Shared with Momoetry April Poet Month challenge – free verse. Inspired by Chapter 2 of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment.
Cheers – 25th April 2025
Tag: Dostoevsky
Underground men gather
~ Here, intellectual torment meets emotional suffering ~
Flying birds and brooms
Sure – 24th October 2022
Why does what you believe make you so mad?
If something else was true would it really be so bad?
So angry at the skies you take it out on the clouds
So oblivious to yourself as you fight amongst the crowds
Was it something that you lost that others took away?
Did someone take their ball so that you couldn’t play?
Divided we are conquered, that’s the way it’s been
Let’s celebrate our diversity to realise our dream
When looking back at your life, you will see that the moments which seemed to be great failures followed by wreckage were the incidents that shaped the life you have now.
Joseph Campbell
Today I’m feeling:
Dozy and happy
Today I’m grateful for:
The coconut lip balm I have. I think I’m missing something in my diet that is causing me dry lips and this balm works wonders.
The best thing about today was:
The brilliant 4-hour afternoon nap I had. It was a light sleep and could feel myself enjoying it! Sounds played on my thoughts and influenced my semi-lucid state. I didn’t want it to end!
If you could be a character from a book or film, who would you be? Why?
This answer would change over time. I identify a lot with Dostoevsky’s Underground Man but that is a me from the past. I recognise the thoughts but no longer think like that. Me, now? I don’t know. Alice? As I often contemplate the wonder in the world around me.
…I realise I’m reading the question wrong. If I could be a character…. I suppose when reading a good book or watching a great movie you become the characters in them. If I could choose though…? I’m struggling to think of an answer. I think it may pop into my head when I come across it in the future. Perhaps I’ll return to this question then.
Dib Dib Dib – 15th September 2022
There’s a hard winter coming
Are you ready for the chill?
Stock up the cellars
Bring the herd down from the hill
Wrap yourself in the comforts
Of a trouble gladly shared
Tie the boats up to the shore
And hunker down prepared
I think I could stand anything, an suffering, only to be able to say and to repeat to myself every moment, ‘I exist.’
Dostoevsky
Today I’m grateful for:
Having the freedom, available space and time to be able to talk to students in my classes today in ones, twos and threes. It is entirely a better way for me to get a clearer idea of their abilities and also relieve their pressures around making mistakes. It’s not possible to do this all the time but I’m glad I decided to do it today.
The best thing about today was:
Just a general sense of well-being and contentment. Nothing stands out more than anything else.
The Same – 6th August 2022
We’re really not so different
The country and the city
The air to breathe we share
To poison it is the pity
We’re really not so different
The north and the south
We’re all scared that one day
We’ll be living hand to mouth
We’re all not so different
The red and the blue
Let’s shake hands after the game
If it’s the last thing we’ll do
We’re all not so different
The dead and the living
One’s life is given
And another’s is still giving
We’re all not so different
The gods and the believers
All capable of miracles
Or victims of deceivers
We’re all not so different
The rich and the poor
Both struggling to understand
What we’re struggling for
The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he’s in prison.
Dostoevsky
The Poems of a Ridiculous Man – 7th August 2021
So here’s the last of my Dostoevsky cool quotes for now, this time from the fantastic The Dream of a Ridiculous Man. Despite being quite dark and moody I feel like my poems came out a little more on the positive side – perhaps a reflection on how I was feeling when I wrote the poems compared with when I was inspired by the quotes as I was reading the story.
Acknowledgement to Husker Du and Rob Crow/Heavy Vegetable for some relevant phrases and ideas and, as before, the poems borrow heavily from the text.
Searching for a picture for this post also lead me to finding this hand painted animation of the story.
Ah, it’s so hard to be the only one to know the truth! But they won’t understand it. No, they won’t.
No Truth
Only I know the truth
They sure won’t understand
I carry this burden
It is just as I planned
Truth is in the saying
The truth will set you free
But I will never share
The truth is just for me
Maybe it was the result of the conviction that dawned upon me quite independently of my will that nothing made any difference in this world.
