363

It could very well be something is destined to fail, but none of us want to confront the possibility that us believing that is what causes it to happen in the first place.

362

There are no absolutes in this world, but to be able to make decisions, we must be absolute in our minds.

361

There's so many people counting on you. You can't give up now.

And if you fail? If you get humiliated? If you embarrass yourself? So fucking what.

If you are at peace with the notion of death, then you can be at peace with this ephemeral nonsense.

360

To do our best in this life, to make things better, and to fight the battles worth fighting—often requires that we lose ourselves in the process—to be ever-consumed by a relentless desire, to be pressed by an exigent need to see change in the world, to forget about everything but making progress in this tireless pursuit.

Is it the right time to be patient? Or the right time to be desperate?

Do we choose to be happy now? Or will we fall into complacency?

Is what we have now enough? Or have we just fallen short of finding what really matters to us?

How much of our lives are we willing to let pass us by in service of this pursuit?

The questions never end, and the answers seem to never come. It is what makes life beautiful, this uncertainty, and precisely what makes it miserable.

359

Two things you should never postpone: to do your duty, and to love.

Or perhaps, they were the same thing all along.

358

How is it that you are afraid of making mistakes, yet so fixated on self-improvement?

Your growth depends on failure. You need to stop latching onto this absurd, idealized version of yourself that, for whatever reason, you absolved from the very things that bring you meaning in life.

357

Most of our conversations are imperfect. They're all going to have their fair share of nervousness, awkwardness, and disagreement. But guess what—it's not the end of the world.

Why do we have this unrealistic expectation that everything must go perfectly in an imperfect world with imperfect human beings? We can muster up the courage and the confidence to express our genuine feelings face to face. We can speak honestly about where we're trying to go and what we're trying to be. We can be emotionally mature and self-aware enough to tell each other in good faith about how we feel, or if something isn't working out, and not take personal offense to it or sulk.

But instead we hide behind facades of nonchalance, we try all we can to latch onto our pride, and we forget that all we're trying to do at the end of the day is help each other along in this journey through this chaotic existence.

356

Whether you do it or don’t do it doesn’t matter; there is an unknown opportunity lost no matter which path you take. What is problematic is that you vacillate between the two—that you conjure this senseless rift between the mind and heart. If you desire something, and it is appropriate in the given circumstances, then just set out to do it—with courage, with determination, and with resolution.

355

What is a need and what is merely a desire?

Desires are reducible to a root desire, and needs are context-dependent, particularly as they relate to those same root desires. We cannot need anything without first having a desire; after all, without desire, without something to orient our spirit towards, what are we but atoms floating around in this universe? We only need things as they pertain to what we desire to see in the world, in others, or in ourselves.

The truth is most of us merely desire to belong, to be part of a community where we can make a difference, all while having our basic needs for food, water, and shelter; far less important to us is how that all exactly looks like, so as long as those conditions are met. We tack on so many abstractions—so many layers of semantics, and so many arbitrary goals, so many fabricated inadequacies and so many solutions to problems that we created in the first place—that we so easily forget just how little we need, as Marcus Aurelius puts it, to live a satisfying and reverent life.

354

Why do you castigate yourself for failing, especially if you’ve already tried your best? Why didn’t you castigate yourself for wasting away your thoughts on the petty and the inconsequential? Not only that, why did you let your mind and your soul become imbued by such things?

If you’re going to blame yourself, at least blame yourself fairly.