under the milky way tonight

I had a presentiment that the 'travelling' phase of my life might be passing. I felt, before the malaise of settlement crept over me, that i should reopen those notebooks. I should set down on paper a resume of the ideas, quotations and encounters which had amused and obsessed me; and which i hoped would shed light on what is, for me, the question of questions: the nature of human restlessness.

Pascal, in one of his gloomier pensees, gave it as his opinion that all our miseries stemmed, from a single cause: our inability to remain quietly in a room.

Why, he asked, must a man with sufficent to live on feel drawn to divert himself on long sea voyages? To dwell in another town? To go off in search of peppercorn? Or go off to war and break skulls?

Later, on further reflection, having discovered the cause of our misfortunes, he wished to understand the reason for them, he found one very good reason: namely the natural unhappiness of our weak mortal condition: so unhappy that when we gave it all our attention, nothing could console us.

One thing alone could alleviate our despair, and that was 'distraction' (divertissement): yet this was the worst of our misfortunes, for in distraction we were prevented from thinking about ourselves and were gradually brought to ruin.

Could it be, i wondered, that our need for distraction, our mania for the new, was, in essence, an instictive migratory urge akin to that of birds in autumm?

All the great teaches have preached that Man, originally, was a 'wanderer in the scorching and barren wilderness of this world' - the words are those of Dostoevesky's Grand Inquistor - and that to rediscover his humanity, he must slough off attachments and take to the road.

page 180-1
The Songlines
Bruce Chatwin




Remember! she told herself. Remember the solution to this test.Remembrance was a buddhist philosphers trick. Rather than asking her mind to search for a solution to a potentially impossible challenge, Vittoria asked her mind simply to remember it. The presupposition that one once knew the answer created the mindset that the answer must exist...thus eliminating the crippling conception of hopelessness.

Angels & Demons
Dan Brown



Life is about accumulating
through knowledge
and
letting go
through wisdom




Living

A friend called today. He was exhausted.
'Work sucks,' he said.
He felt physically and emotionally exhausted.
He felt dead. Alienated in a job he hated, with co-workers he didn't care for, he didn't feel like
he was living.

Waiting for the clock to strike an end to his monotony
every evening. Waiting for weekends to come. Counting
the days until another holiday. Then counting the days
until retirement.

"When i'm late my boss calls me in to yell at me.
When i don't meet sales quotas, I get yelled at.
Why do i have to put up with this?"

"Quit then."
"I can't."

If you cannot quit then learn to accept it. Along the way,
you might learn about endurance. But when the
learning stops or you've had enough, move on.
Life is too short to be so bitter.

Counting the days until retirement is like waiting for
dearth, waiting for it to end your miserable existence.
That's not living. That's just existing. Just existing
without understanding why is like living in a coma.
YOu might as well be dead.

Living and making a living are two different things.

Pop AreeTadpole