see the origins of suffering, and how it arises from our attachment to intentions (our desires, aversions, and beliefs). We begin to see how our suffering is the very same suffering that others experience.

In seeing these things, we also begin to take action. We begin to modify our relationship with our intentions from one of attachment to one of careful distance. We discover that when we have space from our intentions we suffer less and we feel more joy. We also try to share this new understanding with others, helping them to become more aware and more free from suffering.

But none of this happens if we stop paying attention. We must see as broadly as we possibly can and that means our attention must remain open and free to explore both self and world. It is by leaning into our original insight that attention is important that we gradually develop our awareness of how suffering can be brought to an end.

125. Like A Living Heart

Tue, 08 Jul 2025 08:00:00 -0800

To write from a blank page can be daunting. You begin with nothing other than perhaps a single idea and from there you must somehow create language. What necessarily emerges from such a process is a text that is raw and rough. It lacks the smoothness that comes with revision, with the careful work of rounding the edges and improving the flow.

But despite its blemishes and idiosyncrasies, a first draft can be captivating. For it expresses not only your original thought process but also the predominant feelings you have as you write. This is the text that is closest to you, as it has not yet been subject to the refinements that would help it fulfill the requirements of a possible reader. It is only and exactly what you intuitively felt it must be in the moment of writing.

Realizing this, you might worry that editing will wash away the best qualities of your newly born text. And something like this really can happen. You become too analytical and you start to see the text as a puzzle to be solved rather than as an artwork to be polished. You take apart your draft and you mechanically construct another text that is more rational and functional. You do so with the intentional goal of producing something closer to what your reader would expect to find.

While this process results in a text that functions well, it also diminishes its beauty. The text is no longer alive and vibrant, but rigid and suffocating. The original feeling has been lost by the overzealous application of norms and standards. The text communicates a meaning but the music is all wrong. Its near perfection makes it sound jarring when you read it aloud.

The dissonance of the text is a strong indicator that something has gone wrong. If the text has lost its harmony, if its energy has been muted, if its rhythm cannot be felt, then it will be incapable of invigorating the reader. The text the reader always needs is one that gracefully spills off the tongue, that nourishes through its beauty, and that beats like a living heart.

124. Choosing A Life

Mon, 07 Jul 2025 08:00:00 -0800

You’re following a certain path when you realize there might be a better one. When should you change course? If the choice is a minor one, then maybe it doesn’t matter whether or not you switch. But what if the decision will change your entire life?

We’re usually taught that we should make the change when it would help us reach our desired goals more quickly. In doing so, we’re supposed to account for both the potential benefits and the potential costs. The result is that our choice turns into an optimization problem: we should choose the option where the benefits will most exceed the costs. In this way, we maximize the probability of achieving our goals, which is supposed to be the best possible thing.

When our choice is a purely practical one, this decision making process makes sense, as it helps to ensure we do not waste time or other resources. But is life purely practical? Is it the kind of project that strictly benefits from optimization?

Our ability to optimize depends on our ability to accurately measure and predict the benefits and costs. But not only does life tend to be unpredictable, it’s not at all straightforward to measure how we will feel about particular future outcomes. We can easily weigh certain benefits too heavily or certain costs too lightly. We might even reach our current goals only to realize they are not what is actually important to us.

Instead of trying to optimize our lives, we can look at what feels needed and necessary right now. To see this, we must remain open to the world and its many possibilities. We must be sensitive enough to feel what is pulling us towards it. This pull is an intuitive signal. It is a product of our composite experience, which is entirely unique to each of us. This doesn’t mean we should avoid thinking carefully about our options, but only that we should not rely on muddled reasons to make the final determination.

When our attention is open and free we can see what is needed, and we will feel it is necessary for us to meet that need. It is when we allow ourselves to follow these intuitions that we also begin to see a path towards a more joyful life.

123. Just Breathe And Be

Fri, 04 Jul 2025 08:00:00 -0800

I’m already rushing when the rain starts. At first it’s only a gentle shower and I ignore it, but it soon intensifies into a downpour. I start to wonder if I should seek shelter. My umbrella is functional but the water is coming down with such overwhelming force that I won’t be able to keep much of me dry.

I pause under an awning and check the time. I’m going to be late for my appointment if I don’t keep moving. I detest being late. Someone expects me to be there, and I should be there. I have to keep going. It’s only four blocks and if I walk fast, I can still make it on time.

I press forward into the rain. After less than a block, I notice the bottoms of my pants are soaked. But they’re navy blue so it won’t be that noticeable. I go about another block and the rain seems to be weakening. I can’t tell if that’s actually true or if it’s just what I’m telling myself. At this point, I’m open to deluded optimism.

It’s right then that a car comes speeding out of the exit to a parking garage. I manage to dodge it, but just barely. The car continues forward before stopping abruptly, and I wack the trunk with my palm out of frustration. But there’s no time to lose, and I carry on forward. Where was the driver looking? Certainly not at the sidewalk. How can someone be so oblivious of what is happening around them? Can they not see there are others using the street?

I’m off on a tirade of thoughts and questions when I notice my frustration is boiling into anger. I have to let this incident go or it will sour my entire mood. The appointment will go badly and that will make me even more upset. I can see this whole chain of suffering laid out before me.

I stop at the intersection to wait for the light to change. The rain is still relentless with no end in sight. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. The cool air is calming. It grants me a moment of freedom from the heat of my feelings.

Let go of those who fail to pay attention. Let go of the rush to fulfill expectations. Let go of the rain and the frustration. Just breathe and be.

122. Radical Responsibility

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 08:00:00 -0800

If I’m forced to do something, are the actions I perform mine? If I’m compelled to say something, are the words I utter mine?

I want to say these actions and words are not mine because they do not come from my own will, and thus they have little to do with me. I want to say that these actions and words are the consequences of systems and laws I do not control but must still follow in order to survive, and thus I cannot be responsible for them. I want to say these things because the alternative is too much to bear.

If I were responsible for these actions and words, then I would have participated in an injustice and I would feel guilty. I would feel I had let down people who relied on me, and that I had not lived up to my own principles and values.

I would also feel the need to pose many questions. Was there a real alternative to my actions or words? If I hadn’t done these things, would they have been performed by someone else instead? Does the inevitability of the result influence my responsibility? Can I ever be forgiven for all of the things I have done and said? These questions have no certain answers, and this might push me towards allowing myself to continue doing what I know to be wrong.

To instead choose to take responsibility is a challenging and radical act. It means accepting I have done wrong merely to survive, perhaps even when I had no other viable option. To accept this is not to drown in permanent guilt, but to begin to see how the world must become better than it currently is. It is also to see that I can and must start making changes in my own life.

I must resist and condemn the systems and laws that force me to perpetuate harm. I must do this even if it means I will experience enormous pain. In some cases, I must do this even if it means I might die. I must do this because it is in me and others as individuals where change must first take place. It must happen there or it will not happen at all.

121. A More Immediate Need

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 08:00:00 -0800

When people with power bring harmful changes to your community, your attention is immediately captured. You cannot look away from what is happening because you know the changes will have meaningful consequences. You feel anxious because you can see that the people you care about will be harmed. You hate what is happening, and you oppose it with every fibre of your being. You are angry at those who are responsible and outraged that such a thing is even possible.

Absorbed by this new problem, you cannot stop thinking about it. It requires a response and you know you need to do something. You want to rally others to oppose these wrongs. You want to create a movement so large that it will not only stop the changes but prevent the problem from ever happening again.

Your efforts are strong at first, but you quickly find yourself exhausted by the scale of the project. Your attention keeps drifting towards news of the latest atrocities, which in turn rekindles your disgust and anger. Rather than supplying the motivation to support your struggle, these intense feelings consume both time and energy.

In your determination to fight what is wrong, you have lost sight of a more immediate need. Great energy is required to achieve great results. You can only sustain your energy if you remain free of attachment to particular desires, aversions, and beliefs, as any such attachment can drain it completely.

You need to counteract the wrongs you see without being consumed by anger, hatred, or the desire for vengeance. You need to see the people whose actions you oppose not as your enemies but as fellow sufferers. They might also be delusional, but that does not detract from their humanity, for we all have delusions.

Your efforts must come from compassion and not hostility. Acting out of hostility will only perpetuate suffering because your attention will be limited and you will not be able to see what is needed to prevent the wrongs you hate from arising again and again. To act from compassion is to heal and to help. It is when you allow your attention to remain open and free that you also grant yourself the energy needed to creatively solve the significant problems before you.

120. Particularly Unimportant

Tue, 01 Jul 2025 08:00:00 -0800

It’s not a particular activity you participate in or a special kind of work you do. It’s not a particular book you’ve read or a set of ideas you possess. It’s not a particular experience you’ve had or have not had. It’s not a particular set of principles you follow or an organization you belong to. It’s not a particular belief or collection of beliefs. None of these things determine whether or not you will act from compassion.

On the contrary, the particular actions, principles, and ideas you value dearly can impede compassion. If you are attached to these things, they become anchors that prevent you from venturing out into the rough seas of the world that lie beyond your comfortable harbours. And it is precisely this venturing out into the unknown and challenging world that makes compassion possible.

To venture in this way is to open yourself up to anything and everything, and to disallow your preference for this or that to stand in the way of exploration. It is to steer away from your own limiting judgments that would prevent you from moving in an unfamiliar direction. It is to allow yourself to be sensitive to all that arises around you and in you, regardless of the pain it might bring.

It is this openness — of mind, body, and senses — that allows your awareness to expand. And awareness makes compassion possible. When you are aware and attentive, you will intuitively and immediately see what is needed and necessary. You will understand that it is your responsibility to eliminate the suffering you see, and that the means to do this is compassionate action.

The particulars do not matter. Beliefs do not matter. Values do not matter. When your awareness is broad and your attention is open and free, you will see the world as yourself and you will act always from compassion and towards joy.

119. From Conflict To Harmony

Mon, 30 Jun 2025 08:00:00 -0800

Creativity seems to require us to abandon rules and order. Growth seems to require us to let go of the structure we have already built. Unity seems to require us to get rid of any distinction between the parts. But we do not need to abandon anything. In the realm of concepts, it is possible to have it all.

When we artificially restrict ourselves to this or that position, we limit our understanding. We can instead allow for both and recognize the advantage of flexibility. Rigid attachment to a single perspective is the source of countless problems. In addition to the suffering it produces, we also become unable to see the full range of possibilities open to us, as we have closed ourselves off from them in advance.

But we must also be careful. Embracing a multiplicity of viewpoints is not a matter of finding balance. It is not about constructing some perfect middle that only takes parts from this side and that side. Sometimes we need to go to the extremes, especially when one way of seeing has become dominant and overbearing. It is by adopting the extreme opposite of our usual perspective that we allow the space of possibilities to radically expand.

When we are open to new possibilities, we gain the opportunity for our awareness to grow. When we allow our attachment to intentions or judgments to shut out part of the world, we actively limit our potential awareness. And it is through awareness that we become capable of seeing clearly.

When we see clearly, we are sensitive to everything and we notice the parts of ourselves and the world that most need our attention and action. When we see clearly, we discover how to enable creativity with order, growth with structure, and unity with distinction.

By allowing ourselves to approach our experiences from a wide variety of perspectives, we learn how to transform conceptual conflicts into harmonies we would otherwise rule out as contradictory. We also learn how to transcend the boundary between the self and the other, and in doing so, we create the most powerful harmony of all.

118. No Words For Art

Fri, 27 Jun 2025 08:00:00 -0800

People always want him to talk about his art. But to him the idea is absurd. Words don’t have anything to do with his creations. They want to know about his process, about how he goes from an idea to a form. But for him the art just seems to happen. There’s nothing there to talk about.

When he tries to think about describing his art, he comes up with a sentence or two at most. And then what? His work seems like nothing at all once it’s been reduced to words. The words seem to swallow it whole, almost replacing it entirely. But obviously his work is not nothing. He creates tangible objects that can be seen and even touched.

When he tries to think about his process he almost immediately feels awkward. For the process of creation is a private thing that feels separate from language. He needs to be alone with the work for it to emerge properly. To express his idea and make it real is a personal affair. To talk about process out loud would be like dissecting his soul. And that’s not something he wants to do.

He never shows his work-in-progress to anyone. Before it’s finished it might not even be anything. There’s always a chance he might end up junking it. An unfinished work is not quite nothing but it’s not quite something either. It has to take its final form before it gains its full value. When he can see value bursting out of it, then he knows it’s done.

But when the work is complete is when he least wants to talk about it. A finished artwork is a part of him that now has its own body. He doesn’t feel he’s in any position to judge it or give it a definitive meaning. Even the thought of doing so feels terribly wrong.

If anything, the time he would be most willing to talk about art is when his ideas are still just ideas. That’s when everything is purely theoretical and he hasn’t done anything yet. But no one wants to talk about that. The words end up being too abstract, too indefinite, and people want to know what it means.

He never knows what it means. It’s this obsession with meanings that he cannot abide. So he goes on quietly making his art, without uttering even a single word.

117. The Pain Of Suffering

Thu, 26 Jun 2025 08:00:00 -0800

The pain of suffering causes you to lash out at what you think is its cause. Your anger is real and visceral, and you cannot restrain it. You want justice and you want vengeance. But what you want most is to be free of your suffering.

I cannot see your suffering but only your anger. Your present situation doesn’t seem to merit anger, and I tell you as much. My response causes you to explode into a furious rage. You dismiss me as a fool and go off in search of others who recognize your suffering and share in your anger. But rather than mollifying your suffering, the flames of your anger are fanned by the anger of the others, and even more suffering is born.

By callously dismissing your feelings, I made a disastrous error. Your anger is a symptom of suffering, and that means there is a problem. It might be that you cannot articulate the problem, or that your understanding of the problem is deficient. It might be that the way you describe the problem is offensive to me or places blame on those who are not responsible for it. It might be that you see the problem as having a certain origin when it is actually rooted in something else. But regardless of all of this, any attempt to dismiss suffering is always a mistake.

To be compassionate, I need to be open to suffering of all kinds. I cannot limit my empathy to the kinds of suffering I have personally experienced or the kinds I judge to be valid. If someone is experiencing suffering then there is a problem — the need of a human being has gone unmet.

I must accept the problem even if the sufferer does not have the right words to explain it or they lash out at me. To be compassionate, I must listen, I must try to understand, and I must always do whatever I can to help liberate others from suffering.

116. A Fresh Start

Wed, 25 Jun 2025 08:00:00 -0800

When everything goes badly, we wish we could go back and do it over again. The day has gone wrong, and we would like to reset from the beginning. We want to replay past events but with the wisdom of hindsight to show us what we should do.

We want to reset because we have regrets. We remember the mistakes we made and these thoughts will not leave us alone. We can now see how we could have achieved a better result if only we had acted differently. Comparing our memories to the ideal past we imagine, we wish we could substitute one for the other and live in the ideal reality instead. But alas, we are forced to move forward through time. So our wish goes unfulfilled and we suffer in the form of regret.

Even so, another kind of reset is possible. We can loosen our attachment to our memories and ideals and grant ourselves a fresh start. This doesn’t mean blocking out our imagination or trying to forget the past. To force a different outlook in this way would only waste energy and tighten our attachment further. Thoughts and memories will arise when they arise. There is nothing we can do about this. The end result of attempting to impose control is only that we become even more tired and tense than before.

To loosen is to change our relationship with memory and imagination. It is to see the contents of memory and imagination as objects that exist separately from us. It is to recognize the endless suffering these objects will produce when we are attached to them. When we choose to no longer identify with these objects, our attention becomes free enough to explore the present moment and see what is needed right now.

We can create this fresh point of view every day, every hour, every minute. All it takes is to see the necessity of loosening ourselves from the attachments that produce regret or any other kind of suffering. It’s when we are loose and our attention is free that we can find the energy and creativity to create joy for ourselves and the people around us.

115. Experiencing Media

Tue, 24 Jun 2025 08:00:00 -0800

Every piece of media I encounter changes me. The magnitude of the change cannot be predicted in advance. I might watch a complex film only to remain much the same person as I was before. I might listen to a simple song and discover a whole new way of seeing the world.

The direction of the change is equally unpredictable. Reading a thousand social media posts drenched in cynicism will not necessarily make me more cynical. Reading a novel where the characters demonstrate incredible insight will not necessarily make me more insightful.

The effects of media are uncertain because there is another factor present in each encounter. That factor is me, the cumulative being that I already am. Even more than the substantive beliefs and values I hold, there is the intractable mass of experiences I’ve had throughout my life that influences the outcome. The very same piece of media can produce completely different experiences for different people.

Engaging with media is an experience that takes place in me. The media object itself is the recipe I follow. The brewing of the potion begins when I give my attention to the piece of media. It communicates the ingredients to me through the words, images, sounds, and other perceptions it provides. The communicated information mixes with my past experience to produce a unique potion. But I’m not only the one brewing, I’m also the one drinking. And I cannot know how I will be changed.

In each encounter with media, the possibilities are almost endless. I’m at risk of becoming anyone, even someone I barely know. Even so, the risk is worth taking. For each media experience is always also an opportunity to open myself up to a new way of seeing the world and myself. By taking the risk and allowing myself to change, my awareness can expand and I can become more than I previously was.

114. Acting From Intuition

Mon, 23 Jun 2025 08:00:00 -0800

The rational mind does not trust what it cannot understand. It works in language, and it tries to comprehend ideas by relating them to other ideas using logic. If it cannot do this, then it abandons the idea as irrational and unjustified.

If the idea in question pertains to the future, then it is often more rational to leave the outcome blank than to make an unjustified prediction. This can be helpful because it limits speculation about what cannot be known. But it can also leave us paralyzed, unable to act in one way or the other due to a lack of definite knowledge.

Without action, we allow suffering to continue and we risk stagnation. It is through action that we create the possibility of a more joyful life. While we might not know exactly what we should do, knowledge and reason are not the only tools we have available. We also have our intuitions.

Intuitions are not knowledge because they are not justified by reasons. Even so, they are valuable, as they arise from our cumulative experience of life. Everything we observe and do changes us, even in ways we do not perceive. Every experience can add something to our awareness of ourselves and the world around us. From the soup of experience that is awareness, intuitions are born.

To intentionally disregard our intuitions would be to intentionally hinder ourselves. It would be to abandon a tool we could instead pick up and use. For while our intuitions will not always be correct, they are worthy of our attention and consideration. They do not live in the rational world of language and logic that the mind has constructed, but they are still very much connected to reality and our experience of it.

By following our intuitions in situations where reason cannot help us, we allow ourselves a chance at joy even in the presence of great uncertainty.

113. A Genuine Gift

Fri, 20 Jun 2025 08:00:00 -0800

She pauses to read what she just wrote. She examines the text carefully, looking for both errors and possible improvements. She is always reading herself as she writes. She is trying to see if her language is working.

What does it mean for the language to work? She thinks it has to do with the text’s ability to communicate her meaning. It is a question of whether or not her reader will grasp what she is trying to say. Who is this reader? It is someone she imagines, an unknown person she is always thinking about.

She thinks about what she wants her reader to see and feel. There are words she must supply and others she must withhold. Her reader might not share her experiences, her beliefs, or possibly even her values. She thinks about the life of her reader and what might appeal to someone with such a life. She often imagines it is a life very different from her own.

In truth, her reader is not one person but many. She has to empathize with all of these different people. She has to do this because she wants to give her reader something that helps them, something that meets one of their needs. This is not necessarily something they will want. Wants are different from needs. It is needs that are her concern.

The problem is that she doesn’t even understand her own needs half of the time. Needs are like this — evasive and unclear. Sometimes she feels aware of a need and at other times she has no sense of need at all. That is, until she is given something that turns out to be what she needed all along.

She is always guessing at needs. She wants to supply what her reader needs but has not yet realized they need. She wants to help them see something in their deepest self, something they have not yet discovered. She knows this might not happen, but it’s still what she aspires to do.

Most of all, she hopes her words will have value for someone. She hopes for this but she does not expect it. To expect it would be too much. It might feel like an obligation for her reader. She does not want them to feel obligated, especially not to her. Her words are a gift, and a genuine gift requires nothing to be given in return.

112. The Trap Of Reason

Thu, 19 Jun 2025 08:00:00 -0800

I sometimes think I can solve a problem just by thinking more clearly about it. With enough careful thought, I will be able to figure out how to make everything work in a way that satisfies my desires and causes no one harm.

And so I think and I reason and I come up with strategies and solutions. But while these solutions work in theory, they are also entirely impractical and there is no real way for me to implement them. I need a solution that is feasible. But my analysis of the feasible options reveals that none of them will do what I want. There will be pain and suffering for me or someone else, and this is what I most want to avoid.

My mistake lies in my attachment to the belief that a perfect solution exists when it does not. And by acting on this belief, I have fallen into the trap of reason, where I endlessly construct and evaluate various options in a futile attempt to reach an unreachable ideal. Instead of finding a way forward, I’ve only taken my attention away from the actions I must take to solve the problem.

For the truth is that a solution is already available. I’m avoiding it because it’s not perfect, ideal, or free of pain and suffering. It might even require me to do something I fear or hate. But it is what I must do, and I knew this from the start.

I was never going to find a way out of difficulty just by thinking more. By allowing myself to overthink the issue, all I did was sink myself deeper into the trap of reason, strengthening my attachment to the belief that a perfect solution was just around the corner.

My problem was never really a problem, but it became one because I was too attached to do what must be done. By releasing my attention and allowing it to be open and free, I can notice my attachment and loosen myself from it. Only then will I be able to devote myself fully to solving the real problems I face through meaningful action.

111. What Compassion Demands

Wed, 18 Jun 2025 08:00:00 -0800

There are moments when you must ignore the rules in order to do what is right. You must keep this in mind, lest you adopt the false belief that you are always constrained by the rules. If you believe this, you might do wrong by quietly following the rules instead of doing the right thing, which also happens to be forbidden.

Fortunately, such occasions are rare. You can usually live congruently with others, in the ways they understand and appreciate. You can do this while also creatively bending and changing the rules where it’s possible for you to do so, in order to live a life that is free, joyful, and meaningfully yours. In general, congruence is beneficial, because others will then accept you as one of them, and this is part of building solidarity and community.

But there are also times when you will need to take a bigger risk. Times when you will need to do something that will shock the sensibilities of your community because it violates the rules they hold dear. You need to take this risk when you see that if you do not, compassion will be denied, either now or in the future.

