Tag Archives: Experience

FIVE WISE LINES [June 2025]

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…we should not be too confident in our belief of anything.

cicero; tusculan disputations

No matter what plans you make,
no matter what you acquire,
the thief will enter from the unguarded side.
Be occupied, then, with what you really value
and let the thief take something less.

Rumi; Mathnawi II

Very little is needed to make a happy life;
it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.

Marcus aurelius; Meditations

I possess, but I am not possessed by her;
since the best thing is to possess pleasures
without being their slave,
not to be devoid of pleasures.

aristippus [according to Diogenes laertius in
lives of the eminent philosophers]

Do not fear the gods.
Do not fear death.
What is good is easy to attain.
What is painful is easy to endure.

philodemus; Herculaneum papyrus
[Often referred to as the four cures of epicurus]

PROMPT: Collections

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Daily writing prompt
Do you have any collections?
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I collect experiences, but they are very slippery and will not stay in a row on a shelf to be displayed.

PROMPT: Cold Weather

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How do you feel about cold weather?

In the abstract, sitting here in the tropics, I’m fond of the idea of winter. When I’m in cold weather, I’d prefer not to be.

PROMPT: Broken Bone

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Have you ever broken a bone?

To the best of my knowledge, I have never broken a bone — neither mine nor anyone else’s.

But it’s not been for a lack of trying.

PROMPT: Camping

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Daily writing prompt
Have you ever been camping?
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Many a time, and I hope to do more. I highly recommend the experience. Nothing like sleeping close to the Earth to realize that there exists no patch of ground on the planet as flat and rock-free as one’s mattress.

“A Minor Bird” by Robert Frost [w/ Audio]

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I have wished a bird would fly away,
 And not sing by my house all day;

Have clapped my hands at him from the door
 When it seemed as if I could bear no more.

The fault must partly have been in me.
  The bird was not to blame for his key.

And of course there must be something wrong
   In wanting to silence any song.

PROMPT: Inaction

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Daily writing prompt
Write about a time when you didn’t take action but wish you had. What would you do differently?
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The older I get, the more I find regret to be a sucker’s game. I was the me then that I was, wishing the me then was the me now is just a waste of angst. Learn and move. Learn and move. No regret.

PROMPT: Nervous

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Daily writing prompt
What makes you nervous?
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All sorts of stuff — e.g. gabby strangers approaching me unexpectedly when I’m in a low mental energy state. But when I observe the sensation of that nervousness, without rumination or feeding of the feeling, it fades rapidly. As Twain [allegedly, but possibly never] said, “I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.”

PROMPT: Positive Thing

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Daily writing prompt
Describe a positive thing a family member has done for you.
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Be present.

PROMPT: High School

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Daily writing prompt
Describe something you learned in high school.
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A psychology teacher taught us about what he called “the gestalt of expectations.” It’s when one builds an alternative reality in one’s mind (typically a worst-case scenario) and then one acts as though it is a reality, when – in fact – it is not. (Though sometimes it creates a self-fulfilling prophecy situation, which — of course — triggers selection bias in people of the unexamined life.)

It was my introduction to what I would come to know as the most fundamental insight of human existence — i.e. that one’s experience of the world is not the world itself, and while one has minimal influence over the latter, one can have tremendous influence over the former. One can even train oneself to perceive difficulties and sorrows as learning and growth opportunities.