Conviction
I tried and tried and tried and tried
To make a difference before I died
Close to the end a sudden dawning
Independently and without warning
Your time is pointless, meaning, none
A pinprick in millions more to come
So make the best and start believing
Despite the sentence we’re all receiving
…eternally dear to the hearts of her most ungrateful children.
Realm
This earthly realm
Where it all starts
Never ending, eternally
Dear to the hearts
….of her most ungrateful children
We can truly love only with suffering and through suffering. We don’t know how to love otherwise; we don’t know any other love. I want to suffer so that I may love.
Love and Suffering
I wanted it all, wanted it so badly
Staring out of misted windows like a fool
To love this love is to suffer it gladly
Our twisted hearts make us look so cruel
This love, true love, it knows no other way
Crushed and broken hearts not spoken thereof
Life lived without it, not for another day
I must, I want to suffer so that I may love
My hatred for the people of our earth had always contained a feeling of despair – why couldn’t I hate them without loving them?
World of Masochism
My hatred for the people of our earth
Has always contained a feeling of despair
Why couldn’t I hate them without loving them?
Why did I have to care?
Some days I’m just in KEN Mode
A rage of pure hate and seething
Other days I wish for utopia
A paradise full of our dreaming
Which way will it go today?
Which side of the bed did I wake?
Every thought is masochism
No matter which path I take
They grew to appreciate the beauty of untruth…the germ of the lie penetrated their hearts, and they took a fancy to it.
A Good Lie
Sometimes a lie is like a lover
A beauty to be believed
The untruth penetrates the heart
Willingly deceived
…they experienced suffering, and came to love it; they declared that suffering was the only way to Truth. Then science spread among them.
To Suffer
He felt he’d suffered enough
So the Buddhist jumped from the roof
Science says ‘he’s dead’
He thought it the way to truth
Each became so jealous of his individuality that he had to do his best to belittle and humble the individuality of others….
Tall Poppy
You’ve reached the greatest height
Like it’s some crowning achievement
Society brings you down to earth
Where everyone is in agreement
Voluntary slavery in which the weak submitted to the strong of their own free will, if only in order to gain their support to oppress those who were even weaker than themselves.
Shit Trickles Down
Submit to the strong by your own free will
Eat the shit until you’ve had your fill
So you may enslave those below you
Pass on the shit your master throws you
The human centipede, a fitting analogy
A voluntary agreement to this economy
A vicious circle made of 7 billion pieces
The pyramid scheme of human faeces
We’re striving for the same things; we’re all, from the sage to the worst criminal, making our way toward the same objective. Only we’re trying to get there by different roads.
Different Roads
You take the high, I’ll take the low
It’s the same whichever way you go
You take the low, I’ll take the high
Arriving together, just in time to die
Let’s say paradise will never come about! I know myself it won’t – yet I’ll still go on preaching.
Right Turn
Never stop believing
Counter negative traits
Never stop the search
Paradise awaits
It will never come
In your lifetime’s fight
You know what is right
Be doing what is right
Afterword:
Man’s desires are not reasonable and often make him act against his own interest and common sense, but they are what makes him human.
Contradictions
I am respectable, yet not reasonable
My flaws are the things that make me
My desires maybe contradictions
This human interest will not break me
Gratitude Journal
I am so happy and grateful for the daily struggle of thinking of something to write here, without repeating myself. During the day something will pop into my mind to write but when I sit down to do it I struggle to remember. As days are somewhat repetitive at the moment I keep coming up with the same ideas. So anyway, I am grateful that I have this first-world problem.
Poems From Underground – 3rd July 2021
This was a mammoth task! Lots of quotes from Dostoevsky’s Notes From Underground stuck out to me and I could identify very well with The Underground Man. Finding many of these quotes elsewhere online seems to indicate that many others identify with him too.
Anyway, I decided I’d try to write a poem for each quote as I’d done before. This took a while!