It is essential that compassion be the motivating force in such a decision. If it isn’t then you risk breaking the rules for the wrong reasons, possibly even reasons that benefit the strong and abled at the expense of the weak and disabled. When you act from compassion, you are attentive to the needs of others, in particular the needs of the disadvantaged, and you will act in support of those needs.

More often than not, the disadvantaged group will include you, and so there will be those who will oppose you simply because they see you will benefit. But in truth, we all benefit from a more compassionate world, so compassionate actions are always also self-interested actions.

When compassion itself is actively threatened, when the world itself is headed towards greater suffering and violence, then you must act. You will act because you see the inescapable necessity of action. You will do whatever is necessary, regardless of the personal cost, regardless of the rules that will be broken. You will act decisively, clearly, and without hesitation to do exactly what compassion demands of you in this moment.

110. The Pursuit Of Revelation

Tue, 17 Jun 2025 08:00:00 -0800

Art is born through the interaction of imagination and intuition. Materials are provided by the imagination and shaped by intuition. The shape emerges through aesthetic judgments that intuitively arise. These judgments cause the artwork to take one form instead of another and to have one content instead of another. It is through open and careful attention to all of the intuitions that arise throughout the creative process that the artist creates a powerful work.

The artwork itself is the unique result of the artist’s present awareness. As the artist further explores their own being and the world around them, their awareness broadens and their intuitions improve. The result is that they are then able to create new and better works. While their intuitions arise from past experience, the artist is not required to conform to the objects of experience. They can always inject the endless possibilities of imagination at any point in the process.

This freedom means the artist is always positioned to create something radically different from their past work. What often prevents this from happening is the socioeconomic situation the artist faces. There is both an unlimited desire for more of the same popular work and the undying belief that artists are supposed to satisfy the desires of their audiences. The result is that the artist can feel forced to transform into a factory of dead art just to obtain the material support necessary to survive. But in doing so, they are also forced to abandon their own intuitions and the revelatory creations that would follow from them.

To break with the desires of others and accept material sacrifice is to recognize the importance of following yourself as far as you can go. It is to work towards creating what the audience needs but does not yet know it needs, rather than producing what it merely wants. What is always needed is a greater understanding of human experience, and the artist, through an unrelenting exploration of their own experience, is always capable of providing exactly this.

109. Time Is Nothing

Mon, 16 Jun 2025 08:00:00 -0800

To see that time is nothing is both our fear and our glory.

It is our fear because we know that our own subjective existence is confined to a limited period of time. Once that period has come to an end, our individual experience will cease to exist. The limit of death is inescapable simply because we cannot live without our bodies that exist in time. If time is nothing then it would seem we are also nothing. Regardless of the length of our lives or the duration of our impact, we would be reduced to nothing relative to the endless universe. Our actions, our feelings, and our very existence itself would seem to have no meaning in a world so incredibly vast.

But if we truly see that time is nothing, then we also understand that the meaning of our lives cannot possibly be reduced in this way. For the beauty and truth we have experienced was never limited to time in the first place. Such things transcend anything that time can change, as they are not temporal but eternal. The joy we create in each instant cannot be lost to time, for it is a permanent part of existence forever contained in that instant. The present, then, is also much more than it seems. It is not merely a nothing quickly lost to history but an everlasting now, a now so wide and so infinite that it easily swallows the entire past and the entire future.

In seeing this, we also realize our lives can never be devoid of value. On the contrary, they are overflowing with it. There is almost too much value, certainly more than we could ever possess and even more than we could hope to see. To grasp that time is nothing is to bask in the glory of eternity, the infinite beauty that is existence itself.

108. To Allow Myself To Surrender

Fri, 13 Jun 2025 08:00:00 -0800

It’s the middle of the day and I’m hunched over my desk. I’m trying to read through some notes I need to organize. I’m rushing because I foolishly wasted the morning on mindless media, and now I feel obligated to catch up. There are dozens of pages before me, and I’ve only read through two or three.

Then there’s a knock at the door. I almost ignore it at first, but then I realize I’d better see who it is. When I go to check, there’s no one. I look around the empty hallway, halfway expecting someone to appear, but there really is no one. Strange, but I don’t have time to think about it.

I go back to work and get through about half a page before I hear the muffled roar of a garbage truck entering the alley. The windows are closed but the truck is still loud. I sigh, and decide to take a short break. There’s no point in trying to work through the banging of dumpsters that will necessarily follow.

Soon enough, I’m back to the notes. I’m stuck on one paragraph in particular, trying to decipher what it says when my phone starts to vibrate. It’s a spam call so I mute it, and go back to the paragraph, which I now realize must be in another language. I’m making little progress and my frustration is growing. I decide I must cut down on note taking.

I’m finally starting to get somewhere when I hear the distinct buzz of a small engine. I glance out the window and I see the neighbour has decided now is the ideal time to cut grass. I also hear the sound of sirens. At first, I think I’m hallucinating, but I’m not. There’s not one or two but many sirens, all growing steadily louder. Probably a traffic accident nearby. The city seems to be conspiring against me. A pact was made to generate all possible noise exactly now, just so that I would never finish with these infernal notes.

Of course, this is absurd and I know it. The coincidence has nothing to do with me. Still I am at war with the noise and with everything. I want to exist in a way that I cannot presently exist. The world has offered a challenge, and I must rise to it. The challenge is not to fight but to allow myself to surrender. I must allow the world to be as it is. Only then is there a chance I might prevail.

107. The Possibility Of Hope

Thu, 12 Jun 2025 08:00:00 -0800

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.

My only hope is an encounter with compassion. If I can muster some self-compassion then I might be able to help myself. But otherwise, I will need the compassion of others to assist me. Compassion is action that meets needs, and when some of my needs are met, I gain an opportunity to be free enough from my suffering to see clearly again.

By allowing me to see, compassion opens my eyes to possibilities. When there are possibilities, there are new paths forward, new ways of acting, new sources of meaning and value. All of this creates hope, especially hope that life itself is possible. If there are new possibilities then I can learn more, I can imagine more, and I can do more.

In particular, I can try to grow my awareness of what it is to be a human being. With greater awareness, I can better understand my suffering and learn how to bring it to a more lasting end. I can become someone who spreads compassion rather than being only someone in need of it. I can help others see the possibilities I’ve found for myself, growing their awareness and renewing their hope, as well.

Instead of being trapped in an endless cycle of suffering, I join a different cycle — a cycle of ever greater awareness and compassion. This cycle is a deeply creative one. It turns by imagining and creating paths towards new awareness for myself and others. With more awareness, we also become more compassionate, and we help each other towards more hopeful and joyful lives.

106. A Surprising World

Wed, 11 Jun 2025 08:00:00 -0800

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.

There is always something more, always an incredible variety of experiences you haven’t had and may never have. As a result, your awareness is always less than complete. This incompleteness can be worrying. It means your own perspective is only a fragment of a broader whole, a whole you can’t possess or even comprehend. How can you reconcile this fact with the requirements of life? For you must live and act from your own perspective — there is simply no choice in the matter.

The only honest way seems to be to question your perspective. You need to do this not to deny your experiences or their meaning, but simply to recognize there might be other possibilities than the ones you’ve already considered. You need to be humble about your beliefs, and accept the possibility that the truth might be other than what you think it is.

It’s awareness of possibility itself that is key. It means keeping yourself forever open to something beyond all you’ve seen and all you know. The world is always bigger and more interesting than it might seem, and it is an endless source of novelty and surprise.

105. Creativity Means Creation

Tue, 10 Jun 2025 08:00:00 -0800

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.

Creativity means creation, and to create is to build and grow. It is to fill the gaps we see in the world, to bridge the seemingly irreconcilable parts of our existence into a new whole. It is to add to the mosaic of the world, to make it more complete and harmonious. It is to clear the ground of obstacles, to remove whatever hinders life and its growth. It is to create flow where there is presently only stagnation.

It is this new flow that allows even more creativity to surge forward. For then it becomes possible to create something that travels further than we have ever gone before. What we take as the pinnacle of creative achievement today soon becomes the material and support for tomorrow’s creations.

Creativity advances our understanding of the world and ourselves. Through it, we create the awareness that allows us to break free of strife and suffering towards a more caring and compassionate way of life. It is by embracing creativity in every aspect of our lives that we offer ourselves the chance to discover purpose, meaning, and joy in everything we do.

104. Systemically Flawed

Mon, 09 Jun 2025 08:00:00 -0800

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.

Most large-scale wrongdoing inside organizations and institutions is not the sole result of bad judgments by particular individuals. It is rather the direct consequence of the interconnected and complex systems we have collectively constructed. Individuals acting prudently out of self-interest will necessarily cause harm because these systems are themselves deeply flawed.

Responsibility for systemic flaws is nearly impossible to assess. These systems are often the product of many different decisions by many different people that have accumulated over a very long time. And because there is no way to get accountability from a lifeless system or the countless people responsible for its current form, we instead seek it from those few individuals who happen to be in charge.

This is not to say that we are wrong to want justice, or that the people in charge are somehow relieved from responsibility for their actions. But rather, people with enormous power will also eventually take the path that leads to enormous personal benefit, regardless of the harmful externalities that are produced by doing so.

To begin to truly eliminate the harm that so deeply offends us, we have to look beyond individual bad actors and towards the very systems we rely on and often uncritically pass off as good.

103. Maybe One Day

Fri, 06 Jun 2025 08:00:00 -0800

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.

He doesn’t offer any resistance when this happens. By now he basically expects it. It seems to happen no matter how much enthusiasm or creativity he brings to his words. So he lets them talk about whatever they want, and he tries to follow along. He doesn’t want to cause anyone trouble or make them feel uncomfortable. He’s sociable enough to keep small talk going, but it drains the life right out of him.

He finds it incredibly difficult to maintain interest when things always go like this. And it seems the lack of interest goes both ways, for the people he meets tend to disappear from his life. He feels no one cares about his presence one way or the other.

He wishes there was a way to interact more deeply with others. Or at least a way to demonstrate his value. But he doesn’t know how to do this, so he retreats inward, deeper into himself. In his free time, he stays home and reads. The people in the novels don’t interest him as much as the people who write them. He thinks the writers must be sort of like him, because they seem to think like he does. This must mean there are people of his kind somewhere out there. He just hasn’t been able to make contact with any of them.

Contact is what he wants. Or some kind of connection that is real and tangible. But all he seems to do is read books and write the occasional poem. He also tries to share what he learns, whenever he gets a chance. He thinks that helping others might mean he isn’t completely wasting his time or his life. And maybe it will lead to contact one day. He doesn’t know if it’s realistic to hope for that, but he finds he does so anyway.

102. Shame Is Suffering

Thu, 05 Jun 2025 08:00:00 -0800

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.

Later, I will reflect on what I’ve done. I might realize it was significant, insofar as it contradicts my values or the values of the people I care about. I might then judge myself to have acted badly, or even to have done something I should never have done. In this way, my embarrassment or guilt can be transformed into shame.

Shame is a kind of suffering that arises because I’m averse to being someone who does wrong and I am attached to this aversion. It is impossible to satisfy this aversion because the past is immutable: I must be the person I already am and I have done wrong. What I do not have to be is someone who is attached.

I have the option of releasing myself from this aversion or any other intention I might hold. This does not mean that my judgment of wrongdoing will change, for I may very well be justified and correct in judging myself to have done wrong. All that changes is that I allow myself to be separate from this particular intention and the judgments that are associated with it.

Without doing this, I risk being consumed by shame. I will then endlessly compare myself to the person I should be but am not, and I will continue to suffer without end. And when I am engulfed in suffering, it is nearly impossible for my attention to be as open and free as needed to act responsibly and compassionately. The result is that shame ends up perpetuating not only my own suffering, but the suffering of others, as well.

101. It Can Be Done

Wed, 04 Jun 2025 08:00:00 -0800

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.

Our traditions and norms exist because they are useful. We’ve tried something repeatedly and discovered that it produces valuable results, so we’ve codified that method into the norms we now rely on. But by limiting our practices to what is reliable, we also limit ourselves. We abandon our ideas before we get a chance to see where they might take us.

The truth is that whatever is humanly possible can be done. Even those things that are not immediately feasible can be achieved, provided we are patient enough to expand our methods and technologies. It is by blazing new paths that we grow — both as individuals and as a collective whole — towards a better version of ourselves.

Doing things in a new way is never easy. We will face criticism and setbacks. We will feel anxious about transgressing cherished norms. We will worry constantly about the possibility of failure. We must not ignore these concerns. They are a reminder that what we are doing is difficult and that success is not guaranteed. At the same time, we must not cling to our concerns too tightly, for then they will limit the scope of our actions and inhibit our growth.

Through both self-compassion and the compassion of others, we can keep our attention free and open and our anxieties at a safe distance. By allowing ourselves the opportunity to open a new road, we also give ourselves a chance to create a more joyful world.

100. Letting Everything Out

Tue, 03 Jun 2025 08:00:00 -0800

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.

But in suppressing our art, we not only project an outward image of creativity and the creative process that is false, we also limit the expression of the very self we want others to appreciate.

The alternative is to let everything out, even our failures. Such a radical act requires great courage. It is to allow the whole self to be expressed, even the parts others might judge to be ugly or boring. It is to see curation as a process of ordering and juxtaposing rather than one of anxious selection and omission. It is to see editing as a process of clarifying and intensifying rather than one of cautious smoothing and erasing.

All of this makes our creations more messy than they otherwise would be. But it is precisely this messiness that has enormous value. By witnessing the mess, our audience is given the opportunity to see the complexity and nuances of a whole human being. This experience helps them become more aware of their own humanity and the humanity of others. By courageously sharing more of ourselves and our art, we not only express ourselves more fully and sincerely, we help others see and understand more, too.

99. Dangerous Distinctions

Mon, 02 Jun 2025 08:00:00 -0800

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.

As our categories become finer and more precise, we gain the ability to refer to more and more specific parts of the world. Sometimes we create categories and then later realize our distinctions do not work. For whatever reason, they do not accurately reflect the world, and so we modify our schema, adding new words or redefining old ones in order to fix the problem.

Most of the changes we make are practical ones because language is primarily a practical tool for communicating with others. But sometimes our categories become problematic for reasons that go beyond the practical. Sometimes we discover our categories are harmful or even violent. Such categories actively limit us. In addition to the harm they directly cause, they confine us to ways of seeing the world that are detrimental to our potential growth. They do this because language itself is normative.

Through the regular use of language, we impose and enforce norms on other language users. We expect them to use language in the ways it is commonly used and we correct them when they do not. This is problematic because our language norms can also be used to reinforce extra-linguistic norms, including moral norms. From nothing more than an innocent desire to maintain the existing rules of language, we can end up policing how people appear and act.

When we take our language norms to be permanent and unalterable we produce stagnation and suffering, just like any other kind of attachment. To use language in a way that does not produce suffering, we must always be skeptical of our distinctions. We have to be willing to abandon categories and norms that are found to be limiting or oppressive. We must see life as a fluid being and language as a fluid creation that changes and grows along with it.

98. A Little More Compassionate

Fri, 30 May 2025 08:00:00 -0800

Every day she tries to be a little more compassionate than the last. She knows it won’t always happen and she accepts this. A misstep today won’t stop her from redoubling her efforts tomorrow. Beyond that, she doesn’t think too much about it. She tries to see what she must do. She pays attention to herself and her environment. She tries to absorb everything she sees, without trying to force herself. Forcing means control and she knows that control consumes energy. She can’t afford to waste energy because she needs it to take action. She tries to act from compassion towards everyone she encounters, herself included. Sometimes there are lapses, but she tries not to hold on to critical judgments. She makes mistakes, just like anyone else. She is sometimes harsh when she could be understanding. She is sometimes hostile when she could be empathetic. She is far from perfect. She certainly does not have all the answers. Still she tries to create as much compassion in the world as she possibly can. She tries to meet needs and reduce suffering, both for herself and the people around her. Sometimes people tell her that she must be tired from being so compassionate all the time, but this doesn’t make sense to her. Compassion is the source of her energy and the source of her joy. There is nothing else she would rather do, nothing else she even could do, really. When she sees terrible suffering she often feels pain, but she doesn’t fight it. She allows it to arise and depart, so that she doesn’t waste any energy. When people tell her about their “compassion fatigue” she just smiles. She tries to help them see more clearly, if she can. She tries to show them the sources of suffering, and how it can be brought to an end. This is quite difficult because everyone is caught up in their own lives, their worries and desires. Still she tries, for she can see it’s important to help others become more aware. It’s the only way they can start to be a little more compassionate, too.

97. Lost In The Details

Thu, 29 May 2025 08:00:00 -0800

You think the details are what’s most important. If you pay attention to the distinctions, to the nuances between this and that, then you’ll figure it all out. After sorting out the details, you’ll see how to arrange your knowledge of the world so that everything falls into place. And then you’ll finally obtain the things you’re looking for.

What is it that you’re looking for? You want to possess beauty, you want to feel goodness, and you want to know truth. All of these will be yours once you sort out the details. So you measure, and you analyze, and you reason. You do this over and over again, carefully refining your investigation without end.

But you never seem to arrive at the imagined ideal. You learn techniques, your knowledge grows, and your capabilities expand. But you never get to that perfect place of peace and understanding where everything is clear. It feels so close at times, and yet the final steps are always frustratingly out of reach.

You have fallen into an unfortunate error. You believe a final answer is possible and can be attained. But the things you seek cannot be found through the narrow pursuit of them. You have become fatally attached to your desire for ultimate truth, beauty, and goodness. And such a profound attachment will always produce suffering. You might even feel a tiny piece of that suffering right now. It is the despair you feel as you realize your efforts will not be successful.

It is only by loosening your attachment that you create the opportunity for beauty, goodness, and truth to appear. For real value and meaning is never absent. It is here with you right now, in this very moment. If it is invisible to you it is only because your attachment has occluded your ability to see. To fix this, you must release yourself from your desire for the ideal. When you let go, you will start to see that everything you’ve sought has been present all along.

96. My Shifting Moods

Wed, 28 May 2025 08:00:00 -0800

I’m not in the mood for that. This is the thought that often arises when there is something I need to do, but it feels like too much of a burden to do right now. My focus then shifts to my mood and how I’m currently feeling. And this can easily become the decisive factor in what I choose to do.

Sometimes I get annoyed with myself over this. I tell myself it’s just a form of procrastination. I tell myself I should just do what I need to do. I tell myself I should not allow my moods to control me. In the end, I discipline myself into doing whatever it is I’m avoiding. This works because the thing that must be done actually does get done.

But this approach also wears me down. It feels like forced labour, like I’m fighting myself, like I’ve become the kind of bullying authority I detest. I might be more productive by being harsh with myself, but I end up feeling worse because I’ve been coerced into action.

To live at the whim of my shifting moods also won’t work. That would make it nearly impossible for me to be an attentive and caring human being. But perhaps I do not need to do anything drastic. Perhaps there is also a gentler approach.

I can allow my current mood to exist without fighting it, while also trying to do something. It might not be the thing I most need to do, but I can still get myself moving in whatever direction the barriers to action are smallest. Instead of resorting to force and discipline, I only need to maintain this active state.

I allow myself to move from one thing to the next without intervention. It doesn’t take long before I get started on the thing I needed to do in the first place. Each of the smaller actions helped to loosen me enough to do what I must. No harsh discipline was required, only the decision to trust myself and to try to exist actively rather than passively.

95. From Inner To Outer

Tue, 27 May 2025 08:00:00 -0800

A human being is a body, its actions, and its words. All of these things exist in the physical world: a body can be felt, its actions can be seen, and its words can be heard. But a human being also has feelings and thoughts and these do not exist anywhere in the world. While they do have worldly counterparts, these counterparts are not the experienced things themselves.

Our thoughts and feelings exist for us in an inner space that the world cannot directly reach. The world can influence this space, but it is still wholly ours. We can think about anything we can imagine. We can invent ideas and structures without limit. We can be fully creative here without having to worry about even the possibility of criticism from anything or anyone in the world.

Everything we create in our inner space is also wholly ours. We hold these creations close and we might even feel they are part of our identity, for this space is also the domain of the self. While we do not share everything we think or feel, we do occasionally feel the urge to transform an idea into something tangible. We want our idea to have its own body, to exist in the world apart from us. We want this not only because we want to express ourselves but also because we see value in the ability of physical objects to outlast us.

But the act of creating a physical object is daunting. It means showing a completely private part of the self to the world. It means violating the inner space that is entirely ours alone by allowing a part of it to exist elsewhere. And this is true even if we do not intend to share our work with others. For the privacy of the inner space is total, and any leak from that sanctum must necessarily breach it. A part of the self that has been expressed to the world cannot be denied in the same way as something merely imagined.

To take creative action is to transcend our present self. It is to exceed the boundaries of our inner space and allow the self to grow. It grows because a part that was inner becomes outer and now exists in the physical world. The creative act grants that part of us a separate body and a new existence — an existence that is both part of the self and also entirely its own.

94. The Monstrous Universe

Mon, 26 May 2025 08:00:00 -0800

When two infinities collide, do they cancel each other out or do they combine to create something even more monstrous?

One infinity by itself is already a monster, for it goes beyond anything we can imagine or comprehend. It transcends both the real and the imaginary. It escapes all of our usual systems, all of our usual rules and practices. It could easily behave in ways that are unpredictable or intractable.

Of our two infinities, one we might call the immovable wall, though it has many names. The other we might call the unstoppable force, though it is equally polynymous. Be careful not to mistake these names for actual qualities, for these infinities are not only not walls or forces, they are nothing physical at all.

The two then collide, but the word “collide” also seems to imply something physical, while the coincidence of two infinities is not a physical collision, but a further thing we cannot comprehend. Were these just physical forces or mathematical symbols, we might expect opposite magnitudes to cancel out, but these are real infinities and they are monsters. The outcome of the coincidence of the two might be just as paradoxical and absurd as the infinities themselves. And genuine absurdity means anything is possible, even the collapse of the world as we know it.

But the outcome might be more pedestrian. For the coincidence of infinities seems to occur regularly throughout our world. Infinities of time and space, infinities of possibility and necessity, infinities of virtual and real are ever present and coincident. As a simple example, there are an infinite number of points between any two given points but the amount of space is also finite and can be traversed in an infinite number of moments that also make up a finite amount of time.

The world seems totally unbothered by paradox and absurdity. Perhaps these are its very foundations. Perhaps it is really these collisions of infinities that make the world anything at all. Perhaps the created monster, the ultimate infinity that consumes and contains all the others, is nothing other than the universe itself.

