The present can change the past, and the future can change the present.
Competence beats obedience.
The things you can see, with even a single open eye. It’s no wonder that people want to stay blind.
If you pay attention, when you are seeking something, you will move towards your goal. More importantly, however, you will acquire the information that allows your goal itself to transform. A totalitarian never asks, “What if my current ambition is in error?” He treats it, instead, as the Absolute. It becomes his God, for all intents and purposes. It constitutes his highest value. It regulates his emotions and motivational states, and determines his thoughts. All people serve their ambition.
I think often people come to the conclusion that life is meaningless because that’s a better conclusion to come to than the reverse; because if life is meaningless, well then, who cares what you do? But if life is meaningful – if what you do matters... then everything you do matters. And that puts a terrible responsibility on the individual. And I think that people are generally unwilling to bear that.
It’s also unlikely that you’re playing only one game. You have a career and friends and family members and personal projects and artistic endeavors and athletic pursuits.
There is a terrible reptilian predator, metaphorically speaking, pursuing you all the time, just like the crocodile with the ticktock of time emanating from the clock he swallowed chasing the tyrannical coward Captain Hook.
Power just means I can hurt you, and you can’t hurt me back. That’s not what you need from a ruler, even though it devolves into that from time to time. What you want is the kind of wisdom that illuminates the darkness.
I have learned to pay attention to dreams, not least because of my training as a clinical psychologist. Dreams shed light on the dim places where reason itself has yet to voyage.
If you haven’t done anything wrong, do not apologize.
It is easy for optimism to be undermined and demolished, however, if it is naive, and for cynicism to arise in its place. But the act of peering into the darkness as deeply as possible reveals a light that appears unquenchable, and that is a profound surprise, as well as a great relief.
It’s a good idea to tell the person you are confronting exactly what you would like them to do instead of what they have done or currently are doing. You might think, “if they loved me, they would know what to do.” That’s the voice of resentment. Assume ignorance before malevolence.
To stand up straight with your shoulders back is to accept the terrible responsibility of life, with eyes wide open.
And maybe when you are going for a walk and your head is spinning a cat will show up and if you pay attention to it then you will get a reminder for just fifteen seconds that the wonder of Being might make up for the ineradicable suffering that accompanies it. Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street.
Perhaps it’s not reasonable to ask God to break the rules of physics every time we fall by the wayside or make a serious error. Perhaps, in such times, you can’t put the cart before the horse and simply wish for your problem to be solved in some magical manner. Perhaps you could ask, instead, what you might have to do right now to increase your resolve, buttress your character, and find the strength to go on. Perhaps you could instead ask to see the truth.
Meaning is the Way, the path of life more abundant, the place you live when you are guided by Love and speaking Truth and when nothing you want or could possibly want takes any precedence over precisely that.
Perhaps that is true prayer: the question, “What have I done wrong, and what can I do now to set things at least a little bit more right?
If the world you are seeing is not the world you want, therefore, it’s time to examine your values. It’s time to rid yourself of your current presuppositions. It’s time to let go.
What is the moral of the story? Make yourself colorful, stand out, and the lions will take you down. And the lions are always there.
You should be careful, therefore, to live your life fully, and marriage and children and grandchildren, and all the trouble and heartbreak that accompanies all of that, is much of what life has to offer. Miss it at your great peril.