The themes are obviously all very similar, maybe it could’ve been one long poem but that would’ve surely made me more crazy. Words are borrowed and manipulated liberally from the quotes. This was a fun exercise but I’m glad it’s finished. On to the Dreams of a Ridiculous Man!
But I still say that not only too much lucidity, but any amount of it at all is a disease.
Lucid Rivers
When you wake up, ready to go
In search of things you didn’t know
Does this compulsion drive you so
Too obsessive to properly grow
The disease of always learning
Never satisfies your yearning
That desire that’s always burning
Is like a wheel that’s always turning
…as a result of heightened consciousness, a man feels that it’s all right if he’s bad as long as he knows it – as though that were any consolation.
Done Bad
I know the things I’ve done
There surely is no prize
I justified the outcome
As I looked into your eyes
I’m guilty of being more intelligent than all those around me. (I’ve always felt that and, believe me, it’s weighed on my conscience sometimes. All my life, I have never been able to look people straight in the eye – I always feel a need to avert my face.)
Pedestal
Here on this pedestal, I sit
Judging all those below
It’s always been like this
And believe me, I know
When will you learn, I say
As if to deny what’s true
I don’t know who I am
But certain that you are you
….it will hurt itself a hundred times more than it will hurt the one against whom its revenge is directed, who probably won’t even feel enough of an itch to scratch himself.
Bad To Worse
When I took revenge on you
You didn’t feel a thing
Little did I understand
The trouble it would bring
I just wanted to hurt you
Make you feel my pain
Instead things got worse for me
Over and over again
How many times did I convince myself that I was offended, just like that, for no reason at all.
To Take Offence Is To Give Offence
Convinced myself I was offended
Just like that, no reason at all
My reaction less than splendid
Taking home my bat and ball
Where will I find primary reason for action, the justification for it? I exercise my power of reasoning, and in my case, every time I think I have found a primary cause I see another cause that seems to be truly primary, and so on and so forth, indefinitely. This is the very essence of consciousness and thought. It must be another natural law. And what happens in the end? The same thing over again.
Merry
Round and round in circles I go
Looking for the primary cause
It’s never ending, I know
It’s one of nature’s laws
You see, ladies and gentlemen, I have a friend – of course, he’s your friend too, and, in fact, everyone’s friend. When he’s about to do something, this friend explains pompously and in detail how he must act in accordance with the precepts of justice and reason. Moreover, he becomes passionate as he expostulates upon human interests; heaps scorn on the shortsighted fools who don’t know what virtue is or what’s good for them. Then, exactly fifteen minutes later, without any apparent external cause, but prompted by something inside him that is stronger than every consideration of interest, he pirouettes and starts saying exactly the opposite of what he was saying before; that is, he discredits the laws of logic and his own advantage; in short, he attacks everything…
Your Personal Friend
Roll up, roll up, he is everyone’s friend
He is another you
Arguing a point, a message to intend
About what you should do
Fifteen minutes, position is reversed
Opposite now true
Argued both ways, you’re becoming the worst
Split yourself in two
Attack from both sides needing to win
Making others blue
Needle your way under people’s skin
Two faced through and through
….in that future age of reason, there suddenly appeared a gentleman with an ungrateful, or shall we say, retrogressive smirk, who, arms akimbo, would say:
“What do you say, folks, let’s send all this reason to hell, just to get all these logarithm tables out from under our feet and go back to our own stupid ways.”
That isn’t so annoying in itself; what’s bad is that this gentleman would be sure to find followers. That’s the way man is made.
Return
“Deny all reason and follow me
Your system isn’t working
I am the one to set you free”
I whisper quietly, smirking
…a man, always and everywhere, prefers to act in the way he feels like acting and not in the way his reason and interest tell him…
Don’t Do It
Who controls my brain?
I’m not sure it’s me
Don’t think about pink elephants
But that is what I see
I tell myself, don’t do it
And do it anyway
Shoot myself in the foot
Reason has no say
…there is one instance when a man can wish upon himself, in full awareness, something harmful, stupid, and even completely idiotic. He will do it in order to establish his right to wish for the most idiotic things and not to be obliged to have only sensible wishes…it leaves us our most important , most treasured possession: our individuality.