93. To Be Slow Enough

Fri, 23 May 2025 08:00:00 -0800

It’s late afternoon and I’m caught in a great mass of people. Most are on their way home after work, but others are strolling more leisurely, popping into stores along the way or chatting with friends. The first group is in a desperate hurry while the second seems to have all the time in the world.

My focus is on navigating through the mass. I’m swerving around bodies heading in the opposite direction, while dodging the sandwich boards that litter the sidewalk. I’m in no hurry, but it’s still challenging to maintain a slow pace. I feel the distinct urge to go faster when others are rushing past me. Their swift movement feels purposeful, as though it were a response to some unknown stimulus, and I feel compelled to speed up.

I only notice this compulsion after I’ve started to act on it. I’m already walking faster than before. When I notice this, I’m immediately frustrated. Why have my actions automatically conformed to the crowd? This is the first question I pose to myself. But a second query soon surfaces: Why am I judging myself so harshly?

Trying to answer these questions would not be productive. Following this line of thought will only cause my frustration to grow. I’ll become further annoyed with myself for existing as I am, for being automatic in the way that all human beings are sometimes automatic in their actions and judgments. And then my negative feelings could easily extend outwards to the people around me who have done nothing wrong.

To soothe my frustration I turn off onto a side street that is less busy. After only a few steps, I begin to feel more relaxed. My pace has slowed and so has my mind. A degree of clarity returns and I become more sensitive to my surroundings.

I’m passing by a shop — a grocer with fruit and vegetables set out on tables lining the sidewalk. I stop for a moment to look at the produce, to take in the varied colours and the general atmosphere.

As I stand there quietly, I notice my other senses come alive. I’m often too focused on what I can see and as a result I miss out on the other dimensions of experience. But now I allow myself to listen, smell, and feel. I hear one of the employees telling a customer about the grapes they just received this morning. I breathe in the pungent aroma of ripe fruit. I pick up a watermelon just to hold it, to feel its weight and its firmness with my hands.

There is so much happening when I am slow enough to notice it.

92. Desires And Necessities

Thu, 22 May 2025 10:00:00 -0800

Someone I care about wants me to do something I cannot do. I am unable to do it because there is something else I must do instead. I feel this other task is necessary because I can see it would be profoundly harmful for it to go undone.

This is not a conflict between two desires. It is not a matter of fulfilling my desire instead of the other person’s desire. It is a matter of yielding to the necessity of compassion or attempting to avoid it.

To do what is needed by compassion today, I must disappoint someone who is important to me. They want me to do something, but I am not able to do it. Their desire will go unfulfilled, and if they are attached to that desire, they will now suffer the pain of dissatisfaction.

It seems natural to believe I have directly caused this suffering and to feel guilty for it. But this guilt is actually another form of suffering that arises from my own attachment. The intention to which I am attached is my aversion to upsetting others.

Even if I do not suffer guilt, I still feel responsible for the additional suffering that follows from my actions. And this is good, because I am responsible for it. I am not responsible for satisfying the specific desires of other people, but I am responsible for suffering in general, and I share this responsibility with all others.

The people I care about suffer when their strongest desires go unfulfilled. If they could see the nature of their suffering and how it arises from attachment, then they would suffer much less when this happens. And it inevitably happens to all of us. There are attachments buried so deep in me that it might take a lifetime to loosen all of them. Attachment and the suffering it produces are part of what it is to be a human being.

The best thing I can do is help the people around me see their own suffering more clearly. With broader awareness and open attention, not only will they be able to free themselves from suffering, they will also begin to see the necessity of compassionate action.

91. You Are Meant To Fly

Wed, 21 May 2025 10:00:00 -0800

They told you that it was too risky and not worth doing. They told you that you couldn’t go any further. They told you that you’d be on your own and you’d have no support. They told you that you’d be crazy to even consider it. You listened to all of this, but it didn’t change your mind. They kept telling you it was impossible, but you went and did it anyway.

You ventured outside the norm, going deep into uncharted territory. The people who warned you were mostly right about being on your own. There’s barely anyone out here on the fringes with you, and at times it gets lonely. You sometimes feel completely separated from reality, like it is one thing and you are something else entirely. You know this isn’t true. You’re just as connected to reality as anyone else. But now you live on a more chaotic plane.

Here there are no rules or boundaries to keep you safe. You’ve left the ground entirely and you’re floating in the air. Free of all tethers, you can easily drift off into nothingness. There is no one here to protect you. No one to make sure you’ll make it back in one piece. You’ve accepted the risk. Is it worth it? How could you possibly know?

You’ve left the known world and joined an entirely new one. It’s a world that’s strange and uncomfortable but also exciting. It’s the variety that excites you, the possibilities that seem almost endless. With no rules, you can go in any direction, you can see almost anything. You might even discover something completely unknown.

But the abyss of nothingness looms nearby. You must pay attention. You need to keep your eyes open. You might even have to return to the ground from time to time. Sometimes you’ll need to do this just to make contact with something solid again. But once you’ve refuelled and shared your latest discoveries, you won’t be able to keep yourself out of the air. For despite the risk, you now know that a human being is meant to fly.

90. Patience For Art

Tue, 20 May 2025 10:00:00 -0800

The need to be patient with other people is clear. Human beings are not machines, and I cannot expect them to perform with the regularity and consistency of machines. They will occasionally do things I do not expect, and act in ways other than I think they ought to act. To demand anything like perfection from a human being would be absurd.

The need to be patient with an artwork is less obvious. An artwork seems like nothing more than an object that exists for me to enjoy. I feel it should do something for me immediately and if it does not then I will revoke my attention and focus on something else. I might even believe its value is determined solely by the degree of perfection it achieves.

But not only might the work be more complex than it first appears, it is also not simply an object. As the creation of a living human being, an artwork is also alive in its own way. The artist has given it a piece of real life with their own hands. It is this humanity that lives in the work that requires my patience.

I need to allow myself to see what the artwork is trying to say and do and be. This means I need to allow my first impressions to depart as quickly as they have arrived. I need to sit with the work and explore it. I need to take it in completely and allow it to work its way through me. I need to see its deviations from my expectations not as mistakes but as enormous benefits, as pathways to a new kind of beauty. I need to grapple with the work, to play with it and its possible meanings.

In practice, I might not have the time or energy to do all of this with every artwork I encounter. Even so, I do not have to make judgments about a work I have not fully appreciated. Not every artwork is for me in this particular moment. Perhaps I will rediscover it again many years later. And then, realizing I am finally ready, I will allow myself to patiently explore everything it has to offer.

89. The Other In Yourself

Mon, 19 May 2025 10:00:00 -0800

When we think of the “other” we tend to think of something beyond our own body. Most often we think of other people, in contrast to the self, which is our own person. But the other is very much alive in us too.

Not everything we are is included in our image of the self. The leftovers are the parts of us that we refuse to identify with. They might be traits we wish we did not have, actions we regret taking, or past failures we want to forget. All of these are us, but we want to deny them. If they must exist, we want them to exist somewhere outside of who we really are. We want to be seen only as our best qualities and actions, as everything that aligns with our most cherished values.

All of the parts we banish from our self-identity are forced to be other. But our attempt to fence off these parts does not succeed without harm. For the othered parts are truly us, and denying them necessarily produces painful internal conflicts and the suffering that goes with them.

To love yourself is to love the other in yourself. It is to bring the outcast parts back into the self, and to accept the whole of your existence. By accepting these othered parts, you take responsibility for your entire life, and by doing so you also start to come to terms with who you are.

But to do this fully and truthfully, we must accept far more of than just the parts of our own person that we do not like. As our awareness expands, we begin to see that everything that exists is also part of the self. The self is nothing but a mirror of the world, and as such, it is much bigger than it seems. The other remains distinct but also forms a continuous unity with the self. There is a difference and also no difference.

To love the whole of the self is really to love the whole of the world. It is to love both the self and the other fully and without limit. In the end, to love yourself is nothing other than to act with boundless love for everything that exists.

88. Disasters And Delusions

Fri, 16 May 2025 10:00:00 -0800

Everything is always getting worse. This is the thought he keeps having over and over again. The foundation is crumbling. The tension is becoming unbearable. The world itself feels only months from some kind of collapse. And when he looks at the people around him he sees more anxiety, more stress, and more uncertainty than ever before. The problem itself is huge and unfathomable — a beast outside the scope of his comprehension and well beyond the reach of his control. It’s not one thing but many things amplifying each other to produce a maelstrom of incredible proportions. To maintain a modest degree of mental stability he has trained himself to disregard anything he cannot control, and so he does nothing about it. Instead he distracts himself with whatever he can find — anything that will fully absorb his attention. This way he not only avoids thinking about the problem, he avoids thinking altogether. Embraced by the safety of immediate pleasure, his mind is adequately soothed, transforming the real world into a distant concern. But he can’t always keep it this way. He is forced back to reality because he has a body with needs, which means he has to work in order to survive. He is required to watch the catastrophe unfold despite his best efforts. He tries not to fight what he sees. It’s coming no matter what, so there is little point in fighting. Perhaps it will not be so bad. He repeats these words to keep himself calm. But sometimes calm is out of the question and he gets carried away in a frenzy of thought. He then feels he can only surrender and accept the inevitable. He tries to be excited by the thought of total disaster — everything would change and that could be interesting. He can’t deny there would be pain and suffering beyond imagination, but he tries to tell himself it would be others who would bear the brunt of it. He and his loved ones would be okay. When he is more languid and therefore honest he admits the disaster would probably consume him too. He will not be spared. But he wonders if maybe even that could be exciting in its own way. For it would mean his life would be changed completely. And that means he would have a chance to be more than he presently is. He would be freed from this bleak world that is always holding him back from his true potential. To have a life with real purpose and meaning… Wouldn’t that be so much better than this excuse for an existence he is currently living?

87. Hope For The Present

Thu, 15 May 2025 10:00:00 -0800

I dream of a future where my life and the world around me will be better than they are now. This dream can be a source of hope, but it can also become a problem. For I will eventually reach a point in my life where it is unlikely that things will get better for me personally. They will instead begin to alternate between staying the same and getting slowly worse. This is not pessimism but the actual reality of aging for every human being.

Seeing this reality approaching, I might feel there is no hope left for me and fall into despair. But like all suffering I face, overcoming despair is a matter of attention and awareness. When I have confined my life to my own personal existence, I am not seeing very far or very clearly.

By opening my attention, I can see the lives of others as deeply connected to my own. These others might be my loved ones, the people in my community, or humanity at large. Rather than existing as an isolated body, I can see that my life is part of a greater living organism. While my individual situation might not improve, I can continue to hope that things will get better on the whole.

There is also another dimension to my despair. I have not only limited my hope to my own life but also to the unknown future. We most often think of hope as future-oriented, but there is no need for it to be. Hope can be something I live out in the present moment, a kind of trust I place in each and every action I take right now.

To hope for the present means I don’t just wish for a better tomorrow — I actively work to create a better today. I look for value and meaning in the world that exists immediately, and not in the world yet to come. I express and share everything I know and see with others today, instead of putting these experiences into storage for some distant day. It is by continually returning to the eternal present that I can always find a lasting and resilient hope to reassure me.

86. A Chance At Real Life

Wed, 14 May 2025 10:00:00 -0800

Nothing ever changes. It’s the the same people talking about the same things, over and over again. The same discussions, the same debates, the same images, in endless repetition. Everyone wants to talk about what they know, what they believe, and what they think is right. All you can do is smile and nod.

Whatever is called “new” is not really new for you. It’s just mechanical variations on worn out themes. The new thing exists to satisfy the very same desires that existed the day before. The same solutions are distributed and redistributed without end, and it sometimes feels like no alternatives are even possible.

You’re aware of all of this. You already know where it begins and ends. There’s little energy or life in any of it. It takes you to the same places you’ve seen countless times. At the end of each day, you find yourself exhausted, sapped of all energy from having to exist in this unchanging environment. Sleep is of little help. When you wake up, you return to the same monotonous pattern of images and chatter that you left the night before.

To come alive you need to break out of the repetition. You need something exciting and fresh, something that allows you to see things in a new way. You need to go beyond everything you’re used to. You need something that pushes against whatever is comfortable, normal, and safe. You need it just to have a chance at real life.

What you need is art — radical creations that demonstrate new possibilities, new ways of being and acting. When you are in the presence of such a thing, you know it, because it brings feelings of inspiration and excitement. You suddenly realize there is more to the world than you thought and you feel yourself almost bursting with energy. And with this new energy, this new way of seeing, this rejuvenated life, you might also find that you rediscover hope.

85. To Be Creative

Tue, 13 May 2025 10:00:00 -0800

You’re just living your life when, suddenly, you have an idea. The idea feels weighty because it’s entirely new and different. The more you think about it, the more important and exciting it seems. You play with it in your mind and you begin to imagine what you could do with it.

But then you get drawn back into the activity of daily life. Reminded of all the things you have to do and all the things you want to do, you quickly lose interest in your idea. When you do happen to think of it, you tell yourself it’s impossible to do anything with it, and the idea loses its lustre. You eventually decide to let it go.

By abandoning your idea, you limit yourself. You allow your judgment of the relative value of the idea to prevent your creative intuitions from surfacing. If you’re able to notice this, you have a chance to release yourself from this judgment and allow your creativity to take the lead.

The form of your new creation is not important. You might draw a picture. You might write a few lines of verse. You might build a small object out of scraps. It doesn’t have to be flashy or complicated. The point is simply to allow yourself to imagine and create.

The fate of your creation is also unimportant. You don’t need to publish it. You don’t need to share it with the world. You don’t even need to show it to anyone at all. Sharing isn’t what makes the creative act worth doing. It is always worth doing, and it requires no justification.

Every moment of creativity enables your freedom to grow. It grants you an open and playful space away from the regimented structure of daily life. It allows you to put your judgments aside and take a break from self-evaluation. It gives you an opportunity to see judgment and even reason itself as tools you can pick up when needed, and not as overseers that control your every move.

It’s exactly this kind of freedom that you can gradually incorporate into your entire life. And that’s also what it is to allow joy in every moment: to be free, to be playful, to be creative.

84. Necessary And Contingent

Mon, 12 May 2025 10:00:00 -0800

I pick up a rock from the ground and I let it go. It falls back to the ground. I pick it up again, and I let it go again. It still falls to the ground. I repeat the process several more times. The rock falls to the ground every single time. I conclude that the rock will always fall to the ground. This process of reasoning is called induction.

Induction is the foundation of our empirical knowledge. Insofar as all other kinds of knowledge can be traced back to empirical knowledge, it might even be the foundation of everything we know. We observe something happening over and over again without fail and then we infer it must be a significant truth about the world. In the case of the rock falling to the ground each and every time, we label this truth “the law of gravity”.

Why does induction work? It works because the world seems to have a certain regularity over time: the rock will fall to the ground in the very same way today, tomorrow, and every other day. What guarantees this regularity? Nothing at all. It is itself something we have observed over and over about the world, but we cannot justify the principle of induction using induction itself.

Still, our assumption of regularity seems to be holding up fine so far. There is no particular reason to doubt it. But we must be aware that regularity is not guaranteed. Regularity is a contingent fact about the world, which means the world could always be otherwise. If regularity is contingent then inductive reasoning is also contingent. And if induction is the foundation of all knowledge, then it follows that everything we know is contingent.

The opposite of contingency is necessity. Necessity implies that the world could not be otherwise — it must necessarily be exactly this. Any sense of necessary truths can be established only because we take regularity to be necessary in practice. But we need not do this. And that paradoxically means that necessity itself is contingent, while contingency seems to be necessary.

83. When The Windows Are Open

Fri, 09 May 2025 10:00:00 -0800

The windows are open and they will stay open. She opens them in the spring and keeps them that way into the fall, only closing them briefly whenever there is rain. But it rarely rains in the dry season, so the windows are almost never closed in the summer.

The windows must stay open because she needs continuity between the space inside and the space outside. When the air inside differs too much from the air outside, she begins to feel claustrophobic, as though she were trapped underground and isolated from the world. But with the windows open, the air is all one and the same, so she feels connected to the world outside. She feels connected to everything, to all that exists, and that makes her feel more alive.

It’s the boundaries that bother her. She feels like part of her own self is missing when she is forced to be apart from everything else. She becomes an island, separated by impassable seas from the great mass of the world. A mass that she cannot see or understand, a mass of indifference or perhaps even hostility.

But when the windows are open, the boundaries fade. The harsh waters that separate her drain away and there is only one continuous, connected land. Her island then is nothing but a hill. Then she feels truly in the world, she feels its movement and its vitality, even when she is home alone.

Practically, this isn’t always advantageous. If it gets too hot outside, she has to suffer, for what is outside also comes inside. She forbids air conditioning of any kind, since the artificial cold would construct yet another boundary between her and the warmth of the world. This means she must be uncomfortable sometimes, but she accepts this cost.

Her policy of open windows extends beyond her physical home and into her relationships with people. She also feels a daunting absence when there are too many boundaries between herself and others. She tries to become ever closer to the people she loves, to melt away the distinction between herself and her loved ones.

In every aspect of her life, she seeks this feeling of oneness with all that is other. Only rarely does she succeed and it’s usually in her closest friendships. But she refuses to allow failures or limitations to discourage her. Just as she is forced to close her windows in the winter when the heavy rain arrives, she knows there will always be limits to what she can do. Still, she aspires to keep her windows and herself as open as possible, no matter what discomfort that might bring.

82. Tragic Lessons

Thu, 08 May 2025 10:00:00 -0800

You’re watching a dramatic film with a complex plot and relatable characters. The film is beautiful but it’s also difficult to watch. The characters struggle endlessly with their problems, and things keep going badly for them. For a variety of reasons, they are unable to catch a break.

You can’t help but empathize with their concerns and feelings. The protagonist is a good person but she keeps making mistakes. Her mistakes bring great harm and suffering. She suffers and the people around her suffer. It’s painful to watch this unfold. There’s a sinking feeling inside you that you can’t seem to shake. It’s the sense that tragedy is inevitable. The story cannot possibly end well.

You consider abandoning the film and doing something else instead. But before you do so, you notice yourself considering this, and you realize you’ve been here before. You feel uncomfortable because you identify with the protagonist. You can see yourself in her situation and you can see yourself making her mistakes. Your reaction to that is one of intense aversion. You want to get away from this story as quickly as you can.

But by noticing your own reaction, you’re now able to counteract it. You decide to keep watching. You choose to continue because you know you’re learning something, even though it’s painful. You’re learning about yourself and about what it means to be a human being. You’re learning that there’s no such thing as perfection. You’re learning that people are flawed, including yourself. You’re learning that you’ve harmed yourself and others in the past and you might do it again.

All of these realizations are part of your reality, and you’re forced to accept them. You know acceptance is the only way because you’ve been here before, and you already know that trying to ignore these things only prolongs suffering. The solution is not to turn away, but to lean in, to become even more sensitive to yourself and others. It’s when you’re both sensitive and attentive that you give yourself a chance to prevent suffering from happening in the first place.

81. A Pernicious Illusion

Wed, 07 May 2025 10:00:00 -0800

The idea that I am a cohesive individual is a pernicious illusion. In this illusory reality, I am a self fully separate from all others. I see my desires and beliefs as fundamental expressions of the identity of this separate self. And I can easily raise my separate self above others out of vanity or pride.

An individuality where there is only a separate self set against the world as background is not sustainable. It puts me in conflict with everything and everyone I do not take to be part of me. This perpetual state of conflict means I produce endless strife and suffering for myself and others.

I have to allow myself to come apart in order to see how I can come together in a better way. A way that is healthy and livable, a way that transforms suffering into joy. I must fragment my illusory cohesion and expose all of the parts of myself to attention and inquiry.

I need to explore the contradictions between my parts — not with the intention of erasing them, but to see that there is contradiction in all things. I need to investigate how my feelings and thoughts arise and then depart — not with the intention of fighting them, but to see how all things arise and then depart.

By exploring these features of my own being, I become more aware of the nature of both myself and the world. I come to see that all distinctions are also indistinct, that what is permanent is also impermanent, and that there is both chaos and order in everything. I come to see that the self and the world are themselves not only different but also the same.

In seeing this, I allow the fragments of myself to fit into the fragments of the world. I am separate from the world, but the world and I are also entangled. I renew this awareness by breaking myself into fragments and then becoming whole again. I live in the tension between the parts and the whole, constantly moving from one aspect to another and carefully observing all that is present.

With awareness, I discover there is harmony even in discord. I discover there is truth even in contradiction. I discover there is a path to lasting joy even in the midst of incredible suffering.

80. Addicted To Machines

Tue, 06 May 2025 10:00:00 -0800

We are addicted to machines. Machines help us solve material problems quickly and efficiently. With more machines, we can solve more problems, so there is always an incentive to build more machines. Meanwhile, we continuously develop new technologies that expand the scope of problems machines are able to address, so the demand for machines grows without end.

Human beings have real material needs and machines help us meet those needs. To argue we would be better off without machines would be an error. But by avoiding this mistake we have fallen into another one. We now tend to think that because machines can solve so many problems, they can eventually solve all of our problems. We now tend to see everything as a material problem that can be solved by instrumental means. It is through these tendencies that our addiction has formed.

A disastrous consequence is that we cut ourselves off from the reality of human experience. Part of this reality is that we have problems that go far beyond the material. One of our greatest problems is how to live joyfully. Whereas the mechanism of the machine is deterministic and predictable, joy arises through the exercise of freedom and imagination. Our needs for love, for purpose, and for creativity are necessarily irrelevant to the lifeless and orderly repetition of the machine.

The art of the machine is also incapable of helping us meet these needs. When we use mechanical means to create art, we expect it to transcend those means through the addition of human freedom and imagination. If an artwork does not or cannot do this, then we feel it lacks something important. This important thing is what all good art points towards. We often fail to describe it with words, but we know it when we see it. We call it by the names of truth and beauty. Human artworks are born from us. They are living beings we create, and their truth and beauty can never be copied by that which has no life.

79. Embracing Limits

Mon, 05 May 2025 10:00:00 -0800

We do not want to be restricted to being merely this or that. We want to be total, complete, unlimited. Any limitation is seen as a flaw, a problem to be overcome. We want to transcend our limits and become so much more than we presently are.

To transcend is to grow and the value of growth is undeniable. When we grow, we extend ourselves beyond what we could do in the past, and gain the ability to create new benefits for ourselves and others. But valuing growth does not mean every limit should be seen as a flaw that diminishes our own value.

Our limitations help define the kind of beings we are. By embracing them, we become more aware of ourselves and of what we are capable of being and becoming. To say “I cannot do this” and accept the bare truth of this assertion is also to accept a part of what it means to be human and the kinds of experiences a human being can have. We are not gods and we are not unlimited in our power. There are things we can do and things we cannot.

