I know who I am.

Is it true that most comedians are secretly neurotic and depressed?

Amusement is like a hardness of heart beyond the norm.

"Take a minute right now to review the past 24 hours. During how many moments were you truly content, appreciating the moment-to-moment unfolding of your life? For most of us these moments are the exceptions -- they stand out in our memory. The rest of the time we're restlessly pursuing some goal or another, trying with limited success to maximize pleasure and minimize pain or discomfort. "


"As though this weren't enough...there is yet another mechanism that...adds to our troubles: our predisposition to love. These emotions bind us together in couples, families, tribes, and larger cultural groups. They enable us to nurture and protect one another...

But these emotions also set us up for a host of painful experiences. On top of thinking constantly about seeking pleasure and avoiding pain for ourselves, we have the opportunity to worry about the well-being of our loved ones.....In general, the more we're able to love, the more everyone's pleasure and pain become our own. While this capacity for attachment and empathy is a wonderful part of being human, it makes the project of trying to hold on to pleasure and avoid pain even more impossible. "

"Since we tend to remember painful experiences [better than pleasurable], we also tend to anticipate them [more] in the future. Each unpleasant memory, worried thought, and pessimistic conclusion is associated with a bit of emotional hurt -- even when nothing is actually going wrong. So as long as we're living in our heads, lost in narratives about the past and the future, we're going to experience a lot of pain."

"Ironically, many of us put icing on the cake of our suffering with a uniquely human addition -- concluding that our dissatsfaction is or own fault. Living in a more or less free-market economy exacerbates this. The way I can motivate you to buy my goods or services is by suggesting that they will bring you more pleasure and less pain. Enterepreneurs and marketers are smart == they know that this is what makes us tick. When we see the happy couple in their new convertible, or the sexy surger with his beautiful babe holding a beer, we draw the conclusion that we wold feel great if only we had that car or brew. Besides creating a remarkable amount of wasterful, environmentally destructivr consumer spending, such marketing contributes to our personal suffering. Grouing up with our minds marianted in these messages, most of us come to believe that if we're not happy, either we must have made bad decisions or there is something fundamentally wrong with us. 'If only i had chosen the right career, spiuse, diet, plastic surgery, shampoo, or jeans -- then I'd be happy.
Why do I keep getting it wrong?'

"We're left blaming ourselves rather than noticing that most human suffering derives from our history, biological makeup, and existential predicament. By not noticing that suffering stems from universal habits of mind rather than our personal failings, we compound our difficulty. "


- Ronald Siegel

a moment...a dream..

Oh how time moves us along...............................









So many days gone by, who am I now?


       Dare I cast a wager?

Old dewy lines dried up along cheeks, salted and pure.

Emo x 1000000000000

Status: Pro

forgot about this one

29

One year, one step.

And there it is again, that old reliable surge of feeling spreading out from nowhere, from my chest, emanating like a true mystery from nothingness  and everything.

It would be so lovely to know just for a moment that others have this presence too.

For crying out loud, how much do we all feel this and have no understanding that others feel it too? Please, someone tell me I'm not exaggerating when I imagine that we are all banging our heads up against the same dense, immovable surface attempting to see the things we cannot ever see, to know the things we can never know....

Is this just some useless quest? Is it meaningless?

Dangit.

So tired of these ruminations. Rumination is indeed perhaps the most fitting word to use. Every definition fits.

 If people are like different cells in a body, why did I have to be this particular cell? To suffer so needlessly on these thoughts, these feelings, when other cells are content without them?

No judgement here meant, just observation, only tempered a bit with some fleeting, awkward pretense of jealousy and despair. Underneath these thoughts I do not have any true discourse.

Why can't I just sit and be, fully? I must examine all of these thoughts and feeling so tirelessly and without ceasing... to the point of total excess. Even now these words are becoming more and more of an exercise in futility that I am becoming exasperated and bored as I type them.

Why am I still typing?

This is my life when I lose focus? Focus? Huh? What is there that is worth focusing on? Someone remind me before I lose the plot completely here...

Is ADHD just an addiction to being distracted?

Negative reinforcement, so to speak?

Built it in the sky, all that's in your eye now not the same

Stuff n things. 

Things and Stuff.

Now you see, what you thought was yours could never be had
Take a look around, try to understand that
It's a game that you'll never hold onto very long, long
Where we are isn't just a place where everything remains....

Silhouettes driving down against the sunset, wind ruffling through salted hair. Eyes clear and still as pools of water, trickling joyful tears, a faded memory of smiles pushing back our cheeks once more. The sense of some beautiful eternity sweeping us off our feet, bringing us to a place of absolute peace and intensity. The genuine aliveness of this moment can never be replaced, and, fortunately, never lost. 

This is better than a dream. This is better than those things considered external and temporal. Moments of absolute inspiration and awe, not possible solely from what surrounds us but dependent on the things that travel through us and stir within us. This is joy, this is peace, this is beauty. 

This is love.

slowly but surely, everything becomes meaningless

What a hipsteresque title today.

Early on, there is so much to discover. So much to learn. So much to achieve! And its all so fresh and exciting, of course.

Go to school. Get good grades so you can get a job.

Get a job. Work hard so you can save up money. Have children. Start them on the same path.
But for what purpose?

These are the questions I imagine many people ask themselves every day. And more and more people are starting to perk up and escape this senseless drudgery, seeking something better. And so now, I look and see that the escape itself is meaningless and dreary.

So now where? What comes next after that? Once you discover your "true passion" or "how to make money and still enjoy your life" or [insert other self help guide catchphrase here] ?

There can only be one answer...

 God. 

Oh, I fervently hope and pray that I do not fail in this last endeavor.