We’re All Individuals
I want to be stupid
It’s my right
Do dangerous things
In the night
I know it’s dumb
But I’m aware
It’s my choice
You don’t need to care
I’m prepared to follow you as soon as you have eradicated my desires, destroyed my ideals, and replaced them by something better.
The Offer
Eradicate my desires
Perhaps I’ll follow you
Destroy my ideals
Would I join your crew?
If you want me to change
Follow you to the letter
You’ll have to show me how
You offer something better
You say you’re longing to live, and you try to solve the problems of life with tangled logic. And you’re so insistent, so arrogant, and at the same time, so afraid.
Tangled Logic
In your arrogance you insist
Don’t fear or resist
Your logic remains tangled
Your thinking quite mishandled
Change the way you live
By what it is you give
You can’t see it made
As long as you’re afraid
There is some truth in you, all right, but there’s no humility; and it is out of the pettiest vanity that you drag forth your truth, to exhibit it, to offer it for sale, to disgrace it. You really have something to say, but you hide your final words, out of fear, because you really have no courage, only the impertinence of a coward. You were bragging about your consciousness, yet you can’t grasp anything clearly because, though your head is quite lucid, your heart is murky as a result of debauchery, and real consciousness is impossible without a pure heart.
Truth For Sale
Do as I say, not as I do
It’s up for sale, what is true
No courage for your conviction
A murky heart, your restriction
Nothing clear in your action
No idea maintaining traction
Your debauchery brings disgrace
And permanently found its place
…there are things, too, that a man won’t dare to admit even to himself, and every decent man has quite an accumulation of such things.
No Freedom
Some things I hate to admit to you
And there’s others I cannot see
I also wouldn’t admit were true
So I’ll hide them deep inside of me
I would like to note here Heine’s remark to the effect that sincere autobiographies are almost impossible and that a man is bound to lie about himself.
Sincere
Every day your autobiography
Is accumulating on your stage
Where you cannot hide behind
Lies you put down on your page
I was twenty-four, but even then I led the gloomy disorganised solitary existence of a recluse. I stayed away from people, avoided even speaking to them, and kept more and more to my hole.
Recluse
A gloomy solitary existence
A rat hiding in it’s hole
Away from the tyranny
Of words that cut my soul
I, of course, loathed and despised everyone in my office, although I was afraid of them at the same time. At times, I even considered them above me.
Sits In His Office
In this office I sit and suffer
Despising those above me
Fools pandering to bosses
Whispering ‘please, love me’
Afraid of failure
And afraid of praise
I wish to be left alone
To quiet office days
I was painfully sensitive and complex, as a man of this age should be. The others, of course, were stupid and resembled one another like a flock of sheep.
No Sheep
Yes, I’m weird about some things
But that’s as they should be
At least I’m no stupid sheep
And learning what I could be
One day I’d refuse to talk to my colleagues at all; then, suddenly I’d be talking their heads off and even seeking their friendship.
Pie Bowler
Today I talk your head off
You just seem bemused
Yesterday I ignored you
No wonder you’re confused
I don’t know why it happens
My brain ain’t balanced well
What you’re gonna get today
Even I cannot tell
I, for instance, sincerely loathed my office work, and if I didn’t spit in anyone’s eye, it was only because I couldn’t afford to – I was paid to sit there.
Sits In His Office II
Another dollar, another day
I spat in no one’s eye
Loathing my self-loathing
Life trudges right on by
If I do not do this thing
I’ll be another useless jerk
So now I race to the office
For another hateful day at work
No, wait, don’t laugh, I can explain – I have an explanation for everything, you may rest assured of that.
Justified Brat
I have an explanation for everything
You may rest assured of that
I’ll justify all my contradictions
Like an ageless teenage brat
How can one ever understand you…with all these noble feelings.