That we are necessarily limited in certain ways means there is only so much we can do as individuals. To achieve our full potential, we have to work with others and cooperate on shared projects. We also have to pass on our understanding, ideas, and projects to those who come after us, since our own lifespan is one of the limits we must accept.

By sharing our understanding and experiences, our successors will in all likelihood exceed our limits and find new ones for themselves. And by exceeding our achievements, they will carry on the human project of which we are all a part. The ultimate goals of this project cannot be known, and this is a further limitation we must embrace. This limit means that a wide variety of ideas and activities can be valuable to humanity as a whole. We do not know where we are going, but this is no problem. It is rather an important truth that keeps us humble about what we know and open about what we choose to do.

78. Hold My Hand

Fri, 02 May 2025 10:00:00 -0800

You sit down beside me as I take a sip of coffee. Hot and fragrant, its bitterness rushes across my tongue. I relax into the comfort of the familiar drink. You press your fork into the cheesecake and ask me if I’d like a bite. I thank you for the offer, but I’m feeling full from lunch so I decline. We’re seated side-by-side, looking out at the street through the front window of the shop. People walk by, but they don’t notice us noticing them. I suddenly realize you’re sitting very close to me. I like that you are. When we were eating lunch, you were so enthusiastic and engaged in our conversation that I had to keep reminding myself to focus just so I could keep up. I liked how you asked me questions about my life, about my work, about my family. All of that might have been too much from someone else, but it felt right to talk about it with you. And being close to you also feels right. We’re so close and I wish you would hold my hand. I think that would feel right too. And then you turn to look at me and I look at you and you ask me if I’d like to hold your hand. I’m not able to answer immediately because I’m shocked. How did you know I wanted that? Surely you can’t read my mind. I finally smile and tell you yes and you take my hand in yours. Warm and firm is my first impression, but then also a bit damp. I realize this means you might be nervous and that makes me happy. It makes me happy because I want you to care about this and you do. But how could you know I wanted your hand? Maybe you didn’t, but you wanted to hold mine. And so you asked. Someone has to go first, after all. One of us has to take the risk of asking for what they want, in the hope that the other wants the same. If no one did this, we would stay separated. But you took the risk and now our separation has been transformed into connection. You’re looking out the window into the distance. I wonder what you’re thinking. Then it occurs to me that you might be thinking exactly this — what I’m thinking, you might be thinking too. Maybe this is all in your head, me included. To be entirely honest, I’m fine with that. I’ll live there, in you. I think it would be a beautiful place to exist.

77. Rage As Motivation

Thu, 01 May 2025 10:00:00 -0800

When I am angry about the wrongdoing I see in the world, I feel energized and capable. My rage becomes a source of motivation. It pushes me to take forceful action to resolve the problems I face. With this newfound purpose and energy, I feel ready to fight tirelessly on the side of justice to make the world better.

But while I might accomplish many things, my actions are unlikely to be especially good ones. When I am in the grip of anger, my attitude becomes adversarial. I see the unjust world as my enemy. I want to prevail. I want victory. I seek the most direct means to defeat my enemy and I pursue those means relentlessly.

Instead of defeating the world or anyone in it, I end up defeating myself. For my anger has given rise to an overwhelming desire: I want victory and I will stop at nothing to get it because my rage demands it. I have become attached to my anger and the desire that follows from it. And this attachment will inevitably produce suffering, both for myself and for any unfortunate person who happens to get in my way. My anger might provoke me into creating some limited good, but it will also produce enormous harm.

Fortunately, I do not need rage (or any other motivator) to make the world better. As long as my attention is open and free of attachment, I will act from compassion towards myself and others.

A liberated body is more powerful than any effort born of anger. It will do the right thing no matter what harm comes to it. It will do so purely out of the necessity that each and every compassionate action carries. It will push harder and more resolutely than any motivating feeling towards a more just and joyful world. It will do so without desire, without being consumed by righteousness, and without producing further suffering.

To be liberated I must learn to release my attention from the attachment that has taken hold of it. Set free, my compassion will no longer be repressed by the bloodlust that arises from surrendering myself to rage. To become a truly powerful force for good, I must allow myself to let go of anger entirely.

76. Open Questions

Wed, 30 Apr 2025 10:00:00 -0800

You are aware, intelligent, savvy. You know the things you hear are not always true. Countless narratives are being spun around you. Powerful interests are trying to influence outcomes. Systems and institutions are working to preserve the status quo and themselves. People are continuously interpreting reality and each of these interpretations is biased. Sometimes these biases veer far from anything that could be called truth.

You know all of this, but if you happen to forget, the absurd media that ceaselessly attacks your senses will quickly remind you. You’re not going to fall for any lies. You examine everything you hear carefully, disregarding what is obviously false and investigating what you don’t yet understand. Sometimes people try to convince you of the truth of their particular narrative. You listen politely, but you always go your own way.

No one is going to convince you of anything by giving you an argument for it. You might discover you’re wrong about something, but it’ll happen on your own schedule. It’ll happen because you’re skeptical of your own beliefs, you ask yourself questions, and you’re open to changing your mind. It feels good when you realize a belief you thought was true is actually false. It feels good because it means you’re now a bit closer to the truth.

You look at everything critically, including what you’re told by those who are closest to you. Even the ones you love. Determining the truth is your job, and it cannot be outsourced to anyone. You’re the one who has to figure out what’s right and what’s wrong. And you do it by keeping yourself open to yet another question, yet another occasion for reflection.

In the end, it’s the questions that matter. A question that stays open is always better than an answer that closes your eyes. You need your eyes open so that you can see more, so that you can become more aware. After all, it’s when you’re aware that you understand what’s really going on. And when you understand what’s going on, you can also see what you need to do.

75. The Critical Life

Tue, 29 Apr 2025 10:00:00 -0800

In its everyday usage, to criticize something is to find fault with it. But in the world of literature and art, to criticize is to inquire into a work. Rather than focusing exclusively on faults, the aim is to explore the work broadly and see what might be found in it.

To inquire into a work is to pose questions and discover how the work responds. It is to posit interpretations and meanings — typically nonexclusive ones that expand our view of the work rather than confine it to strict boundaries. Criticism of this kind is deeply resistant to boundaries. It resists anything that limits, anything final. It remains open to the arrival of a future audience, one that will see the work in a new way, who will pose a new set of questions revealing something as of yet unseen. It means both exploring and investigating, taking both the broadest available view and the narrowest, reaching as far as possible into the wide unknown and diving deeply into the details.

To approach all of life from a critical perspective is to be open to all of its possibilities and to subject every last experience to questioning. It is to accept every part of your experience and explore what might exist in it. It is to offer meanings when they arise and to add value and purpose to everything you see and do. It is to undermine anything that might limit or restrict and to support the possibility of growth and transcendence. It is to share in all of this with other people, to consider their interpretations and the results of their inquiries. It is to remain open to everything that comes to you, to receive and appreciate it as though it were part of you, and to incorporate it into yourself. It is to live as a fully dynamic and creative being in every moment of your existence.

74. The Privacy Of Mind

Mon, 28 Apr 2025 10:00:00 -0800

A human being needs privacy. Having privacy means being able to temporarily escape from reality. It is to enter your own world, a sanctuary for you alone. In your own world you are completely in charge: you make the rules, and you decide what happens.

In this way, your private world is a kind of imaginary space. Here, there is no other, there is only you. Here, the distance between your imagined ideal and your reality is much smaller. And if your ideal does not involve other people, your private world might even be your ideal world.

The most private space available to you is always your own mind. The thoughts and feelings that exist there are yours and yours alone. This space cannot be intruded upon by the other. Your own senses impinge on it, but even they cannot harm your imagined ideal. Your ideal can remain perfectly peaceful and calm even when you are surrounded by loud noises and flashing lights.

And it is precisely when the outside world is crashing in on you that you most need privacy. For it is then that you need to escape from the world for a time, to consolidate your own being, which is being diluted by the other that surrounds you and is always threatening to absorb you.

When you enter into your private space, you are able to become yourself again. You can reflect on your experience, and learn how to understand and appreciate it. By doing so, you come to see more of the nature of experience itself. Without privacy, you could not do this, for the world would demand something of you at all times. But your own mind grants you a private sanctuary that is always yours where you can quietly listen to all that is happening within.

It is this listening that is most important. You listen to yourself — to all that your existence is presently expressing — and you become more aware of yourself, of what you need, and of what you must do.

73. Everything That Is Happening

Fri, 25 Apr 2025 10:00:00 -0800

It seems like he is always reading the news. He checks it at least ten or twelve times a day now. He knows it’s becoming a bit much. But there is so much happening in the world and it all feels important.

New pathogens are migrating between species. The local government is in disarray. The climate is becoming more and more extreme. Elections are happening here and then there. New methods of digital surveillance are emerging. Resources are being consolidated by a small group of oligarchs.

He scrambles to stay on top of all of this. He feels obligated to stay informed. But the more he thinks about everything that is happening, the more his head spins. He wants to understand it all, but how? There is simply too much information. And what advantage does understanding give him?

Control is what he wants most. The feeling of being in control. Or at least the sense that the impacts of the approaching calamities can be controlled. As though they are not going to crush him and everything he loves. As though there is a way to prevent the worst from happening. That there might not be is what scares him the most.

This fear of bad things happening is driving him. He is willing to admit this when he is most honest with himself. The control he wants is just a means to manage the fear. But the fear also seems unmanageable. Everything he reads makes him more and more anxious. And what comes out of his anxiety? Does he do anything differently because of it?

He tries to be responsive to what he learns, to make changes where he can, and to contribute solutions whenever possible. But does this require him to be so deeply engrossed in the details as he presently is? Wouldn’t he learn more than enough by reading the news for thirty minutes each morning?

He knows he has to stop. He can’t go on like this, ceaselessly seeking more and more information. It’s consuming his entire life. It has become an obsession. He has to make a change. He knows all of this, but it still feels impossible to do anything differently.

72. Extinguishing Ignorance

Thu, 24 Apr 2025 10:00:00 -0800

Hearing ignorant opinions can be frustrating. They are almost inescapable when they are widely shared, so this frustration can become part of daily life. The situation feels even worse when the ignorant opinions are shared by those who have power over others.

In response to my frustration, I want to block out the ignorant views. But when I do this, I run the risk of limiting my own awareness, which is the only thing that protects me from succumbing to ignorance. For my awareness to broaden and grow, I need to allow my attention to remain open, and that means I will be regularly exposed to a wide variety of opinions, including ignorant ones.

Instead of limiting myself, I need to examine my frustration. I feel frustrated because I judge ignorance to be harmful to myself and others. To expect frustration not to arise would be foolish. At the same time, I must not hold on to it or the judgment that produces it. By holding on, I allow my frustration to accumulate and transform into anger. I must allow the feeling to arise and then depart without fighting it. To fight is just another way of holding on.

As ignorance perpetuates suffering and unnecessary pain, I still need to try to eliminate it where I can. But I must do this out of compassion and not out of frustration or anger. A hostile response to an ignorant opinion will not change anyone’s mind. Even an argumentative response might cause the other to become further entrenched in their ignorance.

Compassion is the only hope I have to alleviate ignorance in another person. By responding with compassion, I am more likely to help them see things in a new way, which may lead them to doubt their existing opinion. It is important to remember there is nothing I can do to directly extinguish someone else’s ignorance. It is their own doubt and only their own doubt that can dislodge their opinion.

To inspire doubt about a strongly-held opinion is not easy, which means a compassionate response will be both difficult and time-consuming. In many cases, it will not create any immediate change. But regardless of these caveats, compassion is still and always my best option when I encounter ignorance in the world.

71. The Need To See

Wed, 23 Apr 2025 10:00:00 -0800

We ordinarily expect to be able to understand our experiences. If an experience is incomprehensible, we want to understand why. We expect there to be a reason and if one is not readily available, we start to look for it.

In some cases, our search lasts only a few seconds, especially if we realize the answer is unimportant. But more often, what is not understood is intriguing enough to trigger our curiosity, leading us to expend some effort looking for an explanation. We try to gather context and clues that might reveal the nature of the thing in question. We read texts that clarify but also pose further questions, and so we read even more to try to locate reliable answers.

Sometimes we search so frequently that our search expands and transforms into a general aspiration to understand. Our concern stops being limited to single instances of incomprehension and broadens to include everything. We now feel compelled to develop a more general and encompassing awareness of the world around us.

Because this aspiration is really only the hope for greater understanding, we do not despair when our search faces setbacks. We are no longer operating from a desire to know but from the need to see. New discoveries that complicate our understanding are not frustrations but rather encouragements towards the possibility of something even greater than our wildest imaginings. We examine and explore everything, not with the expectation of quenching a thirst or uncovering ultimate truths, but because the search has become part of us. It is who we are and what we are — observing beings within the world’s being.

For someone with this aspiration, a fragment of text discovered in the world is a provocation. It is a call to action, to investigate how this fragmentary part relates to the whole. It is a call to discover the world in yourself, to see the whole in the parts, together and separate, in time and in eternity.

70. A New Form Of Life

Tue, 22 Apr 2025 10:00:00 -0800

You’re forever stuck with your own point of view. There’s no way to escape from your subjectivity. There’s no way to see yourself as you exist in this moment from outside your own body.

Even advanced technology capable of recording your every word, expression, and movement wouldn’t help. A recording can’t solve the problem because what you actually want is to be able to observe yourself in each and every moment as it happens. You want to see yourself right now, from a third-person perspective, without being influenced by your observations. But there is no tool that can offer this kind of objectivity.

You want to understand yourself, but you can’t even do something as simple as seeing what you look like through the eyes of the other. To become the other and observe the self is the dream, but it is seemingly unattainable.

The closest you might be able to get is to see the self and the other as parts of a continuous whole rather than as distinct entities. For the distinction between them, which seems entirely obvious, is also constructed and imposed. And that means it could be otherwise — you could see the whole world as a single being of which you are only a part.

But to become fully capable of this other way of seeing, you would have to be able to incorporate the experience of every other being into your own experience. You would have to feel their needs as your own needs, and you would have to be able to see the world through their eyes. Of course, you still wouldn’t escape from your own subjectivity. But it would become a subjectivity that embraces all other subjectivities as part of its own.

An awareness so expansive and sensitive would require such an enormous breadth of experience that it might not be practically attainable. But to attain it would be a total transformation. Your actions would arise not only from the self but also from the world as a whole. You would transcend yourself and your present existence. You would become an entirely new kind of being — a new form of life itself — unlike anything ever before seen.

69. Awareness As A Goal

Mon, 21 Apr 2025 10:00:00 -0800

We want to be successful, so we are always thinking about our goals. We reflect on which goals to set. We measure our progress towards them. We often achieve them through careful self-control. We believe that happiness is only possible if we obtain the success that reaching our goals seems to promise.

All of our actions are devoted to this cause. We measure and evaluate and plan everything we do for the purpose of fulfilling our goals. These goals might be significant projects that will take months or years to complete, but they can also be so small that we don’t even realize they are goals. Our compulsion towards measurement and progress is so strong that we might even go so far as to plan out our spare time to achieve the best possible outcome, even if it is just to maximize the pleasure we experience.

Our focus on goals can also creep into our efforts to become more aware of ourselves and the world around us. We can come to see awareness itself as a goal we have to achieve. We want to become fully aware, so we formulate a plan to get there, and we manipulate our actions towards implementing that plan.

But in doing so, we work against ourselves. In order for our awareness to expand broadly and deeply, our attention must be open and free. But attachment to a specific desire will take control of our attention and reduce its freedom to explore. Even if we want awareness, justice, or goodness itself, we can actively bar ourselves from these things by becoming attached to them.

When our attention is largely free, our awareness grows steadily and the necessity of compassion becomes more clear. We cannot force awareness or compassion into our possession through planning or any kind of control. They must arise on their own, and once they do, we will no longer seek to manipulate our actions towards this or that particular goal. We will instead act from compassion to meet needs and create joy for ourselves and others.

68. To Be Anywhere But Here

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 10:00:00 -0800

She has been listening to him talk without pause for nearly half an hour now. Just when she thinks he’s about to stop, he launches another salvo of words at her. The gala was supposed to be an opportunity to relax, and maybe even have fun, but now she’s trapped, unable to escape from this rain of endless chatter. If he were just anyone, she could’ve walked away or told him to get lost. The problem is that this man is her boss.

When he first approached, she greeted him politely, thinking he was just saying hello before moving on to someone more important. But he stayed parked next to her and the small talk chugged on from one topic to another. Now he’s expounding on the details of a trip he took last fall. Maybe she could handle this better if she weren’t already exhausted from the ceaseless demands of work and life. She could lie and escape but he’s quick to sense a lie. She has to endure.

She feels a desire building inside her. It’s the desire to run, to be anywhere but here. She can feel it growing because her hands and jaw are tensing further with each passing moment. She tries to imagine herself at home, relaxing with a good book and a cup of tea. How pleasant that would be. But then reality presses in and she realizes her daydreaming has only made the tension worse. It has expanded to her chest and the desire feels more like pain.

Her frustration with the situation is intensifying so rapidly that she begins to worry it might be visible on her face. What if her boss realizes she thinks he’s an utter bore? A terrifying thought. This new worry compounds the tension to an almost unbearable level. She needs to do something — but what?

Other than making a scene and potentially risking her job, her only option seems to be to let go. She has to stop fighting and surrender to her present reality. She hates the idea, but she can’t think of anything else. As silently as she can, she takes a deep breath, while nodding at her boss who is still talking ad nauseam. She focuses on the present, on the tightness she is feeling and the words she is hearing.

She tries to let go of everything, including her desire to be free. She is only here. She is only now. Nothing outside this moment exists. She holds this peaceful thought in mind as the deluge of words continues to wash over her. All of this is nothing, she realizes. It comes and then it goes. Her body begins to loosen as though the world has slipped off her like a silk robe. Perhaps she can endure this trial after all.

67. Witnessing Suffering

Thu, 17 Apr 2025 10:00:00 -0800

It is when I’m suffering most that I most need to open myself to the suffering of others. By seeing the links between their suffering and my suffering, I’m better able to see that the root of our suffering is the same. And by seeing the root of suffering more clearly, I’m also better able to see how to bring it to an end.

Even when my suffering is insignificant, there are others around me who are suffering greatly. To feel their suffering as my own can be overwhelming. I might want to reject it by closing my eyes or by escaping to a comfortable place. I might want to distract myself from it through media or games or some other pleasure-seeking behaviour.

But in doing so, I become separated from life and the world. I isolate myself in a protective bubble that is not actually protective, but actively harmful to myself and others. It is harmful because it blocks me from the possibility of compassion and the opportunity to transform suffering into joy.

This applies to the art I engage with as well. If I flee from difficult novels or serious films because they frequently include stories of people mired in terrible suffering, I limit my own awareness and I work against my own possible compassion and joy.

When I am suffering greatly, I might think I do not have the energy to handle such art, or that there is already too much suffering in my own life to take on more. But by witnessing the suffering of a character in a story, I learn how to see my own suffering more clearly. By connecting my own suffering to the character’s suffering, I am rescued from the isolation of thinking that my suffering is unique or intractable. I might also gain a new perspective on the experience of suffering or discover types of suffering of which I was previously unaware. All of this helps me see the nature of suffering and how it is a shared human experience. And this insight can provide enormous relief from the relentless struggle of daily life where suffering is felt but often not truly seen.

It is by taking in the suffering of others that I allow my awareness to expand and my compassion to bloom. When it blooms, I act to meet the needs of myself and others, including the need to be free from suffering. And it is this action that is also the source of endless joy.

66. Clearing The Ground

Wed, 16 Apr 2025 10:00:00 -0800

It can feel like a mistake to destroy what we have already spent so much effort creating. We have something real and tangible right now, but if we destroy it, then we will have nothing.

It feels like we would not only be discarding what was built, but also its meanings. When we build something we expend time and effort — real parts of our own lives we cannot get back. This meaningful expenditure becomes part of the meaning of the created object. In addition, the longer the object is part of our world, the greater the role it seems to play in the meaning of that world. These acquired meanings feel valuable in themselves and we do not want to lose them.

Our aversion to destruction extends not just to physical objects but also to our creations in the virtual world of norms and language. To negate these things can feel just as troubling. But an aversion to negation operates like any other aversion. If we become attached to it then we limit our possibilities, narrow the scope of our lives, and trap ourselves in the cycle of suffering.

By clearing the ground, we enable the possibility of building anew. We gift ourselves a fresh opportunity to think clearly about what we most need and to put our time and effort towards building something even better than what we already have.

But such destruction can be valuable even when we do not build anything new. It can help liberate us from the past, a past we easily become attached to and nostalgic for. This doesn’t mean forgetting our history, but simply allowing ourselves freedom from artifacts that have become stagnant and limiting.

While our constructions benefit us, they also restrict our movements. To move more freely is the promise that newly cleared ground offers. When we open ourselves to negation, we enable a wider range of creative possibilities that can surpass anything we have previously imagined. And when our creativity is unbounded, we are better able to apply our energy and resources to solve problems of need and live more joyfully.

65. Sticky Texts

Tue, 15 Apr 2025 10:00:00 -0800

You’re cleaning your desk when you come across a book. You started it a long time ago, and then put it down one day and forgot about it entirely. You open it to the page where you left off, but you don’t recall the text. You go back to the start of the chapter and vague memories begin to float to the surface. The book is nonfiction and packed with information. You don’t remember the details but this doesn’t bother you.

You sit down with the neglected book and begin to read. The text comes alive as you process it. You examine each sentence thoroughly, even rereading when the meaning is too dense to be understood in a single pass. The writing is clear but there are so many details. You read with great care, but you know you cannot possibly retain everything.

Each chapter is a relentless barrage of information, wave after wave crashing onto the shores of your mind. There are many interesting bits — probably too many. You occasionally jot down a quick note when something really stands out. As for everything else, you allow it to recede back into the ocean of text.

You feel no need to retain anything in particular. It’s just knowledge. Facts, statistics, and other forms of information. This is not what you’re interested in obtaining. You know you’ll hold on to what matters most. You don’t have to force it. You don’t even need to try to remember. It will happen no matter what you do, as long as you continue to read attentively.

Parts of the text are sticking to you, somewhere deep inside. They may not be the parts you recognize as important. They will take root in you and grow into new appendages, new body parts that will shape your future understanding and actions. Whether or not you consciously perceive them is irrelevant. For the seeds are still there, embedded in the unreachable core of your awareness. In this way, every book you read quietly transforms into an unknowable but important part of who you are and who you will be.

