57. I Wish It On Myself

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.

56. A Vessel For A Feeling

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.

55. Everything You Need

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.

54. Bodies And Spaces

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.

53. She Will Rise Again

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.

52. How To Be Honest

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?

51. Boredom Is A Signal

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.

50. An Author After All

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.

49. Imperfect, Flawed, Arbitrary

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.