Things must be negative but not too negative. Hopelessness, despair – these drive us to do nothing. Pity, empathy – those drive us to do something, like get up from our computers to act. But anger, fear, excitement, or laughter – these drive us to spread. They drive us to do something that makes us feel as if we are doing something, when in reality we are only contributing to what is probably a superficial and utterly meaningless conversation.
It takes a special kind of humility to grasp that you know less, even as you know and grasp more and more. It’s remembering Socrates’ wisdom lay in the fact that he knew that he knew next to nothing.
We are restless because deep in our hearts we know now that our happiness is found elsewhere, and our work, no matter how valuable it is to us or to others, cannot take its place. But we hurry on anyway, and attend to our business because we need to matter, and we don’t always realize we already do.
The only relationship between work and chatter is that one kills the other. Let.
Just one thing keeps ego around – comfort. Pursuing great work – whether it is in sports or art or business – is often terrifying. Ego soothes that fear. It’s a salve to that insecurity.
Ego leads to envy and it rots the bones of people big and small.
And that’s what is so insidious about talk. Anyone can talk about himself or herself. Even a child knows how to gossip and chatter. Most people are decent at hype and sales. So what is scarce and rare? Silence.
Like any good school, learning from failure isn’t free. The tuition is paid in discomfort or loss and having to start over.
First, see clearly. Next, act correctly. Finally, endure and accept the world as it is.
People claim to want to do something that matters, yet they measure themselves against things that don’t, and track their progress not in years but in microseconds. They want to make something timeless, but they focus instead on immediate payoffs and instant gratification.
If we’re to overcome our obstacles, this is the message to broadcast – internally and externally. We will not be stopped by failure, we will not be rushed or distracted by external noise. We will chisel and peg away at the obstacle until it is gone. Resistance is futile.
A critical test of any product: Does it have a purpose? Does it add value to the world? How will it improve the lives of the people who buy it?
No slavery is more disgraceful,” he quipped, “than one which is self-imposed.
All of us waste precious life doing things we don’t like, to prove ourselves to people we don’t respect, and to get things we don’t want.
Ego loves this notion, the idea that something is “fair” or not. Psychologists.
I judge you unfortunate because you have never lived through misfortune. You have passed through life without an opponent – no one can ever know what you are capable of, not even you.” – SENECA, ON PROVIDENCE, 4.3.
Media was once about protecting a name; on the web it is about building one.
Every negative has a positive. Push a negative hard enough and deep enough that it will break through into its counterside.
Philosophy’s true use – “An operating system for life’s difficulties and hardships”.
And why should we feel anger at the world? As if the world would notice! – EURIPIDES.