64. Needing Purpose

Mon, 14 Apr 2025 10:00:00 -0800

What is life for? Is it for having new experiences and finding happiness? Is it for learning about the world and ourselves? Is it for achieving material success and building a family? Is it for supporting others and making the world better for future generations? Is it for expressing ourselves and creating beautiful art? Perhaps life is for all of these things and more.

If we have an answer to the question of life’s purpose then the question dissolves without a fight. But what if all answers fail to satisfy? What if others question our answer and tell us it’s wrong? What if we can’t convincingly defend our answer?

Without conviction in our answer, the question of life’s purpose can haunt us. We can become obsessed with it and with trying to justify our lives. This obsession is a symptom of attachment to the belief that only what is meaningful is worthwhile. We feel our daily activities lack ultimate meaning and, seeing this, we are consumed by the worry that our lives are not worth living.

Our worrying traps us because we feel each possible answer to our demand for meaning is not good enough, not convincing enough, or not justified enough. We want an answer that comes with a final justification. We want an answer we can feel certain about. The trap is that certainty of this kind is simply not feasible.

We cannot reach anything ultimate, and any foundations we might furnish must rest on nothing more than ourselves. This is true not just for existential questions but for all of our knowledge. So a question like “what is life for?” can only be answered with something we choose for ourselves. If we are not satisfied by any of the answers we can imagine then the best we can do is to try to let go of the question.

What we really want anyway is not to know our purpose in flimsy words but to feel our concrete actions are purposeful ones. And this is something we can achieve. If we are open to the world and pay attention to ourselves and the people around us, then we will see need and what we must to do to meet it. And in meeting the needs of ourselves and others, our actions will feel more purposeful than ever before.

63. I Am Not Alone

Fri, 11 Apr 2025 10:00:00 -0800

I step out of the train station and into the open air. The weather is pleasant enough but there are clouds pregnant with rain in the distance. I’ve never been here before, but I know the station is near a body of water. Either a lake or a big river. I can’t remember which. I look around but there is no water to be seen. Just the concrete of the station and a huge, empty parking lot. There is not a single person in sight.

I can hear the distinctive hum of traffic in the distance, but I see no movement whatsoever. I know that two other people got off the train when I did, but they have completely disappeared. To where, I do not know. There are some buildings beyond the parking lot, but nothing to indicate any kind of human presence.

There is a path that leads around the parking lot, and I follow it. I’m expecting someone to appear at any moment but there is nothing. No people, no movement, no water. I suddenly wonder if I’ve made a terrible mistake. I look back at the station and confirm its name is what it should be. I tell myself I’m in the right place.

The bark of a large dog sounds somewhere nearby. I’m startled at first and then reassured. It means there is life here. The path I’m following continues up a small hill. Reaching the top, I can now see the street. A car goes by. I tell myself this is good. There are signs of life.

I look up and down the broad street and there is not a single pedestrian. Just unfriendly square buildings, spindly trees struggling to grow, and the smell of car exhaust. I seem to be the only person on foot. Strange, but maybe it’s normal for this town. I look out beyond the street and see a body of water in the distance, on the other side of the tracks. I want to get there, but I do not know how.

I start off down the street, in what must be the right direction. Every minute or two another car goes by. Because of the sun in my eyes, I cannot see the drivers. And so I still have not seen a human being. No one standing, no one sitting, no one walking. I’m certain I was told this is a popular town. Where is everyone? Has there been some kind of disaster?

The rumble of another train approaching washes away my questions. I watch it pass through the station without stopping. I can see people inside the train cars. I am not alone. I keep telling myself this as I continue down the street. I am not alone.

62. New Beginnings

Thu, 10 Apr 2025 10:00:00 -0800

A strong feeling is present in me but I do not understand it. To see it clearly, I need to sit patiently with it. I need to allow it to exist without any form of interference. I can’t try to preserve it, fight it, or control it. It might last for a long time or it might depart quickly, but this is not up to me.

Right now, I am only an observer. I am not even the source of the feeling. I am looking at the feeling, watching it without any intention or goal. If I achieve anything, it will only be in seeing what my feeling is and where it comes from.

The depth of a single feeling can be terrifying when I’ve never looked so carefully before. It seems to contain a darkness that could swallow me whole. This easily causes a new feeling to arise — the fear of what lies beyond. Because fear is so powerful, it pulls my attention away from the feeling I’m trying to observe. I want to run to the safety of a distraction, to anything familiar and known.

But I have to keep watching in order to gain the chance to understand. I need to watch my feeling from the moment I notice it until the moment it departs. Then I might just be able to discover its shape and its source. It is this awareness I need.

As I gradually become more aware of my feelings, I also become more sensitive to myself and others. I begin to see how the experiences we share as human beings give rise to many of the same feelings and responses.

When I am sensitive and aware, I make different choices and I act differently. This happens because I begin to see what I must do. I begin to understand how the suffering of regret, despair, or anxiety arises in me and causes me to act in ways that are limiting and harmful. I begin to take action to rid myself of that suffering and create joy in its place.

All of these new beginnings originate in the decision to quietly observe the feelings that arise in me. And this is why I must always be patient and watch with great care.

61. The Thing In Question

Wed, 09 Apr 2025 10:00:00 -0800

To express the whole truth is no easy matter. It means releasing myself from whatever intentions I might have about what is right and good. It means following the grooves of my past experience — grooves unknown to words but deeply felt. It means listening carefully to the intuitions that arise from my present awareness of myself and the world.

Where my awareness is strong, I am likely to discover that my words are able to say more than they literally say. They seem to point at something beyond, a truth or a beauty that has no name and cannot be talked about directly. Something that simply is. If I try to talk about it, if I try to use words to pin this nameless thing down, I will not be able to capture it.

And this means it can be a real challenge to keep my words honest. To be honest about what resides beyond words while still using words means I must refrain from trying to force language to do what it cannot do. I should not attempt to define what lies beyond. I have to recognize that there are limits to my language. At the same time, I have to allow for the possibility that my words will express something that somehow exceeds these limits.

To do this, I embrace metaphor in all its forms. I recognize that clear language is not always the most expressive language. I accept that I am sometimes more honest when I try to point to the truth through indirect images and gestures, rather than trying to state it outright using rigorous logic and detail.

All of this is difficult because there is an overwhelming inclination to use language to just say the thing. Language is a practical tool at heart, and it wants to be used practically. But the thing in question cannot be said, for it is not even a thing. All I can do is show what I see with as much openness and honesty as possible, and then what cannot be named might somehow reveal itself.

60. A Terrible Mistake

Tue, 08 Apr 2025 10:00:00 -0800

Your friend is making a terrible mistake. You’ve been in their situation before and you know it ends badly. You don’t want your friend to experience the same pain and suffering you experienced. You want them to change course.

You tell your friend about your concerns and you give them good reasons to take your advice. They listen to you carefully and they seem to understand your reasoning, but they don’t agree with you about the outcome. You think it will end in certain disaster, but they feel it’s going to work out. You plead with them to reconsider, but they still stand by their choice. You think they are being stubborn and that they do not want to admit their mistake. They think you’re just pessimistic and everything will be fine.

The disagreement cannot be overcome. You’re upset because you know they’re going to be hurt, and it feels like there is nothing you can do. You can only wait and watch it happen, and this makes you feel terrible.

You are suffering. You have a strong aversion to your friend’s actions and the harm you believe these actions will produce, and you have become attached to this aversion. Your friend will not change course and so your aversion is confronted by a reality that you do not want. The suffering you are experiencing as fear and worry is the product of your attachment.

If you do not step back now, you risk being consumed by your suffering. Intense worry might cause you to argue with your friend and push them away. And then who will be there to offer support when the inevitable happens? By allowing yourself to be manipulated by your suffering, you will only produce additional suffering for yourself and your friend. They do not want you to worry and they do not want you to suffer. But the only person who can prevent this particular suffering is you.

You’ve made your concerns known and now there is nothing more for you to do. You must allow events to unfold as they will. As difficult as it is to do, you must try to create some space for yourself by loosening your attachment. This means you have to look into yourself and see the root of your attachment. You need to see how it is actively producing the suffering you feel.

By creating space for yourself, you allow your attention to shift to what you can actually do to support your friend. With open attention and freedom from attachment, you will be able to offer yourself and your friend the compassion you both need.

59. The Legitimacy Of Power

Mon, 07 Apr 2025 10:00:00 -0800

To have power over someone is to introduce a problem. Having power over another means being able to require particular actions (or inactions) from that person. But imposing particular actions means extinguishing the ability of the other to make a choice. And this is a problem.

It is precisely the freedom to choose that enables every person to live their own life and establish their values in the world. This activity of choosing and creating oneself is a primary source of one’s own value as a human being. If our ability to choose is limited through the application of power, then our humanity is also limited. By depriving us of the responsibility to choose, power also deprives us of our humanity.

Any authority that restricts our ability to choose is therefore dangerous. This is especially true when the authority itself is imposed without choice and without recourse to an alternative. Willing acceptance of a limited authority could obviate the problem, but in practice, such acceptance is neither sought nor required for existing authorities to exercise power. The lack of explicit approval or acceptance raises serious doubts about the legitimacy of such power.

Out of a desire for expediency, we tend to sweep questions about legitimacy under the rug. We assert that the authorities present in our society are legitimate because they are democratic or otherwise originate from the will of the people. But at no time is there ever any suggestion that the people have the option to choose other authorities outside our system or even other systems altogether.

Anxiety over others developing serious doubts about our existing systems and norms is often enough to stop us from considering the problem head on. But by hiding from the problem, we only lie to ourselves. To investigate power and its legitimacy is demanding and troublesome, but openness to potentially frightening alternatives is the only way towards a more wholesome respect for the humanity of all people.

58. Living Means

Fri, 04 Apr 2025 10:00:00 -0800

Faced with the prospect of living, he wants to run.

Living means getting up early and having barely enough time to eat breakfast before his ninety-minute commute to work.

Living means working fifty hours per week at a job that isn’t difficult but bores him to death.

Living means figuring out how to help his sister with her money/boyfriend/job problems without involving their parents because he knows they will do nothing but worry and complain.

Living means he’s lucky if he gets an hour to relax in the evening before bed and then not being able to sleep because his mind won’t stop running.

Living means trying to follow the news and not understanding what it actually means, but having the vague feeling that everything is going to be worse in the future.

Living means working a second job for an extra twenty hours per week so he can afford to pay the rent in a neighbourhood that isn’t entirely terrible.

Living means driving in heavy traffic for three hours each way to visit his parents, which he tries to do at least once a month.

Living means trying to find someone on a dating app that reduces him to a handful of images, and then finally meeting the one person who responds to his messages before they disappear after two weeks.

Living means the only time he actually enjoys himself is when he has some time off to do absolutely nothing except eat, watch movies, and play video games.

Living means his friends have all moved to other cities or countries, to chase money, lovers, or something else, something undefined, something like happiness, which he doesn’t think he really knows.

Living means not being able to get a better job because he rarely has time to send out his resume, and even when he does, there is no response.

Living means thinking of an excuse to tell his mom so that he doesn’t have to visit this month, not because he doesn’t want to, but because he needs time to relax.

Living means he can’t stop thinking about how nothing seems to end, how everything just keeps going and going, grinding him down more and more, with nothing better in sight.

Faced with the prospect of living, he wants to run.

57. I Wish It On Myself

Thu, 03 Apr 2025 10:00:00 -0800

When someone harms another, I demand justice. If justice does not come and the wrongdoer continues to do harm, I might then wish for the wrongdoer to also experience harm.

I wish for this because I feel the wrongdoer should suffer just as his victims have suffered. I see him as my enemy. I want him to pay for his crimes. I want retribution. I want it so much, I become blind to how this wanting itself can harm me.

The desire for vengeance and the need for justice are not the same thing. Desire can consume me through obsessive attachment and dominate my actions in ways that produce even more pain and suffering. Most importantly, when I satisfy my desire for vengeance by responding to harm with further harm, I perpetuate the cycle of violence.

The person I have declared my enemy is also me. For all living beings are part of a continuous whole. The distinction between myself and the other is not a binding or final truth but rather a convention I impose. And since the other is also me, when I wish harm on anyone, I wish it on myself. It may not arrive today or even tomorrow, but it will come. The cycle will continue.

Anyone who does wrong is flawed in much the same way as I am flawed. For like me, the awareness of the other is not total or complete. The difference between us is that he is ignorant of the harm he is presently causing. To meet the need for justice, I must work to eliminate not just this particular ignorance but all ignorance. And not only in the other — for this might not be possible in practice — but in myself, as well.

To create justice, I have to see everything clearly. When I see clearly, I refuse to allow myself to contribute to further harm. When I see clearly, I understand that the system of power and hierarchy — the one we have built on the false premise it will protect us — only serves to produce an endless stream of suffering. When I see clearly, I know that each individual act of wrongdoing is also a product of this constructed system that is itself unjust.

With this clarity, I will always see the need to reduce ignorance and expand awareness. I will be motivated to act from compassion, which means I will work to meet the needs of myself and others, including the need for justice. Instead of wasting my energy wishing harm on those who have done wrong, I will help to create a more just world with my every act.

56. A Vessel For A Feeling

Wed, 02 Apr 2025 10:00:00 -0800

There’s a feeling inside you that needs to be let out. You’ve felt it for ages and you’ve finally decided you have to release it into the world. You need to express it. Sure, you could tell someone about it, but that wouldn’t be enough. The feeling is too powerful. It needs to live apart from you. It needs to be given its own separate existence.

You need to create a container, a vessel, to carry your feeling in your stead. You need to make something, but you aren’t sure what. You start thinking and investigating. You come up with an impressive list of ideas, techniques, and methods. This process of imagining and discovering feels good while you’re doing it, but your feeling is still with you. You have not yet created anything. All you’ve done so far is think.

Now is the time to do. You apply your methods, techniques, and other products of thought to create the perfect vessel — but nothing happens. What you produce is dead on arrival. It cannot hold your feeling. What must you do differently? You understand the ”what” but not the ”how” — you know what you want to show but not not how to show it. You try a few more times but still you get nowhere. You grow frustrated. Should you just quit? You want to abandon the project, but your feeling persists. It still needs to be released. It demands to be given a life of its own.

Obviously you can’t continue doing what you’ve been doing. So you decide to let go of your ideas, of your methods, of all of your thoughts. You decide not to think at all. You will simply do, and see what you get.

You make the first marks. Gradually, something starts to appear. A being. It’s not at all what you expected. You aren’t sure of its value. You can’t tell whether it’s any good at all. But it is something and it is real. You know this because you can see vague traces of your feeling in it.

You press forward, allowing the vessel to emerge freely from your body. You allow no thought or reflection. You’ve abandoned all of that, or at least reserved such processes for a later time. Now there is only release. Now there is only birth.

55. Everything You Need

Tue, 01 Apr 2025 10:00:00 -0800

You desperately want to find someone who energizes and inspires you. You’re so tired of the endless small talk and the conversations about events, and media, and politics. You want genuine contact — connections alive with hope and breathing with possibility. You want substance, depth, and genuine stakes. You want there to be lives on the line.

You search and you search but you fail to find such a person. Everyone you meet feels cold. They lack the fire you so desperately desire. They do not live for beauty and ideas like you do. They do not seem to care about the things you feel are important or true. You do not seem to fit in anywhere. Your desires and beliefs do not seem to be shared.

You realize you are an alien, without any people of your own. You despair over this discovery. But you also tell yourself it isn’t true. Your people exist. They must exist because you find them in the books you read, so they must be out here in the world too. But where are they? And if you knew, would you be able to reach them? These questions haunt you.

Finding nothing for you in the world, you gradually start to spend more and more time by yourself. Your focus shifts to your work, so heavily that you often have little time for anything else. You work on projects that inspire you. You develop your ideas. You create artworks and you share them with others.

One day, you realize you’re no longer suffering. This is strange at first, but eventually you begin to accept it. You are standing alone and it feels fine. You’ve stopped trying to seek anything specific from others and your despair has vanished along with your desire. You still meet people, but without the expectation that your experience with them will be like what you once desired. You appreciate what is there, regardless of what you find.

From your acceptance, you discover your life is more than it once seemed. It’s richer, more vibrant, more full of possibility than you previously imagined. The world feels open to exploration, your connections with others feel meaningful, and your creative efforts finally feel satisfying. You are not missing anything or anyone. You already have everything you need.

54. Bodies And Spaces

Mon, 31 Mar 2025 10:00:00 -0800

A human being is a body — a physical entity that takes up space in the world. This seemingly obvious fact is often obscured by the nature of contemporary experience. Physical bodies do not seem relevant in the realm of the internet. Here, we do not care about our own bodies, let alone the bodies of other people.

Inside the virtuality of online spaces, we exist as disembodied entities. We can forget about our bodies entirely and interact with others in ways that exceed our ordinary abilities. We can engage in situations where we would otherwise face harm. We can enter into contexts we would not be able to enter as embodied beings. Disconnected from physical existence, we engage with each other in these spaces as though we really are disembodied.

By extending the range of our experience, the freedom of virtuality makes us more powerful. But power is also dangerous. It can cause us to overstep our responsibilities and behave in ways that we wouldn’t were we in the same room with others. When spread widely across millions of people in an online space, this overstepping can be catastrophic.

Without the presence of our bodies and the bodies of others, we do not know how to recognize each other as fellow human beings. The result is that we fail to treat others as real people capable of experiencing pain and suffering. We instead behave like gods and treat others like objects.

When someone treats us like an object, our immediate reaction is to do the very same thing to them. Reciprocity is, after all, our most basic social instinct. The patience to inhibit this instinct and locate a more just response is not available when we cannot see another person as a person. The inevitable outcome is an environment that actively repels empathy and encourages a spiral downward into an abyss of hostility and harm.

53. She Will Rise Again

Fri, 28 Mar 2025 10:00:00 -0800

Everyone is against her. She can’t escape the feeling that everything she does or wants to do is met with opposition. One day, it’s her mother nagging her to finally figure out her life, to find a partner and settle down. The next, it’s her best friend telling her to be more conscious of her financial situation and to set more realistic goals. Or it’s her boss, giving her a hard time over a mistake so mundane it’s not even worth mentioning.

Everything she does is wrong. She feels she’s wrong about everything. She knows this isn’t true but she still feels it like a weight pressing on her chest. She knows she doesn’t act how others want and expect. She knows she’s strange. But she’s only trying to do what she knows is right — to create her own path in the world.

The world refuses to yield even an inch. The world is relentless in its fight against her. Being herself has become so difficult that existence itself feels like a burden. Why can’t she catch a break? Why is her life a constant battle? It’s all beyond exhausting.

Giving up is always an option. Of course she thinks about it. Abandoning her path. Building an ordinary life. Starting a normal career. There was a time when she would’ve given into such thoughts. She would’ve done whatever people demanded of her. She would’ve done anything just to keep the peace.

Peace is no longer a priority. She’s lost far too much for peace. She isn’t going to roll over for anyone. Not anymore. She’ll take whatever damage the world dishes out. She’ll take it and continue to push forward. She might occasionally collapse under the weight of the world’s onslaught, but this is just a sign she needs to rest. She will not let it change her mind.

She will rise again. And again and again. She will keep rising and pushing herself forward. She will struggle for as long as it takes. She will be the person she knows she must be.

52. How To Be Honest

Thu, 27 Mar 2025 10:00:00 -0800

If I am not honest with myself then I run the risk of living a lie. I can easily delude myself into thinking something is real and true when it is actually fake and false.

To keep myself honest, I need to ask myself questions. I must question my intentions, I must question my understanding, and I must even question my values. By posing these questions, I gain an opportunity to become more aware of myself. But how do I know my answers will be honest ones?

When I reflect on a particular idea or belief, I eventually reach a conclusion that I accept. I accept it even though I might still have doubts. Acceptance simply means that I stop the process of reflection for now. I might take action based on my present understanding, but I must also leave room for future questions to arise. This means my accepted conclusion is never final and it can change over time.

Openness to change is fundamental to honesty. If my answers are so clear and final that they close me off from further questions, then I am at great risk of falling into delusion. I am at risk because I am not allowing for new information to arrive and I have forgotten that nothing is certain.

Even if I do fall into delusion, there is still hope as long as I remain open and attentive. For if I have not answered a question honestly, then it will not leave me alone. It will keep appearing in my thoughts, even though I believe it is already resolved. Deeper than any conscious thought, a powerful resistance to dishonesty resides in me. If I have not been fully honest, then I will intuitively feel I am being tricked — and I do not want to be tricked, not even by myself.

As long as I can notice this intuition, I can reopen the question and reflect on it again with even greater honesty. But if I try to bury my intuition using distractions and deceptions, then I will not be able to help myself. I will be tricked into living a lie.

I must pay attention to myself. I must keep asking myself questions. I must keep myself open to everything. As long as I do these things, I leave a path open towards a more honest and truthful life.

51. Boredom Is A Signal

Wed, 26 Mar 2025 10:00:00 -0800

To be completely bored is a dreadful feeling. You desperately want something new and interesting but there is no such thing available. The world itself begins to feel devoid of value since there is no longer any part of it that draws you in and captures your attention.

In the absence of anything new, you are left entirely alone with yourself and your feelings. You want to escape this state. You will do anything to find something that will pull you out of the hole you’re in and help you feel excited again.

As you experience more and more of the world, you naturally get used to it. Rather than being an aberration, boredom is an expected outcome of life. New things might come along, but they will tend to be variations on what you’ve already seen. That the world still contains countless unnoticed and unseen details does not change this, because boredom is a subjective experience. It happens when you feel you’ve seen it all, regardless of whether or not you actually have.

Paying greater attention to the world might alleviate your boredom or it might not. Perhaps you simply aren’t excited by what the world has to offer right now. But there is also more for you to experience than just the world. There is also yourself, and in particular, your own imagination, which can take you far beyond anything that already exists.

Boredom is a signal for you to spend more time with your imagination. It is a sign that you need to allow yourself to envision a new world. This other world might not arrive immediately, but by repeatedly allowing yourself to imagine bolder and more complex ideas, your ability to see it will develop and grow.

As your imagination grows, you will become excited by the things you imagine, and you will feel an urge to bring them into reality. You will discover within yourself a hidden need to express the new world inside you through creative action. Far from desperately desiring what is new and interesting, you will now become its provider.

50. An Author After All

Tue, 25 Mar 2025 10:00:00 -0800

From between the pages of a book, an anonymous text slips out and falls to the ground.

