What personality trait in people raises a red flag with you?
When a “grown man” makes life / wellbeing decisions based on what others will think of him, one of the words in quotation marks is in question. So, I guess… conformity.
Travels with Epicurus: A Journey to a Greek Island in Search of a Fulfilled Life by Daniel KleinIt should be small enough that I won’t acquire new things without asking whether they are necessary, and whether their value exceeds their spatial cost. [And, also, such that it encourages spending time outside.] Besides that, it should be an environment within which one can live healthily.
The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin
buds & blossoms,
in vibrant red, gussy up
a dreary cityscape.
In the drowsy dark caves of the mind / dreams build their nest with fragments / dropped from day’s caravan.
From the solemn gloom of the temple / children run out to sit in the dust, / God watches them play / and forgets the priest.
The wind tries to take the flame by storm / only to blow it out.
The same sun is newly born in new lands / in a ring of endless dawns.
When death comes and whispers to me, / “Thy days are ended.” / let me say to him, “I have lived in love / and not in mere time.” / He will ask, “Will thy songs remain?” / I shall say, “I know not, but this I know / that often when I sang I found my eternity.
Fireflies by Rabindranath Tagore is in the public domain and can be read at sites such as:
Fireflies is available at PoetryVerseWhat brings you peace?
Being in the now, and feeling – but not feeding – emotional sensations.
What are you curious about?
Everything. But I have learned to be less obsessed with the grand metaphysical questions for which no one has any defensible answers – just rank speculation. Socrates convinced me it’s not worth worrying about abstractions while one is still struggling with fundamental questions of how to be human.
Stationed in East Anglia,
I remember layered fog,
fog so thick one couldn't
see past the hood's end,
but, given a slight rise,
one could see all the way
down the runway -- as if
it was a cloudless full moon eve.
As one might expect of an airbase,
(having been built around a flat runway)
there wasn't much topography.
But sometimes life is like that:
a tiny rise in perspective
allows one to see the world clearly,
but a minor dip puts one in a
soup of unfathomability.
Every source of information is flawed and / or of limited value as a source of truth.
There is beauty everywhere (but to see it one has to let go of one’s compulsion to attach value judgements to everything.)
People who know more things for certain are wrong about more things.
A better life comes of being content with less than of having more.
There is a force, we’ll call it gravity, that keeps my feet to the floor (or insists that I either fall or expend energy to break the surly bonds.)
With respect to that which one can’t know for certain, it’s closer to truth to remain ignorant than to be deluded.
The world that I perceive isn’t the world, itself.
All else being equal, a diverse group of people is stronger, smarter, better looking, and more effective than a homogenous one.
If the same level of effort were put into fostering emotional intelligence as is put into mental intelligence… what a wonderful world it would be.
One who hands you knowledge but tells you to drop it like a hot rock if it doesn’t stand up to your own experience and rationality is more trustworthy than one who hands you knowledge and insists you hold onto it with white-knuckled intensity.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 