Know its inevitability. Ride its currents.
After getting freaked out, realize that being freaked out changes nothing. Might as well see the unfolding of an uncertain event as the unwrapping of a gift.
PROMPT: Uncertainty
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Tag Archives: emotion
PROMPT: Villain
Heath Ledger’s Joker [The Dark Knight (2008)] has a monologue that goes: “Nobody panics when things go ‘according to plan’… even if the plan is horrifying. If tomorrow I told the press that, like, a gang-banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it’s all part of the plan…I’m an agent of chaos. Oh, and you know the thing about chaos? It’s fair.”
It is definitely true that our psychology allows us to accept tens of thousands of deaths from drug interactions or auto accidents, but then we will go to outlandish extents — billions upon billions of dollars — to avoid the possibility of a couple of terrorism fatalities. We would use resources much better if we were not so panicky about uncertainty.
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PROMPT: Fear
Swimming in the deeps.
Swimming day in and day out until my buoyancy became an incontrovertible fact of nature that not even my amygdala could deny.
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PROMPT: Won’t Live to Witness
Daily writing prompt
What’s something you’d love to see in the future, but know you probably won’t live to witness?
I would love to see an era in which AI and robotics frees up humans to work on the project of being better humans physically, mentally, creatively, emotionally, artistically, etc.
However, I suspect that on the way to that point there will be periods of dystopia, chaos, and quasi-Armageddon. As near as I can tell, it will involve the invention of a new form of economy (and possibly governance,) which I haven’t seen anyone discussing in the merited depths.
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PROMPT: Quote
“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them have never happened.” – Mark Twain
“There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.” – William Shakespeare, Hamlet
“What you imagine, you create.” – Siddhartha Guatama Buddha
All restatements of one key principle, that our [mental / emotional] experience of the world is an entirely separate thing from the world itself. The latter one has almost no control over, the former one can reach a state of complete control (granted through painstaking and relentless effort.)
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PROMPT: Nervous
Chemical interactions in (and between) my nervous, enteric nervous, and endocrine systems make me nervous.
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Whiplash Weather [Free Verse]
Mountains are the
Lamborghini of weather --
from gray and dismal to
gloriously sunny
and back again
in record time.
It may rain and the droplets
burn off before noon,
leaving no trace of
the gloom.
One day may feel
multiple ways before
the sun goes down.
The human mind isn't
built for such whiplash
emotional experience.
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Stump Gator [Kyōka]
Gator rests on stump.
but my mind cannot rest.
it's not "gator"
and "stump" in the same place,
but in the same sentence.
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The Fray [Lyric Poem]
Rainy December day
blows in - not long to stay.
From season to season,
without any reason,
sometimes we feel the fray.
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PROMPT: Pay More Attention
What details of your life could you pay more attention to?
Mental states and somatic & emotional sensations. Sakshi Bhava is good stuff.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 