Words that come from nowhere exist in empty space. They have no meaning, as they are only symbols. Meanings are human — words on their own do not have them. Isolated words are independent of any human being and of humanity itself. Here, there is no me and there is no you. There are only words.

A text that has no humanity has no author, no context. It is only an object. Context would usually come from the author, and the world of meanings they carry, but there is no such person. There are no persons at all, only this collection of symbols, arranged into a text.

It is when you arrive that everything changes. You see the text on the ground in its state of total loneliness and you do something with it — you read it. Now the text is attached to a person, a context, a set of meanings. These are not the intended meanings of the author, for there is no author. There is only you and whatever you have supplied to the text, whatever meanings you have given it. You have imbued the text with your own humanity.

You have transformed this orphan text into something more than a simple object. While it was only symbols before, it is now rich with semantic content. The text has come alive, and you are the source of its life. It lives as an extension of your own subjective consciousness. It means what you allow it to mean and nothing more than this. It is your beliefs and values that grant it any truth or falsehood.

This text that you found homeless now has a home in you. It is only because of you that it has a context and a shape. By reading, you have crafted it into something real and vital. You have given it power and meaning. It seems this authorless text does have an author after all. Its author is you.

49. Imperfect, Flawed, Arbitrary

Mon, 24 Mar 2025 10:00:00 -0800

Rule making begets rule making. We first make a rule only to later discover an exception. We then modify the existing rule or make another rule to cover the exception. But then we discover an exception to the new rule and the whole process repeats.

What we end up with is a frustrating and unmanageably complex set of rules. We find ourselves with laws that require professional guidance to follow, sports with rules that are impossible to adjudicate, and philosophical distinctions that are incomprehensible to non-specialists.

The problem begins with seeing the original rule as sacrosanct. A rule that is established and employed is taken to be final — subject to tweaking but not complete replacement. Instead of positing an alternative or getting rid of it entirely, we tend to want to keep that first rule, believing it can be fixed. We also tend to think that perfect rules are possible, provided we make the right changes.

But perfection, while perhaps not strictly impossible, is at the very least unrealistic. By recognizing our rules as imperfect, flawed, and arbitrary, we learn not to expect more from them than they can provide. We thereby avoid the trap of thinking that a few small changes will lead us to perfection, which keeps us from becoming obsessed with the rules we are currently using.

When we remember our rules are conventions we have mutually agreed to impose, we see them as contingent and thus also changeable and eliminable. Our current rules are then nothing more than temporary infrastructure that will be demolished and rebuilt as new and better approaches are discovered in the future.

48. Held By The Light

Fri, 21 Mar 2025 10:00:00 -0800

Standing at the waterfront, I look out at the vastness of the sea. The afternoon sun shimmers off the water’s surface. There are wobbly patches of intense light in the foreground and an abundance of sparkles in the distance. The patterns that emerge possess a mesmerizing beauty. I feel an urge to capture the moment, to save its magic in some way. But I know it won’t work. Whatever I could preserve by taking a photo would not be this. It would just be a representation, a reduction of what is here and now into a lesser form. Right now I just need to see, to absorb the view, to live in it. This it that is already so fleeting. This it that will be gone so soon. But I’ve got to stop thinking about this. If I’m thinking about how it will soon be gone, then I’m already mourning, even while it’s still with me. I need to live it fully, and that means I’ve got to let go of everything but it. That means there is no past and no future. There is just this instant where I am being held by the light. But letting go also means there can be no me, either. Being fully present means being one with it. I need to allow myself to melt into it and for it to melt into me. The glistening and my feeling of its beauty together form something new, where there is no me, no water, no light. Just it. This singular experience. It’s brief but also eternal. Somehow I can sense eternity in it. And now I also notice that I’ve become more than I usually am. Boundaries that are usually sharp have become blurry. The world and I have become a living unity. And in this becoming, I feel an unmistakable joy.

47. Consumed By Conflict

Thu, 20 Mar 2025 10:00:00 -0800

When the world feels hostile, it is easy to fall into a pattern of endless judgment, criticism, and opposition. I see how things could be better and I imagine an ideal world. This imaginative vision is valuable because it shows me a possible alternative, but it can also transform into a problem.

I can easily become attached to my ideal. It seems so much better than reality and I want it to exist. I want changes to the present that cannot exist presently. Instead of accepting the world as it is and working from there, I start to fight everything around me. There is a conflict between me and the world. My desire for a better world is pressing, but the present world must be as it is. I suffer as I experience this discrepancy.

My suffering might take the form of anger towards others, despair over my life, or anxiety about the future. It might be one of these feelings one day and another the next. All of these feelings drain me, and I expend enormous energy trying to appease them. For the conflict between my ideal and reality is not a passive consequence. It is a battle I actively maintain. I manipulate my attention and actions in response to my suffering, and I quickly use up all of my resources.

When I am so completely consumed by conflict, I have nothing left to devote to bringing about actual change. I need to allow the world to exist as it is. I need to see how it could be better without becoming attached to my desire for an ideal. To do this I need to see my attachment and how it produces suffering. I need to see that there is space between myself as the subject who experiences and my desire as an object created by my judgment. I cannot escape from my desire for a better world, but I must recognize that this desire is not me.

Seeing these things is not easy. I cannot simply notice them once and then carry on with my life, for the attachment will immediately return. I must actively and continuously see them, and this requires effort. But through this effort, I can end my self-produced suffering and restore my energy. Then it will be finally possible for me to do what I must to help create a meaningfully better world.

46. An Inexplicable Gift

Wed, 19 Mar 2025 10:00:00 -0800

The miraculous is singular and divine. It only happens once, and never again. It is beyond our human abilities. It is an inexplicable gift given by the world itself.

Like the miraculous, the magical also cannot be explained. If it could be explained, we would call it science. The magical, however, is neither singular nor divine. It is repeatable and it is something we can do. The magical is closer to the human while the miraculous is the work of the gods.

Your desires, aversions, and beliefs can produce suffering. They combine to produce an ideal world that you want for yourself. If you become attached to your ideal, you will continuously compare your reality to the ideal. Since reality typically falls short, you will suffer from the misery that your life is not what you want it to be right now and the anxiety that it might not be what you want it to be in the future. By seeing this relationship between attachment and suffering in your own experience, you can also discover how to free yourself from attachment. When you are completely empty of attachment, your self-produced suffering also ends.

That your suffering ceases when you are empty appears to be straightforward cause and effect. If it is regularly and repeatably observed it might even be a scientific truth. But not only does your suffering end, it is also replaced by an unexpected joy. You exist in the same way as you did when you were suffering but now this same existence is a joyful one. This transformation does not seem to have any explanation. It seems to be, in some way, magical.

And perhaps it is also miraculous. For even if each particular instance of joy is something you create through your own actions, the very possibility of joy itself is not your doing. How is it possible that there can be an experience so peaceful, so uplifting, and so perfect? That joy exists at all seems to be a singular and inexplicable gift.

45. It Might Result In Nothing

Tue, 18 Mar 2025 10:00:00 -0800

Doing something you do not know how to do can be frightening. Your goal is to do it correctly and not make a mess of things. You want to be successful, but more importantly, you do not want to fail.

You are worried about your performance because any mistake might doom you to failure. Your actions become rigid and tightly controlled because you are evaluating your every move, judging whether or not it will help you achieve your goal.

To approach your task with no intentions, no focus, and no plan might seem foolish. It seems this way because your sole focus is the potential failure you see ahead of you. But it is when you let go of the desire to avoid failure that true creativity becomes possible.

Being creative means doing something you do not know how to do without any specific goal in mind. It means experimentation. It means trying out different possibilities without knowing how they will go. It means letting go of worries about performance, even though you do not know whether or not you will succeed.

Your effort might result in nothing. It might end up feeling like a waste of time. Accepting these possible outcomes is part of unleashing your creativity. If you only do things in the proper way then nothing that expresses your unique experience can emerge from you. You will be stuck following the same existing patterns and what you produce will be a reproduction what came before you.

To be creative, you must release yourself from all expectations, from all norms, from all goals. You must allow something wholly new to be born from your actions and you cannot do this when you are trying to meticulously control the outcome.

Your creativity is also a kind of freedom. It cannot function properly when it is hindered by your unwieldy desire to avoid failure. You must set it loose and allow it to play. Only then can you possibly hope to create something vivid, expressive, and beautiful.

44. Temporary And Permanent

Mon, 17 Mar 2025 10:00:00 -0800

A star in the sky seems permanent, for it appears the same each and every night. But it is no more permanent than we are. Like us, it will eventually burn out and die. A blossom on a tree seems temporary, for it might last only a few more days before vanishing. But it is no more temporary than we are. Like us, it is sealed into history for all eternity.

All things are impermanent (in time) and permanent (in eternity). This is the nature of our experience and of the reality in which we must live. Everything lasts for only a finite time and yet it also goes on forever, since what has happened cannot ever be changed.

If I imagine the most beautiful paradise, it now exists permanently as something I have imagined. But it is also nothing other than a product of my own existence, which itself will disappear one day, like everything else. All of my imaginings and memories will vanish like this. And they will also always exist, for it is now impossible for them not to have existed.

Time is a movement through the world, just as walking is. But unlike walking, we cannot stop moving through time. Everything that exists in time also exists forever as it is eternal. The present moment as it is experienced is eternal. We are forever and always in eternity and in time.

That everything is both temporary and permanent might seem paradoxical. But perhaps it is simply that time and eternity are not the same kind of thing. To see the impermanence and the permanence in everything that exists is to free oneself from the illusion that it must be one or the other.

43. A Vague Unhappiness

Fri, 14 Mar 2025 10:00:00 -0800

The way to happiness, he thinks, is this: 1) ask himself what he wants, and then 2) do whatever he has to do to get it. Only when he gets what he wants will he be able to feel happy. In the meantime, he will have to suffer. This is just how it is and how it always has been. And so he works very hard for a very long time and he achieves many things. With each achievement he experiences happiness, but it lasts only for a short time before fading again. So he repeats the process, working even harder to get the next thing he wants. He figures life is just like this, fulfilling goal after goal, and when he has achieved all of his goals, he will finally be happy forever. After all, there will be nothing left to want, and if he has everything he desires, how could he not be happy? But his work never seems to end. There is always something more that he wants, and worse, some things he thought he had attained have now left him. He is stuck in a perpetual state of vague unhappiness that he can neither grasp nor mollify. He keeps struggling with his feelings, with his desires, with himself. Why can’t he just be happy? Why does happiness keep escaping when he works so hard? He starts to wonder if there might be no solution. Perhaps there is no such thing as lasting happiness. Perhaps his efforts have been in vain. As his frustration builds and builds, he begins to hate his work, his colleagues, and even the people he once loved. He begins to hate everything. Sometimes he even hates himself. He believes the world is against him and he sees everyone as his enemy. He soon discovers he has no hope left for anything at all. His final resting place is cynicism, the hatred of life itself.

42. The Heart Of Compassion

Thu, 13 Mar 2025 10:00:00 -0800

Empathy is the heart of compassion. If I cannot empathize with you, then I cannot see what you need and I will not be inclined to help you fulfill that need. And as compassion is action to meet needs, I cannot possibly act from compassion when I cannot empathize. If I can already see that compassionate action is necessary to bring an end to my own suffering, then I must learn how to empathize with everyone I encounter.

I have to allow myself to see the experiences of others — their desires and worries, the beliefs they hold about the world, the wide variety of feelings they have, and so on. My own experience is necessarily limited because I am only one person. There is only so much that a single person can do in their own lifetime, so there will be many experiences I will never personally have.

To develop greater empathy, I must grow out of my narrow experience of life and into the varied experiences of diverse others. In practice, what this means is allowing myself to see all the connections between my own thoughts, feelings, and experiences and those of other people. I do this by listening to others, reading about their experiences, engaging with artworks that express their feelings and ideas, and so on.

When I am able to see how their experiences connect to my own, it is then possible for me to understand what they are going through as though it were my own experience. It is this shared experiencing that is empathy.

When I experience someone’s suffering through empathy, I see that it is no different from the suffering I experience in my own life. When I see someone’s need as my own need, I act to fulfill that need as much as I act to fulfill my own needs. It is precisely this action that is compassion.

41. Like A Common Fool

Wed, 12 Mar 2025 10:00:00 -0800

A sailboat rests on the rocks, its single mast tilted slightly to one side. It has run aground, pushed in during the previous night’s storm. The unmanned boat had been anchored in the harbour, before coming loose in the storm’s harsh winds. It remains perfectly intact, with no visible damage.

People pause along the boardwalk that runs close to the shore to stare at the boat. Some quickly survey the scene before moving on, while others linger or take photos of the misfortune. A cluster of seagulls has boarded the boat and taken possession. A man positions his two children for a picture using the beached boat as the background.

Is it better to run aground or to sink? If there is someone on board, surely it is better to run aground. But assuming the boat is on its own, resting in the harbour, which is the better outcome? The question might seem straightforward for an outside observer, but what if you are the boat? What if it is you who must either run aground or sink?

If you run aground, you are going to suffer. You might live to see another day, but first you will be made into an object of ridicule. Everyone will stop to look at you and take pictures of your failure. They will memorialize it for all time. How could you do this, running aground like a common fool? Are you incapable of holding your anchor? Is that not what a boat is supposed to do? You wanted to be out on the open sea, joyfully cutting through the waves, and now you’re just an embarrassment.

If you sink, you can avoid all of this. You get to disappear from the world entirely, until maybe a salvage barge comes along one day and lifts your corpse from the seabed. Perhaps your parts could then be sold for scrap and you might end up being part of something else in the future. But that would be the end. No more open sea. No more joy. No more you.

Maybe being in a few embarrassing pictures isn’t really so bad? Eventually someone will refloat you and repair your hull, and then you’ll get to go back to being a regular sailboat. In a few months, no one will even remember you were here.

40. The Better Choice

Tue, 11 Mar 2025 12:00:00 -0800

It can be terrifying to choose the unknown. Between an already-tested option and an untried one, more often than not, we want to go with the safe bet.

But what if the safe bet is not actually safe at all — what if it is really the more dangerous option for our current dilemma? With only a limited awareness of the situation, it is difficult not to be deceived. We easily become confused by our existing views and biases. After all, the safe bet was the right choice in the past, and so we believe it must still be good now. We are not able to see the true risk of our options.

If someone tells us that the formerly safe bet is now a bad choice, we will not want to hear it. We ignore such warnings because listening would mean we would have to consider the possibility that we are in more danger than we think. We want to believe everything will work out fine, so we blind ourselves to the need to change course.

We need to take a step back. We need to allow for some distance between ourselves and our view of the world. This is incredibly challenging because we are deeply attached to our existing perspective and beliefs. Our attachment produces an overwhelming anxiety about any kind of change, and we are strongly inclined to hold on to our existing views.

To see more clearly, we need to look at our situation from as many different viewpoints as possible. We need to gather information, and carefully examine everything, both the good and the bad. This kind of dispassionate analysis is never easy, but is necessary in order to see the reality of our situation.

Set free from our attachment, we will be able to see that choosing the unknown is not always the inferior option. In some cases, it might not only be the better choice but also the only way to reach what we most desperately need.

39. The Limits Of Responsibility

Mon, 10 Mar 2025 12:00:00 -0800

Where does my responsibility begin and end? I know I am responsible for my actions and everything that is directly caused by them. If I do something that directly harms someone, then I am responsible for that harm.

In many cases, I will not be the sole cause of a particular outcome. But even so, my responsibility is not reduced because responsibility is not quantitative. Either I am responsible or I am not. My responsibility might be shared with others, but this does not exempt me in any way.

Insofar as I make choices at all, I am responsible. Not just because of the consequences my particular choice produces, but because the very act of choosing itself creates responsibility. Every choice I make influences the choices of others, and it can also reduce the range of choices available to them. In the same way, the choices that others make also influence and limit the choices available to me. My freedom limits the freedom of others, and their freedom simultaneously limits mine.

I am forced to make choices in every moment of my conscious experience. And every choice I make creates a limit on the freedom of others that I am responsible for. It follows from this that my responsibility is unbounded. It is unbounded because my freedom is unbounded. I can always make a choice — even when it feels like I cannot — and so I am always free. If I am always free, then I am always responsible. In the end, freedom and responsibility are actually the same thing.

38. Impossible To Satisfy

Fri, 07 Mar 2025 12:00:00 -0800

She was getting a lot done. She knew this because she was devoted to her work and she was always busy. Her productivity was higher than it had ever been and her projects were finally moving forward in a big way. Every evening, she would review her efforts and note with pleasure the measurable results she had achieved.

Her progress was impossible to discount, but still she felt she wasn’t doing enough. She kept worrying that her current pace wouldn’t be enough to reach her goals, at least not before she had expended her meagre resources. But when she took the time to map out her progress more carefully, it looked like she was still on track. She would be able to make it as long as she sustained her current effort.

But could her effort be sustained? This was the other side of her recurring worry. Did she really have the stamina to keep going at her current pace indefinitely? There was no way to know for sure. Her worry wasn’t justified by any evidence. It was the uncertainty itself that bothered her.

She’d been working hard for several months now and it didn’t seem to be wearing her out — at least, not in any way she’d noticed. Still, there was the possibility she wouldn’t last. And that possibility was more than enough to fire up her anxiety.

She told herself there was no way to be completely certain. Not about this or about anything, really. There would always be uncertainty and she’d have to live with it. She kept reminding herself of this, sometimes repeating it like a mantra.

She told herself to stay focused on making further progress. She told herself to ignore the bigger picture and the worry it brought. If she kept doing the work then she would get somewhere. And she was doing the work. Lots of it.

But still she was not satisfied with herself. This she couldn’t understand. Why was it impossible to appreciate the effort she was making? She was doing her absolute best, and she thought she ought to feel satisfied. She ought to, but she simply did not. The more she thought about it, the less sense it seemed to make. At last she considered that thinking itself might be the problem, and she decided to stop.

37. A Collection Of Pathways

Thu, 06 Mar 2025 12:00:00 -0800

A frequent companion of the active reader is the reading list. My list is is long, varied, and poorly organized. Entries sometimes include details on a book’s content, but often they are nothing but a title.

My list is, in fact, several lists. I abandon them periodically, starting a new one whenever I feel the existing list no longer suits me. But while I stop adding to the old lists, I never delete them. I hold on to them out of the belief that what interested me once might be useful again in the future. Sometimes this is actually true.

I come across the old lists sporadically — most often when I am doing my digital housekeeping. A title grabs my attention and I look it up. If it sustains my interest, then I add it to the current incarnation of the list.

The current list almost always gets out of hand. By this I mean it grows to contain far too many books for me to plausibly read before I get tired of the list and start a new one. But I accept this, for I don’t see the list as a task to complete, or a goal to accomplish.

To see the list as a task would be to transform my reading into a purely practical exercise. I would become overly concerned with progress and results. Anxiety over not reading fast enough would follow, along with the feeling that I need to maintain a certain pace in order to get somewhere on time.

To get where? On time for what? These questions do not make sense.

What I hope to obtain from reading is a type of growth that cannot be measured. My reading list is a collection of pathways I can explore to expand my awareness of myself and the world. Most of these pathways will lead to something I haven’t seen before. Some, perhaps, will not.

All of the books I read are steps in an endless journey. A journey of growth towards greater clarity, sensitivity, and awareness. It does not matter that my list is too long or impossible to complete. All that matters is that I am reading, learning, and growing.

36. The Flexibility To See

Wed, 05 Mar 2025 12:00:00 -0800

To avoid what makes me uncomfortable is to limit my own awareness.

I see harm being done and I turn away from it. I read an article that is contrary to my views and I disregard it. I hear someone offering an opinion that I hate and I plug my ears. In every case, I have closed myself off from part of the world. It is the part of the world that I do not like — the part that goes against my values, the part I judge to be bad.

I have allowed my judgments to occlude my sight. I have prevented myself from seeing the world as it really is. I have prevented myself from becoming aware of other people and their views and judgments. By blocking out part of the world, my judgments solidify and I become solid with them.

When I am solid, it is impossible for my attention to move around so that I can see things fully and clearly. It is also impossible for me to investigate myself critically and ask questions that keep me open to the world. I have become delusional — I believe my own view of the world, my singular subjectivity, is the ultimate reality. But it is not, and it never will be.

No matter how confident I am in my ability to accurately evaluate the world, my judgments are not reality. When a judgment becomes solid, then I am fully attached to it. And being so attached, I will strongly desire those things I judge to be good and I will strongly oppose those things I judge to be bad. I will allow my actions to be manipulated by my judgments and I will be distracted from doing what I must. As a direct result, I will perpetuate the cycle of suffering for myself and others.

To prevent this, I must remain open at all costs. I must take in the entire world, even the parts that feel wrong, even the parts that make me anxious, even the parts that I hate. All of it must be allowed in, without exception. It is by allowing everything in that I grant myself the flexibility to see all of the world clearly, including the parts I do not like.

35. A More Joyful Life

Tue, 04 Mar 2025 12:00:00 -0800

We go to great lengths to disguise our misery. We are suffering deeply inside, but we do not want to see it or let it be seen. We try to hide it, not just from others, but also from ourselves.

We tell ourselves we are happy when in reality we are suffering. We try to distract ourselves from this reality by whatever means we can find, but mostly by what gives us pleasure. We will do anything to avoid the idea that our way of life is not working and we do not know how to live better. To admit we are suffering feels like a fatal declaration of weakness.

We think our suffering must be the consequence of something we have done (or failed to do) and so the only person to blame is ourselves. There is some truth to this. Even if others might be responsible, we are still responsible in part. Crucially, we are responsible for our awareness of the world and ourselves. If our awareness is too narrow and limited, there is little anyone can do to help us.

We have to take action for ourselves. We have to open up to the world and explore it. We have to grow and develop the range of our vision. We have to loosen ourselves from the rules and norms that so tightly bind us. We have to question ourselves in order to see where our thinking has gone astray and where our actions do not align with our needs and the needs of others.

All of this is challenging to do. It is always easier to pretend everything is okay. It is always easier to shrug off our own suffering and continue down the same path, even if it leads to more suffering. But there is also the possibility of a better life — one largely free of suffering.

If we can see the necessity of this life for ourselves then we must first admit that our suffering is real. It is when we see the reality of suffering that we can also see how to bring it to an end.

With attention and effort, a more joyful life is possible. We need only the honesty and courage to allow ourselves to see how to get there.