Enigma
Your noble thoughts and feelings
Your enigmatic dealings
Can one ever understand
Life’s journey that you have planned?
I was already grimly wondering at the pettiness of their thoughts, the inanity of their talk, their games and their preoccupations. They couldn’t understand the essential things and were not interested in the most thought-provoking subjects, so I came to consider them as inferiors. …but while I was still dreaming, those boys were grasping the real meaning of life.
Mindtrap
I discounted you in my false superiority
Because I felt I was far above the majority
Your talk and games are inane
Yet the meaning of life they explain
I still lay here, still provoking thought
In this trap I made, I am clearly caught
I hated them violently, although I was probably even worse than they.
In Common
What you did to me
Makes me so mad
And what I do to you
Is just as bad
This violent hate
The same as yours
Exposes us both
To our own flaws
I did make a friend once, but I was already a tyrant at heart and wanted to be the absolute ruler of his mind….It was as though I’d only wanted his total friendship just for the sake of winning it and making him submit to me.
Tyrant Friend
The only way you can be my friend
Is if you submit to my will
Your submission must be total
Tho I will remain a tyrant still
If you break these unspoken rules
You will be castigated
I must be ruler of your mind
Until my ego is placated
I wanted to show the lot of them that I wasn’t the coward I myself thought I was.
Bravado
My true colours as a coward
My bravado comes to hide
I hurt myself to prove to you
There’s more to me inside
That’s bad too – not to think. Wake up and get hold of yourself while there’s still time. Because you do still have time, understand that!
Too Bad
I don’t want to think about it
I just want to drink about it
I try to fix but always doubt it
In my mind is where I shout it
Can I wake up to myself
Whilst there’s time to be had
Try to think my way out
But…ah, well, that’s too bad
…we must first learn to live ourselves before we begin to accuse others!
Jack Hughes
Issuing instructions on correct living
Somewhat insincere, granted misgiving
Accusations undermined in ignorance
Hypocritical, devious denial of intelligence
I didn’t understand that sarcasm is a screen – the last refuge of shy, pure persons against those who rudely and insistently try to break their hearts.
Extreme Screen
I dare not speak of those things I’ve seen
Shy, yet pure, I must raise this screen
My last refuge is not as it may seem
This story plays out as a reoccurring theme
Indirectly, I direct you to where I’ve been
Cry off in the corner as I, smiling, beam
My reaction may be considered extreme
My sarcasm will rudely disturb your dream
Habit can do things to people, I’m sure.
Does
Discipline breeds habit
Habits breed discipline too
Doing things to people’s brains
Doing the do, do do
I’d been insulted, so I wanted to insult back; I’d been made a doormat, so I wanted to show my power and wipe my feet on someone else.
Doormat
You wiped your shoes on me
With your insulting behaviour
I’ll take my shoes to someone else
So they may feel my failure
I can only play with words or dream inside my head; in real life, all I want is for you to vanish into the ground! I need peace.
Vanishing Point
The life I wish for is just a dream
I play out in my head many times a day
I would never stick a real knife in you
Though I need peace – please, just go away
Of course, spinning long yarns about how I poisoned my life through moral disintegration in my musty hole, lack of contact with other men, and spite and vanity is not very interesting.
It’s Not Called a Men-cave
As you can see for yourself
My life is quite ordinary
The tales of my disintegration
They don’t often vary
From my cave I look out
A life so poisoned with spite
Unable to deny my vanity
And unable to make things right
We’ve lost touch to such an extent that we feel a disgust for life as it is really lived and cannot bear to be reminded of it.
Daily Reminder
It annoys me to be reminded of the way you are
Disgusts me so much that I then take things too far
Losing touch with reality, trapped inside this cage
Punishing myself as I’m tortured with this sickly rage
We don’t know ourselves. We would be the ones to suffer if our whimsical wishes were granted.
Whimsical Wishes
Ah, it’s the usual story
Wasted wishes on whimsy
We think we know ourselves
Yet the evidence is flimsy
So that we may suffer
When desires are not earned
Your third wish is for three more
Is something to be learned
…we long to turn ourselves into something hypothetical called the average man.
