M: On independent identity
You can not think when someone else thinks for you, prescribes your actions, or picks the tie you wear to work. You lack opinion and thus you lack identity, and thus you lack a basis to explore the human soul. Without a boat, the river can never be fully known. You can not navigate the far and deep reaches.
M: Killing the self in order to live authentically; De-conditioning the mind
“If you want to understand, really understand the way things are in this world, you’ve got to die at least once. And as that’s the law, it’s bette to die while you’re young, when you’ve still got time to pull yourself up adn start again.”Giorgio Bassani, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis ; Dedication quote in Nobility of Spirit by Rob Riemen.
For me this quote makes me think to killing off my ego, as well as deprogramming myself out of the conditioning that I have been subjected to. Sometimes our social programming is so strong that the only way out is by destroying everything around us–the world we live in is so tightly interwoven that we are unclear as to what is ours and what is theirs.
So we burn it all down. Destroy everything. Kill the life we had in order to rebuild and discover the life we want.
M: My attempt at Carpe Diem
Do not TRY to “find yourself” –you must make yourself. Choose what you want to find meaningful and live, create, love, hate, cry, destroy, fight and die for it. Do not let your life and your values and you actions slip easily into any mold, other that that which you create for yourself, and say with conviction, “This is who I make myself”.
Do not give in to hope. Remember that nothing you do has any significance beyond that with which imbue it. Whatever you do, do it for its own sake. When the universe looks on with indifference, laugh, and shout back, “Fuck You!”. Remember that to fight meaninglessness is futile, but fight anyway, in spite of and because of its futility.
The world may be empty of meaning, but it is a blank canvas on which to paint meanings of your own. Live deliberately. You are free
Paradigm Shift
Sometimes it happens so fast it just catches you off guard. You are one person for such a long time, days, weeks, months, and then you wake up one day, you meet someone new, you read a book, you see someone do something, and it strikes a cord inside you, the world shifts, and bam! Yo’re forever changed.
M: On Apologies, Making Mistakes, and Guilt
When due, apologize once, twice, but not for forever. You are human and are liable to be swept up from time to time. You can not sleep with guilt all your life for having made the mistake of being human and being greedy and wanting something too soon, too much, too wholly.
M: If you are to fear, fear stagnation!
Live in the present. Let the memory of the past and the wind of the future grace you but do not let it dictate how you live. When we start creating strict rules for our living and militaristicaly adhere to them, we begin to lose the beauty of living in the present–we begin to fear change. we descend into stagnation.
If you are to fear, fear stagnation! For life is flow. Life is every changing.