WellsBaum.blog

Writing about life and arts

philosophy

Celebrate the story you tell yourself

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Conformity will always be the safest choice. But honesty is a passport to freedom. As long as you’re living your best self, you’ve got nothing to worry about. #gif #amwriting

You either fit in or strive to stand out. There’s promises in both approaches.

You’re more likely to feel more secure in the first route as society rewards mimetic behavior. Every obedient dog gets a treat.

Success is harder on the fringes. Whether you’re an iconoclast, a contrarian, a ‘weirdo’, or innovator, you can expect to be misunderstood for long periods of time.

Walking through the labyrinth requires acceptance of uncertainty. Thinking different from the norm will always require more courage than jumping through hoops.

“It’s as though people expect you to blow one note all the time, and I guess a lot of people can only blow one note. But there are people who can blow two or three notes, and I guess I’m one of them.”

Frank Gehry

Yet, rarely is one unique individual every truly alone — the internet swims in collaborative niches. Different is attractive.

Conformity will always be the safest choice. But honesty is a passport to freedom. As long as you’re living your best self, you’ve got nothing to worry about.

The fog of the present

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Attaching yourself to the coming and going will steal your future. You have to listen to your life and follow its intuition.

Introspection is your observatory. The depths of inner space needs no telescope but your own attention. You can already see far enough.

“You must always know what it is that you want,” the old king had said. The boy knew, and was now working toward it.

PAULO COELHO, THE ALCHEMIST
Galileo Galilei‘s telescope

With such belief, landmarks pave themselves along the way. Routines build confidence.

The challenge is in seeing the world as many angles as possible while simultaneously having the courage to act on your own volition.

Like a rough draft, you experiment and reshape it later. It is the spirit that guides you settles you in, on purpose.

What imprints the outlook

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You have to cultivate everything: awareness, happiness, aloofness, sadness, the yin, and yang.

Nothing comes naturally, although genetics are known to preprogram our inclinations. 

People are constantly surveying, digesting the world around them. So they must also decide what sticks and what doesn't.

Inner and outer feelings express themselves as lifestyles. Fashioning one as an outsider gives them their edge. Being an insider gives one all the answers.

Humans signal their desires and struggles. A lousy sleeper wears their restlessness on them the next day.

When the try becomes a habit, the unconscious controls take over. The body is in concert.

Shaggy but sure — that’s when you know that the desired perspective is a part of you.

Facing opposites

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face to face

We want to reduce the stress in our lives, yet we keep piling on the number of things we need to do. We travel arms wide open into a tidal wave of responsibilities.

We want to restrict the data tech companies collect from us, yet we swipe right at consent. All terms, all conditions, in favor of the Leviathan.

We want to think we're a curious bunch, open to a world unknown, yet act like novices at the ways of seeing. What is new leads somewhere new, absent the spot.

We meditate to detach the mind from surfeit consciousness when simply going for a walk, doing the dishes, or shooting hoops produces the same relaxing effect. With little effort, the neuronal spike trains intensify in voltage.

Opposite to everything, without opposition to anything. Whatever one says is true, the opposite is equally true.

Have an exaggerated sense of curiosity

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We’re all fake artists, winging it to chase our dreams while simultaneously masking our vulnerabilities.

It isn’t a thorny question of attribution. We all steal ideas from each other and recast them as our own.

But having an exaggerated sense of curiosity pays off. The cash value of policing thoughts means that we can better sew the past, present, and the future altogether.

We are one, in mind and spirit. The only drawback is fabricating the best self that meets the lofty ambitions of others.

Nothing is fake if the desire is real. All we can do is float into the canvass of our dreams.

art via giphy

Thinking, thinking!

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People don't like thinking. It's painful. Like denoting page numbers, you have to get your brain's cells to assemble in an attempt to establish some order.

There's a reason why there are so few philosophers and so many people attending entertainments. It is easier to sit back and play, to consume in our default setting rather than tinkering with abstract trains of thought.

The “Thinking Tree”, an ancient olive tree in Puglia, Italy

Humans are thinking machines

It takes courage to challenge yourself to learn without drawing conclusions. Society obsesses with absolutes, stuck safely indoors while the explorers coast outside making guesses and predictions with effortless attention.

Magnetically lured to controlling the world, you forget that uncertainty is what makes thinking successful. Experimentation begets revelations, which allows one to seize even more possibilities.

Doing is why there's knowing, a result of thinking lightly about what could be.

gif by @lilypadula