34. Breaking The Rules

Mon, 03 Mar 2025 12:00:00 -0800

The rules that govern our lives often feel solid and permanent. We believe we should follow these rules because they reflect the established way of doing things. We especially believe this when the rules have been written down and formalized into a code or law. We sometimes believe we shouldn’t deviate from the rules or modify them in any substantial way. We might even go so far as to believe that our current system of rules is the only one feasible.

But rules and systems are the creations of human beings. They have force only as long as people agree to follow and uphold them. Beyond this, they are literally nothing. Rules can be changed when needed and, in fact, often do change as we learn more about ourselves and the world.

Too often we get caught up in the structures imposed by our existing rules and systems. We begin to think that the possibilities open to us are strictly delimited by these structures. Not only is this false, but sometimes we must break the rules in order for our actions to be good ones.

To break a rule is not to do wrong, it is just to break a rule. Whether or not there is any wrongdoing is a separate question having to do with whether or not the action causes harm. Rules themselves do not distinguish right from wrong, even though we are frequently convinced they do. At their absolute best, rules are attempts to codify common beliefs about what is good or bad, but they are always necessarily flawed because we are flawed.

Compassion cannot be restrained by rules or any other human construction. Compassion requires that we apply all of our creativity and effort to meet the needs of living beings and to help free them from suffering, without any consideration for rules or structures. To act from compassion is always to do whatever is necessary, even if it means breaking every last rule.

33. In Your Own Way

Fri, 28 Feb 2025 12:00:00 -0800

When you’re about to embark on a new creative project, you might first seek out some feedback on your idea from people you know. Someone more experienced might then tell you that “you need to do it this way.” When you ask them why it must be done in this particular way, they might then tell you “that’s just the way it’s done.”

This well-meant advice is entirely prudent. Human beings are creatures of habit, and if you want to make something that attracts their attention, you’re better off doing it in a way that matches their existing expectations.

But a problem arises when you discover that you can’t do your project in the expected way. For whatever reason, it is not possible for you to do it that way. You are simply incompatible with the usual approach. Now you have to make a choice. You can give up because you can’t do what you’re supposed to, or you can do it in your own way, which will likely be challenging.

Doing it your own way requires confidence. You’ll be venturing into the unknown and you can’t know in advance what will happen. But giving up is even worse, because it means abandoning the opportunity to create something new and exciting without even trying.

When you decide to press forward in your own way, you might now hear opinions like “that’s impossible” or “it simply can’t be done.” You’ll be forced push past these solemn declarations as you blaze your path into the unknown. This burden is a lot to carry while you’re also carrying the weight of realizing your new creation.

Perhaps the best course of action is not to seek advice. Just make the thing. If it fails, then so be it. But it can also succeed, and it will find the greatest success when you do it in your own way.

32. The Name Of The Poet

Thu, 27 Feb 2025 12:00:00 -0800

It was impossible for me not to feel excited when you told me you liked to read. Books are my favourite things. You asked me what sorts of books I read and I enthusiastically listed a number of authors at random. You told me you’d read some of them — two or three, or maybe it was four. I was so happy to hear it that I couldn’t properly process your words.

It had always been difficult to find people who were interested in what I read, but now here you were, standing right in front of me. I asked what you’d been reading lately. You responded with a book of poems by someone I was unfamiliar with. I asked you to repeat the name of the poet, so that I’d remember it. You did so with a smile.

And then suddenly, you had to go. You said you were supposed to meet a friend soon. I was naturally disappointed because I wanted to keep talking to you. I knew I didn’t have much time, so I hastily asked if you’d like to meet up later, to chat further about our shared interest.

You paused in thought for a moment and I knew immediately it wouldn’t work out. You said you were sorry, but you didn’t think you’d have time. I smiled and nodded, and you went on your way. It simply wasn’t meant to be.

As I stood there, alone, in the remains of your presence, I couldn’t help but feel sad. Was it something I’d said that had scared you off? Was it the intensity of my interest in books? Was it that I’d smiled too much or not enough? Or was it something outside of my control entirely — maybe you were just having a bad day?

There was no answer to these questions. Any possible response would be a guess. It would tell me nothing conclusive about what had actually happened. I had to accept I’d never know and that there had been no way to guarantee the result I wanted.

I wanted. It was difficult to admit this, even to myself. But the rejection was painful because my desire was real. My inconspicuous need for connection had given birth to an intense desire while I was talking to you. It was born and I was immediately under its spell.

When the desire finally dissipated, so did the pain. All that is left now is a memory. Already the name of the poet has vanished from my mind. And soon the remainder will be nothing but a whisper in a crowded stadium, fading rapidly into the emptiness of the past.

31. My Nature Is Change

Wed, 26 Feb 2025 12:00:00 -0800

The world is constantly changing. What is formed dissolves. What is alive dies. What is built falls apart. Some things last longer than others, but nothing lasts forever.

Against this truth, I try to create something permanent, something I can rely on, something that will outlast change itself. Perhaps I do this because I can see that I am also constantly changing. My life is short — my body will decay and fall apart and my personal consciousness will eventually come to an end. I want to halt this process. I want to stabilize my existence. I want to preserve what I have.

These wants mean my striving for permanence is endless. It consumes all of my efforts and energies as I try to hold on to all that is slipping away. In response, the world tells me this is no way to live. It tells me through the immense suffering I produce for myself and others out of my attachment to things and people and places. I strive to preserve and protect what I have, but my efforts only generate strife and misery as one thing after another inevitably leaves me.

I don’t have to live this way. Instead of fighting change, I can allow myself to embrace it. I can move with the world and change with it. I can see the things I love as temporary, and in seeing this, feel gratitude for all that I am and all that I have. I can perceive myself and others not just as individual bodies but as part of something greater, a living universe.

The only fatal thing for a living being like me is to stand still. I exist to move and grow and change along with everything else that lives and dies. When I align my own dynamic being with the dynamism of the world, I release myself from the desire for permanence that produces so much suffering. It is then that I become free to discover the joy of my existence.

30. Happy Or Joyful

Tue, 25 Feb 2025 12:00:00 -0800

Happiness and joy are not the same thing.

Happiness comes from satisfying my desires, from getting what I want, from living the life that I want. Happiness is rational and so it can be explained and justified. When I am happy, there is a reason I am happy. Happiness is a result — it is what I get when I am successful.

Joy comes when I am actively doing something and only while I remain active. It arises without reason or justification and stays regardless of circumstance, struggle, or pain. It is inexplicable and irrational. An action that provides no joy one day could bring joy the next. Joy can even arise from an action that also brings pain and unhappiness.

Joy seems to appear in the effort of making life better, both for myself and others. It frequently arises when I give something to meet a need and when I have gratitude for my ability to give it. In other words, joy arises most often when I act from compassion.

If I were always aware of what compassion required, then perhaps joy would stay with me always. Joy vanishes when I get caught up in my desires for good things, or in my worries about bad things, or in my beliefs about what the world ought to be. To live joyfully means to see clearly how these intentions can harm me and the people around me. It means seeing what compassion demands and acting on it, even when I know it will be a painful struggle.

29. Today's Poems Are Tomorrow's Language

Mon, 24 Feb 2025 12:00:00 -0800

Poetry is powerful because it takes us beyond the reaches of our everyday language. A poem is a text that points at something outside of it, something for which words are not enough.

The more we use language, the more we find ourselves trapped inside it, unable to find the words to express what we want to say, and as such, unable to communicate our meaning to others. To escape this prison, we write poems — tricks of language that indicate the thing in question without ever naming it. This trickery is not always successful, which makes writing effective poetry difficult.

When a poem succeeds, it lifts you up to a new and special place. When it fails, it is nothing but empty words that leave you where you started. To complicate matters further, a poem that resonates for me might do nothing for you, and a poem that successfully transports you to the heavens might fail to move me even an inch.

It is the rare poem that is universally successful. But such success tends to result in a strange fate. For often, the universally successful poem ends up being totally absorbed. It is consumed and digested so thoroughly that it becomes part of the language itself.

Consequently, an old poem that was once universally successful might now seem trite or obvious. We can no longer feel the full power it once possessed. The language has grown to encompass it, and it can no longer take us anywhere new.

28. The Artwork That Changes The World

Fri, 21 Feb 2025 12:00:00 -0800

You’re nobody’s fool. You’re not about to go through life with blinders on. You’re paying attention to everything that is happening, to your life and to the world. You see all of the forces in play, all of the patterns.

Everything seems to be pushing you towards conformity. Bribing you to take the path of least resistance. Asking you to accept the world just as it is. Everyone tells you that if you just go along with the way they do things, then you’ll have a happy and pleasant life.

You’re skeptical of this, but it’s also more than just skepticism. You think it’s a lie. An unintentional one perhaps, but a lie nonetheless. You see the lives of others and you see all the strife and suffering they endure. And you won’t accept any of it.

You refuse to choose suffering for yourself. You know there must be some alternative, but you aren’t sure how to bring it into being. Even so, you want to try. You decide to try because you really can’t do otherwise. If you tried to live the usual life, you wouldn’t survive. You have to take another road.

But taking another road means going against what everyone is telling you. It means pushing back on the way things are. It means acting differently from what is expected of you. It means you’ll be seen as an outcast or a delinquent, as someone wholly unserious about life. You’ll lose some of the people around you and you might even find yourself completely abandoned.

When you arrive here, you will probably consider giving up. You’ll consider it, but you are far too stubborn to actually do it. You’ll double down and find new people, others like you, people out on the fringes, risking it all for the possibility of something different. Together you’ll create what is new and exciting, and it will be a signal to others that there is another way.

Will you succeed? There’s no question. You’ve already succeeded, just by existing as you are and living as you must.

You are the artwork that changes the world.

27. Uncertainty Is

Thu, 20 Feb 2025 12:00:00 -0800

Certainty seems beyond my reach. My knowledge of the world is always limited, always finite, always subjective. To claim certainty would imply I have somehow managed to transcend these limitations. But this kind of transcendence does not seem possible for a human being like me. There is always some degree of uncertainty that remains in everything I know. To say I am certain would be a lie.

When I am dishonest, I suffer because I am forced to battle with reality itself. I try to live out my lies against reality, but reality is ruthless and it always wins. I want to be certain because I have needs that must be satisfied and satisfying those needs is far more feasible in an environment of relative certainty, where I can know what worked yesterday will also work today. To the extent that I desire my continued existence, I also desire certainty. Anxiety arises whenever I encounter the very real uncertainty that opposes my desire, and so I suffer.

To overcome my anxiety I might want to dismiss uncertainty. I might try to convince myself that I really am certain. I might try to pretend that the likelihood of the truth being any different from what I know is so minuscule as to be unworthy of consideration. But doing any of these things would mean telling myself further lies that would produce further anxiety and suffering.

Uncertainty is the condition of my existence. Anything could happen, including my death at this very moment. If I cannot accept the contingency of everything, including my own existence, I am forced into dishonesty, which in turn traps me in suffering. Perhaps this is too much to accept. But how well can I possibly live when I am constantly stuck in a trap?

26. The Last One He Will Ever Read

Wed, 19 Feb 2025 12:00:00 -0800

The old clock in the kitchen says it’s almost nine when he finally gets home. He was at work for over ten hours, plus the time to commute there and back. Now, he is exhausted. He showers quickly and eats leftovers from the fridge before collapsing onto the couch. He wants to sleep, but he knows it will be impossible. Despite his exhaustion, his mind refuses to slow down. It is still running at full speed, replaying today’s events and imagining tomorrow’s problems. He considers turning on the TV to distract him. It would give him a virtual world to fall into, a world built out of blitzes of image and sound that would occupy his mind until it finally surrenders and allows him to sleep. But he does not actually want this. He does not want more noise and activity. What he really wants is clarity. But lying here and ruminating on his life does nothing to make things clearer. He needs something to calm his mind. He ponders the problem but finds no solution, and so he decides to stop thinking about it. He will just do something. He picks up a book he has been reading. He opens it and looks at the words and realizes he doesn’t want to read. The book feels burdensome and the text looks oppressive and unwelcoming. Even so, he continues to stare at the page. He finds himself scanning the words, skipping to the place where he left off. He reads without intention, absent of any goal. He does not even know if he will make it beyond this page. He takes in each sentence as though it were the last one he will ever read. He examines it carefully, much more carefully than he ordinarily would, allowing it to fully occupy his mind. He reads it again and again, letting its meaning sink into him. Finally his attention dries up and he moves to the next sentence. And then the next. Eventually he comes across a sentence that is more interesting than the others. It seems to have multiple meanings and he is unable to settle on just one. He starts to take the sentence apart, moving the words around and replacing them with others. He plays this game with the words until his attention finally drifts to the next sentence. He continues on like this, considering everything carefully, imagining the full scope of possibility created by the language. Soon his mind grows tired. He reads only a page or two before he settles into the bliss of dreamful sleep.

25. Critical And Creative

Tue, 18 Feb 2025 12:00:00 -0800

The critical spirit looks at what already exists and questions it. The creative spirit looks beyond what already exists and searches for something new.

The critical spirit compares reality to an ideal. The creative spirit attempts to manifest an ideal by bringing it into reality.

The critical spirit discovers problems and performs investigations. The creative spirit explores possible solutions and performs experiments.

The critical spirit sees particulars as limited and subject to revision. The creative spirit sees the whole as limitless and complete in itself.

The critical spirit interrogates norms and systems that restrict and control. The creative spirit develops new structures that liberate and expand.

The critical spirit deconstructs inflexible traditions and obsolete institutions. The creative spirit transforms extant entities and substances into tools and materials for constructing new forms.

The critical spirit is skeptical of the range of human ability and understanding. The creative spirit is hopeful that new methods and technologies will expand our boundaries.

The critical spirit is a negative, destructive force, clearing away all that is tired and stagnant. The creative spirit is a positive, constructive force, building all that is vibrant and exciting.

Both spirits are necessary and needed, for each alone is impotent without the other.

24. Shifting Meanings

Mon, 17 Feb 2025 12:00:00 -0800

Language is based on agreement. You and I can communicate only insofar as we agree on the meanings of the words we use. If you judge one of the words to have a different meaning than I judge it to have, then I will not be able to communicate what I intend by using that word. Similarly, if I use a word that has no recognizable meaning for you, then I will not communicate anything at all, since for you it will be literal nonsense.

When you encounter a word for which you have no sense, you might look up the word in a dictionary. There you will find a list of meanings that have been agreed on by the broader community of language users. Dictionary definitions are records of this general agreement. The dictionary is not an arbiter of what the word ought to mean, but rather describes what it means in typical usage. From here, you might add this word to your vocabulary, and eventually use it yourself, thus demonstrating that you agree with the rest of us on what it means.

But suppose you do not agree with our meanings. Suppose you feel the word means something different. Nothing prevents you from using the word to mean something other than an agreed-upon meaning. You are free to use any word to mean what you would like it to mean. Others might not understand you at first, but they will most likely work out your meaning through context, especially if you use the word frequently.

It is through this process of proposing new senses that the accepted meanings of words change over time. Along with the birth of entirely new words, this is how the vocabulary of a language shifts.

Such change is only possible because the community of language users continually arrives at new agreements on words and their meanings. If we are recalcitrant in our use of language, if we are unwilling to alter our agreements, then we might find ourselves abandoned by the broader group. Our words then become broken tools — too rigid for the fluidity of communication and even less understood.

23. The Right Direction

Fri, 14 Feb 2025 12:00:00 -0800

We put enormous emphasis on optimizing quantities. Our attention is shackled to screens where we make certain numbers go up and other numbers go down. We want to measure everything so that we can control and optimize it. The benefit of this is that we are able to fulfill our material needs more efficiently and with less effort.

But by doing so, we begin to think only about quantities. We create incentives to sacrifice quality in order to obtain better quantitative results. We become so focused on measuring and optimizing, on increasing efficiency and productivity, that we stop thinking about what is happening to us in our day-to-day lives.

It is perhaps not surprising that we then feel there is something missing — as though life is not going as well as it ought to be, even though all of the numbers are moving in the right direction. We are astonishingly productive and yet we still struggle with the same problems of want and worry as we always have.

Our incredible efficiency consumes incredible attention, leaving none to devote to solving our most important problems. In such an inattentive state, we allow our intentions to take control.

Our desires, beliefs, and other intentions dominate our decisions. We make choices that give us more resources, more control, and more pleasure while sweeping under the rug the profound absence we feel inside ourselves. We perpetuate suffering through our attachment to endless wants, worries of loss, contempt for others who seem better off, and delusions about productivity.

We could easily carry on like this for our entire lives, with only fleeting glimpses of the joy we could regularly experience. It is only by allowing our attention to shift away from quantities and towards the quality of our experience that we ourselves begin to move in the right direction.

22. She Stays Home A Lot

Thu, 13 Feb 2025 12:00:00 -0800

She has many problems but perhaps the biggest is that she is always bored.

The people she knows talk endlessly about the most mundane topics. She doesn’t understand how they can stay interested in these things. The games and the shows and the movies that they find so engaging do nothing for her. It’s just the same thing over and over again, she wants to say. But she doesn’t say anything. She just listens and nods.

She goes for walks around the city and everything she sees is dull. It’s the same city every day, the same streets, the same parks, the same shops. She goes to events that look exciting and sometimes they actually are. But everyone ignores her at these things. There is no contact — nothing she can hold on to, nothing she can build from. Even if she gets lucky and meets someone new, the conversation devolves quickly and she is back where she started. It happens and then it’s over. And now she’s bored again.

She thinks the world is not supposed to be boring and feels bad for finding it so. She thinks there must be something wrong with her. Why is she like this when everyone else is having a good time?

She stays home a lot, reading thick books and watching old films. She loves art because it displays intelligence and depth, and literature for the same reason. These are the only things she has found that do not bore her. But what is the point of all this reading and watching and listening? There must be some purpose to it.

She wonders if the point is to make something herself, so she dabbles in writing short stories. But nothing she writes is any good. When she shows her work to others they do not seem to appreciate it. She wonders if she just needs more practice or if she should try something else. Maybe she could write poems. Or try her hand at illustration.

She wishes she had someone she could talk to about these things. Someone just as interested in art as she is. Someone who could help her grow. Someone who sees the beauty that she sees. Someone who is just as bored as she is of all that is ordinary and normal.

21. To Be Concerned With Everything

Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:00:00 -0800

My attention must be free to wander. But often I inhibit its freedom. I narrowly focus on one task to the exclusion of all else, or I block particular experiences or ideas from my view, or I try to possess and maintain whatever is present.

When I do these things, my attention becomes stuck. My imposed control restrains it. Being stuck is not the same as lingering or being at rest. My attention may rest on a single point, but I need to allow this to happen without force.

When I restrict the movement of my attention, my sensitivity towards myself and the world is profoundly limited. As I force my attention to stay fixed on my own particular ends, it cannot reach anything or anyone outside my focus. I treat myself like a machine, with no other concern than to fulfill practical goals. But a human being needs to be concerned with everything and everyone, for only with awareness can I see how I must act.

I control my attention because I have been trained to see its control as necessary for productivity and success. But in doing so, I bar myself from understanding what is happening in myself and in the world. I bar myself from responding with sensitivity to all that I encounter. I bar myself from taking action to reduce unnecessary pain and eliminate suffering.

I must allow my attention to explore all of myself and all of the world. It is by granting my attention the freedom to wander that I become more able to act with care and compassion.

20. The Music Of The Text

Tue, 11 Feb 2025 12:00:00 -0800

Writing that is alive evokes powerful feelings of excitement, of anticipation, of concern, and of joy.

Many elements of a text can contribute to the creation of these feelings. Elements like pacing, vocabulary, structure, metaphor, and tension can all play a role. But these are only tools and, if haplessly deployed, they can easily produce something mechanical and barren of life. A text can be furnished with all the markers of good writing and still fall flat. What is it that breathes life into these elements that are otherwise static and unmoving?

Perhaps it is the music of the text. If there is harmony and coherence in the rhythms and melodies, then the text brings the energy and vitality of life. This is true regardless of the complexity of the writing itself, for even the simplest of sentences can carry this power — provided they come together to form something musical.

When the reader puts a vibrant text into action through reading, they assemble its pieces into something more, a song that transcends the text itself. It is the sound of this song that lifts up the reader beyond the usual limits and creates the joyful experience of being in contact with an artwork that is alive and real.

19. Reaching For The Unreachable

Mon, 10 Feb 2025 12:00:00 -0800

The body needs contact and it needs intimacy. It needs to touch the world and feel itself to be part of it. It needs to feel itself shared and connected with others. It needs to be recognized as a living thing among other living things.

Deep inside, the body carries memories of contact. As a child: with parents, siblings, relatives, schoolmates. As an adult: with friends, family, lovers. The body remembers contact as a place of comfort, warmth, and joy.

From its memories, the body projects an image of a possible future where the experience of contact is plentiful and frequent. This image is preferred over the present experience of work and struggle, and so it becomes the ideal. It manifests as a desire to live in a way that is more shared, more cooperative, more intimate.

The need that produces this desire is real, but the ideal itself is virtual. It does not actually exist. As an imaginary entity, the ideal world cannot be directly reached. The ideal might be realized in the distant future through further work and struggle, but this is not what the body desires. Its desire is for the ideal world to be real and present at this very moment.

The inevitable result is that the desire goes unfulfilled and it produces suffering. Actual life is felt to be lacking, barren, and miserable. The ideal might motivate the body towards it, but this only increases the body’s suffering. For even if the desire is partly met it will not fulfill the ideal. The ideal is an existence that is presently impossible. The world that could fulfill it does not yet exist. And so sustained pursuit of the ideal increases suffering rather than mitigating it.

Any attempt to reach the unreachable produces an endless array of conflicts with actual life. The desire for the ideal asks that actual life be overcome in a way that it presently cannot be. By releasing itself from the desire, the body is able to find contact in those forms that are immediately available to it. It then has the opportunity to discover joy in the world that actually exists, rather than pining for one that does not.

18. A Paragon Of Human Perfection

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:00:00 -0800

When I believe I can do no wrong, I am in great danger.

This belief should be a blaring klaxon. It is a warning that my awareness is profoundly lacking. It is impossible to exist in this world without ever harming anyone. Even if I were the most ethical person ever to have lived, I am still human. And a human being makes mistakes. A human being cannot foresee all possible outcomes. Perfection might be possible but it is not plausible.

When wrongdoing happens, there is almost never only one person at fault. Responsibility is rarely singular and rarely clear. Part of being responsible is recognizing this lack of clarity. In practice, responsibility means I hold myself accountable for all of the things I do and how they contribute to the way the world is.

