Saturday, May 29, 2021

Nagging.......................

 What the hell?  Kelly frowned in frustration at the traffic because he didn't know the answer, but then there were a lot of questions to which he hadn't known the answers in the last six months.  He told his mind to be quiet and watched the traffic, even though it kept up its inquiries in a nagging sort of background noise.  One's mind, after all, rarely obeys its own commands.

-Tom Clancy,  Without Remorse

On orienting the world properly...............

 

















As it is said, "Man shall not live by bread alone" (Matthew 4:4).  That is exactly right.  We live by beauty.  We live by literature.  We live by art.  We cannot live without some connection to the divine—and beauty is divine—because in its absence life is too short, too dismal, and too tragic.  And we must be sharp and awake and prepared so that we can survive properly, and orient the world properly, and not destroy things, including ourselves—and beauty can help us appreciate the wonder of Being and motivate us to seek gratitude when we might otherwise be prone to destructive resentment.

-Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order:  12 More Rules For Life

Actually, he did..........................

 


Life its ownself...........................

 Take a risk. If there is no risk, there is no change. No one ever got anything different by doing the same thing. Write a new destination for your life and take a step toward it.

The greatest stories ever written and the greatest battles ever fought are those between our ears. Check your perspective and perception. Leave low living at the door. Strive to live with integrity and honor.

Life can be very hard. Life can be scary. But there are no champions without challenges and no victories without battles.

-Beth Bline, as culled from this column in the Newark Advocate

Friday, May 28, 2021

Checking in with Martin Gurri......................

At bottom, all discussion of freedom is really about its restraint.  Once we move beyond the Protean cult of personality, human life becomes a balancing act between consciousness and desire, private goals and public demands, the individual and his family, his profession, his country, his culture, his God.  In this matrix of possibilities, freedom means having the opportunity to choose when to surrender freedom.  Thus the husband chooses his wife while giving up the freedom to bed others.  Similarly, the athlete chooses a tyrannical training regime to achieve automatic (but consciously learned) behaviors like the overhead smash in tennis.