134. Stubbornness As A Virtue

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.

133. An Encouraging Smile

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.

132. Authority Is Insidious

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.

131. The Power Of Reflection

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.

130. The Human Project

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.

129. Reasoning About Ethics

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.

128. Something Like Transcendence

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?

127. Judgments And Anxiety

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.

126. The Importance Of Attention

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.