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120. Particularly Unimportant
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.
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119. From Conflict To Harmony
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.
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118. No Words For Art
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.
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117. The Pain Of Suffering
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.
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116. A Fresh Start
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.
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115. Experiencing Media
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.
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114. Acting From Intuition
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.
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113. A Genuine Gift
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.
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112. The Trap Of Reason
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.
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111. What Compassion Demands
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.
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