157. Barren Of Possibility

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.

156. Proximity To Intentions

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.

155. Compassion Cannot Wait

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.

154. A Helpful Provocation

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.

153. The Other Side

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.

152. Forgiveness Saves

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.

151. Paying Attention To Attention

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.

150. To Communicate A Feeling

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.

149. Political Questions

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.