Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Patterns of Life

The Pattern of the Sad life

1. Do not forgive: anger and hate are very rich, deep, and enjoyable emotions, but unless you can forgive yourself and those that have hurt you, your soul can never move on from that pain associated with certain actions.

2. Play the victim: it's always someone else that has hurt you, wronged you, or is not correct, and you can't help but feel victimized when something bad happens to you.

3. Think only about your own problems: Focus on everything that is wrong. Really, this is just the pain of feeling pained. It's not that your problems are even that serious, you're just comparing them to an ideal reality where there are no problems, and now your reality doesn't match up to that, which causes you pain and anguish.

4. Find fault: Reality is self-reinforcing, and if there really is no fault, you will create it.
-------------

The Pattern of the Good Life

1. There is no where you have to be, and there is nothing you have to do: understanding this eases the mind and allows it to be free from the demands and duties that we place onto life. Nothing is really that important. There really isn't anything that you are going to do that will matter in the long run.

2. pain comes from our concepts about what life should be: pain is felt only when our emotions are tied to certain outcomes. The outcomes do not match our shoulds, and we are pained. But the pain is only from having our expectations not met; when we realize this, we then let go of our expectations and live in this life, not the life of the 'shoulds' or 'oughts'.

3. Fill your life with the beautiful: Figuring out what good there is to be found in life, and then enjoying that good on a daily basis.

4. You act, you are not acted upon. You don't let other's decisions determine your own understanding or attitudes. You're not the victim, you're acting. You're not preoccupied with all the things that have not been done for you, because you realize no one owes you anything, and so you move on with your life and create it the way you want it to be.

------

It's easy for me to see how much I've been living in the pattern of the sad life. I hope to be able to move on from here, and get myself into the pattern of the good life. We'll see.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"The Pattern of the Good Life" is very existential. I've been teaching existentialism to my students while they read Kafka, and they don't seem to see the benefits of that type of thinking. I wish that we all had in high school the kind of perspective that comes later in life, but I guess that perspective is based on the experiences we have, so it's impossible to gain it sooner.

This is an informative post, full of insight that can only be gained by looking at these two philosophies side by side. Interesting.

3:33 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home