It's been Lonesome on my saddle since my horse died

We are all made of stardust. Stars died for you to be alive today.

"Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves.

To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow.

But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly.

When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."

C.S. Lewis

join the club!

To me, this is one of the most inspiring things I've ever seen or heard:

It's the heart afraid of breaking
That never learns to dance
It's the dream afraid of waking
That never takes the chance
It's the one who won't be taken
Who cannot seem to give
And the soul afraid of dying
That never learns to live

"From the smallest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from one attribute of man - the function of his reasoning mind." Ayn Rand.

PERSERVERANCE! Endure. Learn. Endure. And learn some more!

I saw an article yesterday that talked about how Schopenhauer essentially taught that we live totally on a pleasure / pain axis and that those who escape pain and suffering have to contend with boredom. By that logic you must not be suffering enough!

I think that's an over-simplification. And I very much disagree with the notion that we somehow need human suffering to be fully human and to have any real appreciation for pleasure (or freedom or whatever). Motivation does in a sense come from pain avoidance and pleasure-seeking but all that requires is contrasts ... I can tell the difference between a pleasant walk in nature and an orgasm and everything in between; I don't have to extend that scale into the realms of deprivation, grief, loss, and fear to have contrasts.

All that said, if your biggest problem is not being inspired, you're pretty privileged, so take heart, it's a good sign.

Now ... to the problem of not finding life as compelling as expected. I think this is also an overdetermined problem, a product of our operant conditioning by society that we are on some form of heroe's quest, that we're the central protagonist in a story that's all about us, acted out on a stage for a "great cloud of witnesses". And that anything that's ordinary, prosaic, or unremarkable is some sort of failure on our part.

I submit for your consideration (he said in his best Rod Serling voice) that you may not be living within your true scope, that of an ordinary mortal of no particular significance in what passes for the great scheme of things, and so you're robbing yourself of your sense of accomplishment, which needs to come from little things. Not great accomplishments or acclaim, possibly not involving any appreciation at all, but just showing up and being present and doing your eensie-weensie little job in life.

I'll tell you what's compelling so far about my day: I fed the dogs, listened to my wife's concerns about our dying cat, took care of some work-related tasks, and answered this post.

It is sufficient.

i try not to indulge in philosophy but i do remember my mother saying (not original to her but i heard it from her) "my right to swing my arm ends at your nose." it's a good thing to remember in daily life. daily life is all we've got.

g