Mr Average
Poison girls once did tell
That Mr Average did never exist
Yet the desire for exactly that
Is a want we cannot resist
23rd Jun 2024 – Submitted to Weekly Prompts Weekend Challenge – below
Gratitude Journal
I am so happy and grateful to our friends who will come and visit us for lunch today. We can prepare tables, chairs, food and drinks for them all and we’ll have a good time.
Whites in Knight Satin never-ending the reach – 10th March 2021
I highlighted these quotes as I was reading, as they struck me for some reason. Now as I sit and reflect on them I sometimes wonder exactly what it was that stood out and if it’s not obvious I guess that the truth I saw in these words is not as deep as I thought. Quotes that remain obvious for their inclusion would seem to highlight a deeper belief I have about the world.
Extracts from White Nights (Dostoyevsky)
…you’re sorry that the ephemeral beauty has faded so rapidly, so irretrievably, that is flashed so deceptively and pointlessly before your eyes – you’re sorry, for you didn’t even have time to fall in love with her…
When I was a teenager or twenty-something I would often look at people in the distance and try to see through their eyes at that moment in time and wonder what they were experiencing in their head. Could I jump, movie-like, from this life experience into a totally new one? Would it be better? Did I feel an urge to escape my own life?
Other times I would see a pretty girl and pretend to fall in love in that moment, hear her breath leave her mouth as I softly kissed her neck, then live a lifetime together in blissful happiness. In an instant these thoughts would disappear back behind other inane thoughts I might have. But, for that brief moment, I lived entire lives.
…moments like this are so rare in my existence that I must repeat them again and again in my thoughts.
These are happy thoughts and memories and as I’ve gotten older I realise they are not as rare as I thought. The more I have been writing and remembering, the big transformative negative events have given way to the smaller transformative positive ones. And as there have been less negative events in the last decade or two I feel like I must be getting somewhere. Repeating thoughts of positive memories must surely have the equal opposite benefit of continued negative ones. This could be a valid use of the word exponential.
…deep down the queer fish really means well.
Just call me ‘the queer fish’.
At any moment, I see more clearly than ever before that I’ve wasted my best years.
Everyone must feel this to some degree. It’s kind of relative. I wish I was as wise as I am now when I was a teenager. I’m envious of those who seem to have a level head at that age, yet also jealous of those crazy mad dogs charging into everything without thought and getting away with it. I consider everything that happened to me has gotten me to where I am now. Ok, I’m not as fit and healthy as when I was a teenager but inside I don’t feel any different, especially when it comes to the possibilities….I feel much more capable now, capable of learning new things and persisting. Though falling off a skateboard aged 40 taught me some things are probably too late to take up.
In the end, you feel that your much-vaunted, inexhaustible fantasy is growing tired, debilitated, exhausted, because you’re bound to grow out of your old ideals; they’re smashed to splinters and turn to dust, and if you have no other life, you have no choice but to keep rebuilding your dreams from the splinters and dust, But the heart longs for something different!
I’m not sure why I specifically highlighted this but it is giving me several ideas. Those ‘much-vaunted inexhaustible fantasies’ smashed; due to maturity, due to change, due to circumstance. I think I’ve been quite flexible in this regard and been able to accept changes and moving on as they happened. ‘Rebuilding your dreams’… is nothing to be afraid of.
I was struck by a passage in Sam McPheeters book ‘Mutations’ where he says he suddenly changed from going to see shows many times a week to not being interested in seeing live music at all – like a switch that went off for him. My circumstances in 2013 suddenly meant that I could no longer afford (or choose to afford) going to shows after about 8 years of being out every weekend. I missed the thrill and the camaraderie, meeting friends, frenzied noise and the joys of working together but ultimately I easily accepted this new situation. Perhaps because I had a higher goal at the time – to move myself to Thailand.
