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I like this. I like the writing style, I like the humility and the openness, and I like the recognition that chasing goals is ultimately an exercise in futility
by ryanwaggoner 6y ago
I like this. I like the writing style, I like the humility and the openness, and I like the recognition that chasing goals is ultimately an exercise in futility. You spend almost all your time unhappy because you're not yet at your goal, and then as soon as you achieve it, you're unhappy because you're not at the next arbitrary goal. It's madness, but it's basically the way almost all of us live.
I've been spending more time meditating and reading about mindfulness recently, and it's helped me become aware of just how infrequently I'm truly happy and present. I can be in the most idyllic setting and situation, and part of my brain is wondering how I can improve it, or what I can do to feel that way all the time, etc.
Why is it so difficult to turn off the past- and future-oriented parts of my brain and just be? To just enjoy this?
- dhuin 6y agoPretty much the human condition. Seneca was writing about it in the first century, Buddhists were talking about it from the inception of their religion.
- ryanwaggoner 6y agoWhat do people get for all the toil and anxious striving with which they labor under the sun? All their days their work is grief and pain; even at night their minds do not rest. This too is meaningless. A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil. From Ecclesiastes, one of the few parts of the Christian scriptures that still interests me.
- julianeon 6y agoI was thinking I like the blog format, actually: more like Tweets than like 'My Manifesto About Software, Life, the Universe, and Everything: Volume I of MDXXIII.' It just has an inherent digestibility and modesty that makes it really appealing. Also it makes me think I may try this tweet-style writing also, and modify my CSS to look more like his, because I like it a lot.