June Journal Excerpts: Part 2
The clothes you wear. The songs you play. That which resonates with your being. Express it, so the others with whom it resonates can see the connection you share.
Would you rather have ten deep friends or one hundred acquaintances? Would you rather be a master at one instrument, or reasonably good at four? Would you rather be fluent in two languages, or able to scrape by in five?
Much of life comes down to finding the balance between repetition and novelty. Between depth and breadth.
Should I read a new book, or reread a book I’ve already read?
Could you benefit from adding some structure and commitments to your life? Could you benefit from doing the opposite?
I’m starting to believe that many of the so called “rules” of reality, even the laws of physics, are not quite as set in stone as most of us imagine them to be.
A little nudge is often all it takes.
Do you take pleasure in going above and beyond what is expected of you?
Learning about others is one of the best ways to decrease the amount of time you spend obsessively thinking about yourself. My mind has a strong tendency to do this, which is one of the reasons why I make such a strong effort to spend lots of time reading biographies and autobiographies.
The less I think about what I’m going to say prior to having a conversation, the better the conversation tends to go.
I’ve never fully understood the blind worshipping of the constitution. It was not written by God. It was written by men. Men who were, presumably, no more immune to having and writing down potentially bad ideas than anybody alive today.
Some say globalization is good. Some say it’s bad. Some say facebook is good. Some say it’s bad. The same goes for the chemical industry, taxes on businesses, investment banks, bitcoin, capitalism, socialism, environmentalism, the list is endless. Why is it so hard, for so many, to see that in nearly every circumstance, the answer is highly nuanced, and probability lies somewhere in the middle?
If everyone, regardless of their income, was forced to work a job that paid less than fifteen dollar per hour for one month every year, I think the world would quickly start to become a better place.
How long should I cook it for? Undercook a meal, and it won’t taste right. Overcook a meal and it will burn. As is so often the case, the answer lies somewhere in the middle.
If you tried to figure out why cars did what they did without learning about their drivers, you’d never be fully successful. Trying to figure out why people do what they do by studying the brain and the body, but not the spirit, will, I think, prove to be an equally inadequate form of inquiry.
If you find your mind wandering to a place you’d rather it didn’t go, just take a few deep breaths and refocus on what is happening in front of you.
How are your fundamental assumptions about the nature of reality influencing your beliefs about what might be possible?
What words do you love? List them. What do they say about you?
It’s one thing to think about how to win a game. It’s another to think about which games are worth playing.
Reading uplifting content is like introducing beneficial species into an ecosystem. The species are thoughts. The ecosystem is your mind.
If someone asked me what was the most fundamental truth about reality, I would say this: Everything is music.
The car and the driver.
The instrument and the musician.
The body and the spirit.
Properties arising from combinations of constituents
Molecules, words, and chords
Atoms, letters, and notes
Subatomic particles, phonemes, and harmonics
If you want to heal
Listen to water
Listen to rain
Listen to rivers
Listen to waves.