‘Grow out of your ideals’….this, I feel, is something that didn’t change for me. I still carry the same ideals – even useless ones. I am an idealist more than a realist. It’s a source of personal unhappiness but by itself a virtue.
‘But the heart longs for something different’…the grass is always greener. I’m learning now to be satisfied. My brain is not switched off to new ideas and possibilities and I don’t wish to become an old man stuck in his ways but I am learning to relax into a peaceful rhythm of life, sitting in my own comfortable space within a beautiful house with a beautiful garden, in a strange otherworld of a foreign country and in the comfort of my own mind. This is what I wanted, this is what I got, so now I must enjoy the reward.
I know exactly why I highlighted this yet I think I only agree the first clause of this sentence. I have some very vivid memories of certain places that contributed to a great passionate love that sticks with me to this day. It was a very special time that I hope I can put into words one day. I would often revisit those places, searching for that brief passion within me, ultimately knowing that it won’t be found again. I have accepted that and even feel happier without that high, because those kinds of highs were always followed by lows, whether the following week, month, year or decade. I am much more at peace these days. I do still wish I was more mature at the time. I would’ve hurt less people, including myself.
It has been a sad, drizzly day, without relief – just like my future senility. I am oppressed by strange thoughts and dark sensations; throngs of vague questions obsess me, but I have neither the strength nor the desire to cope with them.
“…just like my future senility’ made me chuckle. What about my current senility? Although not this day, I am often oppressed by throngs of vague questions. Some days I love them and others I don’t have the strength for them. On those days I usually accept the situation and watch TV. I am trying to be kind to myself, waiting on my future senility.
…our own unhappiness makes us more sensitive to the unhappiness of others.
I can feel this deeply sometimes and the effort to take other people out of their funk may help my own depression yet the advice I can give others is much more difficult to follow myself. This is a common experience for most people and I have tried to practice talking less and trying to find other ways to pick people up. This is particularly interesting when there’s little point in talking to ESL students or friends as they don’t have the vocabulary to understand anyway. Cultural differences often stand in the way too. I don’t want to come across as being some kind of expert or having the right way but can only try to offer suggestions.
Tell me, why aren’t we all like brothers? Why does even the best person hold something from another?
What a crazy world it would be if we never held anything back. All truths were told. There must be science fiction stories about this. A utopia or a place where humans completely destroyed each other? This concept is too huge for my tiny little brain right now. Is it even worth thinking about?
Naval Ravikant suggested that asking the question ‘what is the meaning of life’ is pointless, at least in the purpose of producing an answer, but the process of trying to answer the question will still provide worthwhile results.
…we won’t resent for long a wound inflicted by those we love..
I’m reminded of a recent time when a friend offered me advice along with the statement that “I’m only saying this because I love and care about you.” I forget what the advice was now but considered this statement. I took it at face value at the time though also felt a little strange about it – what was the real purpose of the statement?
A few months later and for one reason or another I had done something to upset this friend and now they no longer talk with me. Of course, I could have behaved better though it’s not exactly clear to me what it was that triggered this change in friendship status. Then I thought back to this statement and I realised that it was said without sincerity. It was said just to make them feel good.
Now, that’s ok. Because I’m sure I do this all the time. But I try not to. I want to be completely sincere (or obviously insincere – that’s the English in me again!). I would be a terrible poker player – I cannot hide my feelings on my face and I don’t care to learn.
As to those I love, all wounds are forgiven but I also don’t spread my love so deep and far. Maybe I should. But I’m afraid. What am I really afraid of?
Now I’m getting to vague questions that I may not have the strength to contemplate.
Brain dump
Take it easy. No need to push real hard, just do something – every little bit helps.
You are a student and a teacher. Clearer mind this morning – not so much in it.
Gratitude Journal
I am so happy and grateful for my calm mind this morning. I had a good sleep and woke up with not so many thoughts rattling around and I think it is because I am not teaching proper classes at the moment so I have taken the internal pressure off. I hope I can achieve this state more often when I am teaching normally. Got to balance my care.
1994ever 