8/15

Not enough time, and yet, not enough patience.

8/14

There are reasons why we thought what we thought, why we believed what we believed, and ultimately why we did what we did.

We can’t just pretend as if those reasons didn’t exist after the fact.

We can do what we can do now, in this moment, and there’s nothing else to it.

The circumstances were as they were. And they are as they are. What’s left is simply a choice now, in this present moment—if we are so able—to do better now.

8/13

We could’ve done better.

Well, then why didn’t we?

8/12

To live out our days as if they were the last; to approach the world as if every we could make a difference; to think of every action as having an incomprehensibly complex cascading chain of consequence—these are among the most difficult things to internalize within our consciousness.

8/11

How lamentable it is to be trapped by ignorance—to have neither the capacity nor knowledge to break free of our own impulses and our natural mode of thought.

If we suffer, we will continue to suffer.

If we are unable to be happy, we will continue to be unhappy.

If we inflict suffering on others, we will continue to inflict suffering.

It is a game of simply waiting, to merely drift around in the world, tugged by our circumstances until they decide to lay perfectly to our favor—to help us realize a change and the value of a change.

8/8

It’s not about looking on the bright side—to merely ignore the suffering and the ugliness of the world, because it’s inevitable to resurface; it’s about reorienting the mind to see how something is the way it’s supposed to be on either side, and that we can be at peace with the circumstances we’ve been given.

8/7

For all that is wrong with the world, if we so possess the energy to complain about it, we simultaneously possess the energy to change it.

It is the choice between satiating the ego or being generous.

Be the change you seek to make.

8/6

In the heat of the moment, criticism—thoughtful, constructive, or neither, and judged on the basis of its intrinsic validity alone—feels like an attack on our identity, our values, our conception of truth.

But if we take a mere moment to step back—it's probably the most generous thing someone can ever offer us; they offer a chance to find clarity, revelation, to look beyond the confines of our biased perceptions and the echoing chambers of our mind. How can we turn down such an opportunity? An opportunity that exhorts us to remember that the life that you or I live is not merely what you or I personally make of it; it is what we make of it, how we can live out our best lives, how we can construct meaning, engender love, and craft community.

8/3

Without reason, and we become a slave to our circumstances.

But without emotion, there is no reason to have reason.

8/1

To be happy—the most common answer I’ve received to the question of what’s someone life purpose is.

Yet I find it odd that so many people want something that they don’t understand. What is their definition of “happiness”? Is it merely to maximize the amount of time spent in this capricious emotional state of bliss that comes and goes based on our impulses? Is it the achievement of something we can be proud of? Is it to attain stability and security? Friends and family? To possess freedom?

The truth is that these are the wrong questions to ask; it’s not about achieving, attaining, accomplishing, or possessing anything. These words entail an ending, a conclusion, as if the goal was to simply have something, no matter the means. Indeed, the point of a journey is not to arrive. The point of the journey is to write our story. It is not to avoid suffering. It is not to “achieve” happiness. In the grand scope of things, neither is “good” nor “bad,” as we might define them. They are both necessary components of a life worth living—a life with purpose, with meaning, with intention.

If we can look ourselves in the mirror and declare that this is not what we want—and that what we want is to merely passively drift along in this world, indulging in pleasure when our emotions decide to work in our favor, and drenching ourselves in misery when it doesn’t—then so be it. I won’t hold it against anyone. But for everyone else—this is the only way.