If I believe none of my actions contribute to the wrongs that exist, then I have failed. For it means I have elevated myself above all others. I have taken myself to be the only authentically-good person, a being without flaws, a paragon of human perfection. In doing so, I raise myself up into the thin clouds of self-righteousness, to cast blame on others from on high, like a god judging mere mortals.

When this happens, I doom myself and others to endless suffering. Nothing can improve because I am not paying sufficient attention to myself. I am not questioning my intentions and actions and the ways they perpetuate suffering. And I will not be able to help others improve either, because who will listen to someone who claims to be perfect?

I am not perfect. I am responsible for everything that exists and I share this responsibility with all others. I must be attentive to my inner workings, and open to what I discover there. I must learn to see how my desires, aversions, and beliefs can produce suffering through attachment. It is only through greater awareness of these things that I can possibly hope to help myself and others.

17. Doing Not Being

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 12:00:00 -0800

I run my hand over the grass and I feel the texture of the individual blades — their sharp, freshly-cut edges tickling the skin of my palm. This is a singular experience. I am touching this particular patch of grass at this particular time with this particular hand. This has never been done and it will not be done again. Not here, not now, not by me.

I bring my hands into my lap and close my eyes. I am seated on the grass. I can feel it pressing against my bare legs. I let the feeling go, so that it becomes one with the ordinary condition of my body. I ignore everything I can hear or smell, everything outside of me. I am the singular experience now. What is it to be me, in the absence of the external world? What is it to have this particular body? I am alive, I know, but what is it to be alive?

I take a deep breath and try to feel the whole truth of my existence. I examine myself and my present condition, but there is nothing for me to grasp. In the absence of doing anything, of feeling anything, of thinking anything, there seems to be nothing that is me. I am a completely empty being. Beyond these churning thoughts seeking and imagining and groping for some presence to latch onto, there is nothing I can see.

Then I start to feel something in the heart of the empty cavern that is me. But when I attend to it, I see it is nothing but my own reaction to the realization of my emptiness. It is a kind of concern, or perhaps despair. It is the worry that I ought to be something but I am not. I feel there should be something that is me — even in the absence of the world — but I cannot find it.

But of course I am also something. I am the one having these thoughts. I am something and I am nothing at the same time.

I open my eyes and run my hand over the grass again.

The ticklish, whiskery sensation of the grass remains the same, but there is a new depth to the experience. I notice now that, in the moment of action, I become more real, more substantial. There is an experience of the world and it is me who lives it. I am the experiencing. I become something by doing something.

It is the doing that matters, not the being.

Perhaps it was the doing all along.

16. The Process Of Creation Advances

Wed, 05 Feb 2025 12:00:00 -0800

The task of creation is always unfinished. From every newly crafted thing, a new arrangement of meanings emerges, and from that, new possibilities appear. New possibilities beget new questions, and something further must be created in response.

As the process of creation advances, meanings become more detailed and questions become more nuanced. The target of these questions cannot ever be reached. It is the heart of our experience as living beings, as entities that are both subject and object. It is perhaps even the heart of existence itself. To attempt to name it necessarily fails, because it is everything and nothing at the same time. All that we can do is to create and create again and, through our creations, uncover as much of it as we possibly can.

Though our creations fail to reach the ultimate, they help us experience the world differently and, through this effect, we grow more aware. It is by experiencing more, by being more, that we become aware of more. The endlessness of our task produces despair when we realize that our wish for completion, for totality, will not be achieved by our individual selves. But the other side of this despair is the joy of exploration, which takes us ever further towards the thing we cannot name.

Joy arises from the activity, the making, the doing. We grow and change by fulfilling our task, by extending ourselves through acts of creation, and the experience of this process is the source of joy.

That our lives are finite means nothing. That we will not see the end means nothing. That we will not know the ultimate means nothing. We are part of a great and endless project, and our part is as valuable as any other.

It is in recognition of our task that we offer ourselves and our creations to you.

15. So Many Eggs

Tue, 04 Feb 2025 12:00:00 -0800

Every idea I have is an egg. My eggs are kept warm in the incubator that is me. Each day, some of the eggs will hatch and out will emerge a new being that is capable of living on its own. The being will take the form of a fragment, like this one. It will emerge from its egg and onto the page where it will live. Usually this process goes smoothly, but if I try to hatch an egg by force, what appears on the page is not a living being but a lifeless mess — not unlike what I would get if I took a real egg and threw it at the wall. Each egg must be ready to hatch before the being inside can emerge properly and coherently. I must be patient. Some eggs will take months, or even years, to hatch. Waiting can be difficult when it feels like a particular egg might be a special one. I wish there were a way to speed up the process, so that I could express myself continuously, so that I could, at all times, create new beings and send them out into the world. But it cannot be so. Forcing the matter produces nothing but a mess. I remind myself that I am fortunate there are so many eggs. Every day, one or two are ready to hatch. To prepare myself for them, I keep a careful inventory of the incubator. I look inside myself to see which eggs are beginning to show the first cracks. If I watch carefully, then I can give these new beings the best possible chance to arrive on the page with potential and vigour.

14. Not Even Miracles

Mon, 03 Feb 2025 12:00:00 -0800

The ordinary basic facts of the universe are necessary facts, and so anything and everything that exists is necessary as well. Everything that happens in the universe follows necessarily from the basic facts through causality. A cause produces an effect, which then causes some further effect, and so on. In this universe, there is no such thing as contingency. The chain of causes and effects is perfect. Everything that happens does so because it must happen. There is no way that anything could ever be other than what it already is. Possibility does not actually exist. It is an illusion produced by a lack of knowledge. There is only one way that things can be from now until the end of time.

The above conclusions follow from my starting point — I decided that the ordinary basic facts are necessary. But suppose I instead choose to take those ordinary basic facts as entirely contingent. The world would still exist as it presently does. It is only my perspective that has changed. But now, not only does possibility exist, it exists in the radical sense that anything is possible at any moment. This means I cannot know what is going to happen next.

Practical reasoning requires necessity in order to function. And insofar as reason itself is rooted in practical reason, to decide that everything is contingent might even be irrational. Yet it is also a powerful choice, for it is no less real than the alternative. Both options — absolute necessity and absolute contingency — originate in me, in my judgment, in the perspective that I choose.

Possibility is never less real than necessity. It is possible for the world to be other than it is. Nothing can be ruled out, not even total disaster, not even miracles.

13. Others Like Him

Fri, 31 Jan 2025 12:00:00 -0800

Every morning he goes through the same process when he wakes. It takes place automatically as his consciousness returns to him. As the calm serenity of the dreamscape recedes, he becomes situated in the world — not only in the physical world of his body, but also in the virtual world of life and work and other people. He enters conscious reality and he feels inside himself a void appear and grow prominent.

He has become aware that he is alone in the world, separated from others. No matter how close they might seem, they do not experience the world just as he does. His experience is singular, forever his alone, a possession he does not want but that he is forced to accept.

The society in which he lives offers little respite from this feeling of isolation. Instead, it further alienates him. Its rules and boundaries hinder every opportunity for the relationships with others he so desperately needs. He feels there is no way in. He feels he is stuck in a permanent outside, bereft of community and closeness.

For him there is only conflict and competition, an endless stream of unsatisfied desires and haunting worries. Everywhere around him there are walls. They are the walls that people use to keep others out, to feel safe and protected. He constructs his own walls too, for he feels it would be wrong to act differently. When opportunities for connection arise, he tries his best but in the end he feels only frustration. An intense frustration because everyone seems to be living lives so different from his own. They have different values and priorities, and connection feels impossible.

Still, there is a part of him that says this cannot be true. There must be others like him. There must be something shared. A common humanity, if nothing else. If only he could get past his interminable worrying. He worries about sharing his thoughts, about breaking the rules, about being seen as himself.

He knows he needs to try to exist without filters or barriers, and without pretending, too. He needs to simply be human and share in the humanity of others. Is this something he can do?

12. The Eternal Now

Thu, 30 Jan 2025 12:00:00 -0800

It feels like time is my enemy. I only have so much of it, and every moment that passes is one I will never get back. I can see how much time has passed without being used well, and in noticing this a feeling of regret follows. It feels like time is taking something from me and I can do nothing to stop it. It feels like I am being swallowed by an infinite abyss.

Whereas time is seemingly infinite, my existence is finite and the world is always moving towards a day where my personal experience of it will be extinguished. Though I must be aware of this fact, thinking about it too much is harmful. When I focus on how time can be well or poorly used, I overanalyze my past actions and overplan my future actions, instead of paying attention to my present experience. Giving all of my attention to the present means being responsive to what is actually happening to me in this moment, and not what has happened nor what will happen.

When I am fully attuned to the present, I see that all things change. Entities come in and out of existence, and the same is true for me. I am as impermanent as everything else. My subjectivity exists right now but it will not exist in the future. But there is also more to me than this subjectivity. There is the rest of the universe, of which I am a continuous part. The nondistinction of all things, the total unity that transcends the categories of conventional language, extends also to me.

In reminding myself of these things, I grow towards a greater awareness of time. I learn to accept the passage of time and that all things change. When I do not fight to preserve the past or to seek an ideal future, I am able to devote myself to the present.

When I am totally present, I am able to be — right here, in this moment, the eternal now.

11. Always On The Move

Wed, 29 Jan 2025 12:00:00 -0800

A human being is always on the move. Sometimes we move to accomplish an important task. Sometimes we move around frenetically, without purpose or intention. Sometimes we move in order to feel ourselves moving.

Movement does not necessarily mean moving through the physical world. We can be physically stationary and still moving. Sitting in quiet reflection does not mean you are not moving.

Real movement is change. It is vital, it is transformational, and it means growth. If you are in quiet reflection then you are engaged in this kind of movement. False movement is repetition. It is mechanical, it is sameness, and it means stagnation. To move in this way is mindless, and the body is abandoned to its own devices. Such activity not always harmful, but it cannot sustain a life. To live we must be moving, and so we must also be changing. Stagnation means death.

When your mind and your body are engaged and connected then there is a chance for real movement. It means you are in a state of deep attention to what you are doing. It means what you are doing will make you something other than what you already are.

Attention means your awareness will grow, which in turn means you will grow into a more fulfilled being. If you are not growing in this way, then how can you have any hope? Hope can only be realized through action. But beware of false movement that seems real but is not. Ask yourself if a machine could do what you are doing — if it could then you are in a trap, you have stopped living.

Real movement is a profoundly imaginative and creative way of being. It is reflective, it is aware, and it is alive with attention and growth.

10. One Word And Not Another

Tue, 28 Jan 2025 12:00:00 -0800

Judgments can limit the scope of my awareness. If I rush to judge everything I see, then I cut myself off from the opportunity to experience it fully. I have to open myself up and allow everything in as it is. I have to be sensitive to nuances and complexities. I have to hold my judgments at a distance and consider their opposites. I have to allow myself to see even those things I judge to be bad or wrong or ugly.

I need to be even more open and sensitive when I am creating. If I rush to judge my work, then I cut myself off from the opportunity to express myself fully. But I cannot let go of all of judgment, for it is also what shapes my creation through choice. I choose one word and not another. I choose one rhythm and not another. I choose one line and not another.

What I must release (send away) is reflective judgment, which evaluates my efforts with a distant and critical eye. What I must release (set free) is the judgment of experience, which arises through the intuitions I have developed by years of practice.

I have to trust that I can express myself without intervention from reflective judgment. I have to trust that I understand the conventions of expression, not through formal rules, but through worn lines of practical experience, through the grooves that have been etched into me.

Set free from the critic that is also me, I can create without censorship and without constraint. When I grow tired of expressing myself, then the work is finished. Then and only then can I allow my reflective judgments to examine the work. Only then will they help me see where I have discovered value and how I might refine my creation to improve its clarity and power.

9. Senseless Language

Mon, 27 Jan 2025 12:00:00 -0800

Language and reason are deeply intertwined. Words are connected through rules we call grammar. For these rules to function they must fit together coherently — they must be for the most part logical. The rules can be bent and even changed, but they cannot be completely eliminated. A language without rules could not communicate anything at all. It is because you and I agree on the rules of grammar that you can read this sentence and it has a meaning for you. We can change our agreement at any time, but we must still agree. The rules we have agreed on are the reasons why our sentences take one particular form and not another.

Within this world of rules and reasons, it is difficult to express what has no reason — what lies outside of reason entirely. In trying to express it, I try to point at something that, strictly speaking, does not make sense within language itself. For if it is outside the rules, then it is outside both language and reason, and so it is outside of what can have a sense.

And yet I still try to do this. I try to express that which goes beyond. To the extent that my senseless language does something to another person, to my reader, I succeed. I succeed even though neither they nor I can explain what is happening. I succeed even though neither they nor I know how to express what it means.

My success comes from the fact that the reader is changed. They are changed by their experience of reading the words. They are no longer the same person that they were before they encountered the text. Something has been done to them. They have been touched, modified, transformed.

A poem is nothing more (or less) than a string of words that does this, changing us in an inexplicable way, and the feeling of meaning we are left with is nothing more (or less) than the poem’s truth and beauty.

8. A Smile Is A Question

Fri, 24 Jan 2025 12:00:00 -0800

Sometimes when I wander, I see you. You are absorbed in your existence, in all of the things you perceive and feel and think. This is the whole of your experience; it is everything for you. That I too am here, living a separate experience, is not evident to you, for you have not noticed me.

But then you look up. Your eyes meet mine and your experience changes, and my experience changes, and the two become one: this moment becomes our experience. This new shared experience, this previously non-existent entity, is a powerful one. It arrives sharply and with a surprising intensity. How could this thing that did not even exist a moment ago have us so firmly in its grasp?

But it holds us completely, and it exists simply by my eyes seeing yours and your eyes seeing mine. It exists and its existence is a minor shock to our senses, evoking in us a mysterious but pleasant tingle.

A slight smile forms on your face as you realize what is happening. The smile becomes part of our experience. It is a message. A question is being posed and a response must be given. Not for any moral reason. Not for any reason at all. Only because the joy of the moment demands it. And so there is no uncertainty in what must follow, no doubt about what I must do.

I smile back at you.

7. The World Also Changes

Thu, 23 Jan 2025 12:00:00 -0800

To be open to the world is to embrace all of its parts. It is to accept these parts not as separate possessions but as new components of my own being. Everything I allow to live in me also lives through me. I grow with every new addition. I am transformed into something other than what I already am.

I am no longer one, but many. I am a fragmented entity, made up of the parts I have embraced. The fragments that are me are not in harmony with each other, and this means there is tension. Tension arises internally, in the shifting entanglement of the various parts alive inside me, and externally, in my interactions with other people. There are limitations to what I can become because I cannot abandon my responsibility to others. I cannot allow myself to become a monster.

Being multiple is never easy. Not only do I face questions about my own identity, I also have to pay attention to how my changing self impacts the people around me. Still, I must be multiple because it means living more broadly than I otherwise would. It means experiencing things I otherwise would not. This is how I grow. This is how I become more aware of the world that is, and how I become more sensitive to its needs and pains. It is how I further embody life in all its dimensions. Life, that complex and courageous existence of which I am a part.

Through fragmentation I gradually become more whole. I do this by including more and more parts of the world into my existence, and by living through those parts. It is in both being and responding to that which was other that I become more myself. My growth is growth into the world, and when I change, the world also changes.

6. Neither Blue Nor Purple

Wed, 22 Jan 2025 12:00:00 -0800

The subject wants to hide. You want to say something without me knowing that it came from you. You want me to believe you are not here, that the words you speak have a meaning or value beyond what they have for you or me.

You obscure your “I” by speaking in a voice that pretends to come from nowhere. “The sky is blue,” you say. There is no “I” here. Your sentence claims to report an observation about the world with no reference to an observer. Perhaps you want me to believe the claim is true in some incontrovertible way, as though it were an objective fact. Really what you’re telling me is that the sky appears blue to you, and so the truth of your claim depends entirely on the observer, on the subject who is hidden, on you.

If you say “The sky looks blue to me,” then your subjectivity is explicit. You are no longer hidden. I might agree, by saying that it also looks blue to me. Is the sky then blue, objectively? No, it is only blue for the two of us. We might, at any time, encounter a third person who sees it differently. “The sky looks purple to me,” they might say. Their claim might seem wrong to the two of us, but is it? Or is it just that the agreements of language lie so deep inside us that they seem objective?

In any case, at this moment and from my point of view, the sky is neither blue nor purple, but a rusty orange as the sun disappears below the horizon.

5. A Sense Of Precarity

Tue, 21 Jan 2025 12:00:00 -0800

A work of art is finished when the artist says it is finished. Whether the work is then displayed or published or just left in a drawer, the artist will not change it from that point on. When shown, an artwork usually does not come with an announcement or declaration that it is complete. The audience assumes the work must be complete because it is on display.

What if someone were to show a work that was purposely unfinished? The incompleteness would become part of the work. People would view it with the expectation that it might be revised in the future. What if someone went even further and declared that nothing they create is ever finished, that anything shown could change at any moment? The audience might then feel a sense of precarity about the work they are viewing. They might want to take photos or videos of it, to freeze it in time, to capture the different stages of its existence. But insofar as these secondary media are not the artwork itself, they will never fully replicate it.

What about an artwork that can be copied exactly — like this text you are reading right now? I could tell you that this fragment is unfinished, but you could still make a copy of it, preserve it exactly as it is in this moment before I can make any changes. Copying would then seem to produce multiple artworks, each representing the primary work at a different point in time. In this way, writing is not like life at all, for a living being cannot be contained in a static medium. A living being is constantly changing, constantly revising itself and its presentation. It is always more than anyone can capture or preserve.

So how alive can a written work actually be? Is it not always a corpse abandoned by the side of the road?

4. To Hear Only The Silence

Mon, 20 Jan 2025 12:00:00 -0800

The forest at dusk. The blue-green air envelops me in a bright chill. The scent of foliage, soil, and rain and the taste of life itself. With each breath, I fill myself with more life. The cold air revives and invigorates parts of me that have not felt the touch of life in so long. It reminds me that my body is alive, all of it, the parts and the whole. I find myself in possession of an excess of energy beyond any need. I look up and notice the treetops have turned from green to a muddy orange. What is left of the sunlight cannot reach me — the trees gather up what little remains. With each step along the forest path, there is a muted crunch as the fibres bearing me give way. I am a substantial being — an animal with weight. Are there other animals here with me? If there are, I cannot hear them or see them. When I pause to listen, the silence is so profound that there is nothing of it my mind can grasp. How can any place be so quiet? The only source of noise is me, even when I try to be as still as the trees. I hear the sounds of my breath, of my living body. But the noise is also more than this. It comes from inside me. It is the ceaseless chatter of my mind. I do not just absorb the world around me, I also process, analyze, and evaluate it. I must abandon these compulsions. I must match my mind to this great silence. I must allow myself to be as free and clear as the forest. To see only the greens and browns, to hear only the silence, to be like wind through the leaves, a gust that comes and then goes.

3. One More Piece

Fri, 17 Jan 2025 12:00:00 -0800

I want to put everything together into a single, unified narrative.

I want reasons that make sense of all that has happened and will happen.

I want to understand how each piece relates to the others and to the whole.

I want to know the full story — the story that completely explains and justifies the world.

Despite these desires, I am always discovering new pieces that resist explanation, that refuse to fit into the story. I am continually forced to revise the story or to create an entirely new one. Even then, there are pieces I must leave out to maintain the story’s coherence. Pieces that lack justification or are propped up by flimsy or fraught reasons. Pieces that do not seem to fit anywhere. Pieces that resist the very idea that a unified story is possible.

In the end, even the most coherent story is still partial. I am always forced to leave something out. This inextinguishable remainder torments me. It laughs at my desire for cohesion, for narrative, for explanation. It laughs so loudly and so frequently that I begin to question my desires. Does it make sense to think that I, a limited and finite being, can achieve the complete understanding I seek? Will there not always be something I cannot know?

Still, I often think I need to find just one more piece. One more piece and I will solve the puzzle. One more piece and I will finally have the whole story in hand. But this belief is an illusion. It is a mirage that will consume me. There will always be one more piece to find. I must recognize my limits. I must accept that my knowledge will always be partial.

The story will never be complete. There is always more to come. This is not a curse, but a blessing. It means there is always more for me to do. While I cannot know the whole story, I can always add to it. I can contribute to its beauty and to its truth.

2. Not To Turn Away

Thu, 16 Jan 2025 12:00:00 -0800

When I see suffering, I want to turn away. It is painful to watch another person suffer. It is doubly painful to watch suffering I feel I cannot do anything to eliminate or prevent. I want to help, but I cannot see what I must do. This is deeply uncomfortable, so perhaps it is no surprise that my inclination is to look away.

But this is a mistake. I cannot allow my own discomfort to distract me. It is by giving suffering my sustained attention that I gain the opportunity to understand it. This is not an easy task. It is not easy the first time, and it is not easy the hundredth time. I need not only to see but also to ask questions. I must investigate what is happening and why it is happening, but also what I am doing and what I could be doing. All of this is difficult, taxing, tiring.

Since it is so uncomfortable and challenging, other people will question the value of doing it. They will say that it is unrealistic to hope to understand suffering. They will say that it is too much for anyone to bear. They will say that even if I can understand it, I cannot possibly fix it. Perhaps they are right about these things.

Still I must look. I must try to understand. I must try to see the nature of suffering. I must try to see its features, its ubiquity, and its sources. Only by doing so can there be any hope for its end.

1. The Greatest Victory

Wed, 15 Jan 2025 12:00:00 -0800

The most important thing is not to give up. You have to keep going.

You have to keep observing, absorbing everything that happens, leaving nothing out. You have to keep asking questions and pushing your investigation of yourself and the world further, without end. You have to keep experimenting, attempting what has not been attempted, and going beyond whatever rules or beliefs you have accumulated. You have to keep going beyond everything.

You have to see everything you know as open to revision and nothing as final or complete. You have to question your assumptions and allow for contradiction and paradox. You have to avoid conclusions and claims of having reached the ultimate. Conclusions are a form of giving up, as they terminate inquiry at an arbitrary point. This you must never do, for it is against your sole duty, which is to always keep going.

You have to keep going for as long as you possibly can, which is to say, as long as you exist, because possibility is limitless. Possibility is always bigger than you. There is always something not yet seen, tried, or lived. You have to share what you see and discover and experience, without expecting others to conform to your findings. You have to share in order to help others with their own investigations, to give them an advantage over you, so that they will go farther than you have ever gone. To be surpassed is not failure but the greatest victory. It is how you keep going, even beyond your own life.