“It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: ‘And this, too, shall pass away.’ How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!”
– Abraham Lincoln
Tag Archives: philosophy
The Rhythm of Life
5
Well, Scott and I are off to eastern Wa tomorrow for a wedding and to visit friends and family… Let’s all pray we make it back safely, for as we know, PEOPLE KEEP FUCKING DYING OVER THERE!
On the upside, for the three people I know who died this year, three I know were born. Twin boys I’m helping take care of, and early Thursday morning a friend of mine had a beautiful baby boy. I was there and got to see him when he was like 30 min. old. crazy. I also just found out that the three cousins of mine that are recently married are all expecting babies early next year.
You gotta wonder about the timing of three people dying and three being born all in one summer. The whole idea of a rhythm of life really starts to make sense when stuff like that goes down.
Anyway, glad to be back! hope everyone’s doing well! Scoot and I will be back in portland in a couple weeks, and then you’ll never be able to get rid of us! haha!
A Valid Business Model
“Doing violence for the sake of violence, or shock for the sake of shock — that’s definitely a valid business model.”
– American McGee
Beautiful Things
“Stupid people see beauty only in beautiful things.”
– old dada saying
I'm an Optimist
there are many reasons why I consider myself an optimist, but I never really thought much about it until Annie announced that she thinks I am a pessimist.
She talked to me about it and explained that she was basing that on the way I reacted to certain things, and specifically, my frequent announcements (only partly facetious) that I hate everyone and everything.
I disagree with her. I think being an optimist or a pessimist has very little to do with how well you react to certain situations or whether you hold the rest of mankind in contempt.
It has to do with the way you react to things as a whole. While bad things do happen to me, on the whole, I am confident that in the end, things will work out (if not for the best, then the way they needed to be).
When I watch the news, I see bad things happening, and think “that’s sad,” and I move on. I think about other things and I remain confident that things will work out.
Annie watches the news and comes away with her faith in mankind shaken. I’ll listen to her mutter for hours about the environment, or war, or just unfortunate things. She worries about them happening to her and she stresses about them happening to other people. Her faith in many things, both religious and secular is easily shaken.
To me, that’s pessimism. Because I don’t react that way. I don’t get bogged down in it, because while it’s true that bad things are happening, and could happen to you, you need to do what you can with what you’ve got, and do your best to improve your lot in life. And I remain ever hopeful that I can improve, and so can the world.
There are those (and while Annie has never said so, I think she might think of me this way) who view this as turning a blind eye to the world’s problems. I don’t have a good response to that. I just don’t feel that’s what I’m doing. I don’t think I can solve all the world’s problems, but I also don’t feel a huge pressure to do so.
So sure, I get mad at bad drivers, and I don’t like shallow inconsiderate people, but when it comes to the larger issues, I consider myself optimistic.