91. You Are Meant To Fly

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.

90. Patience For Art

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.

89. The Other In Yourself

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.

88. Disasters And Delusions

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

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.

86. A Chance At Real Life

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.

85. To Be Creative

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.

And 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.

84. Necessary And Contingent

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.

83. When The Windows Are Open

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.