Difficult decisions are like crossing a river. You may jump into the torrent and hope for the best or walk along the stream and look for an easier crossing. Either way, do what you feel is right for you at the time. You will most likely get wet anyway. Googie McCabe
Category Archives: Comforting Thought
Comforting Thought: Empathy Between Gift and Invasion
“I’m interested in everything that might be flawed and messy about empathy, how imagining other lives can constitute a kind of tyranny, or artificially absolve ourselves from guilt or responsibility. How feeling empathy can make use feel we’ve done something good when we actually haven’t. “We start to like the feeling of feeling bad forContinue reading “Comforting Thought: Empathy Between Gift and Invasion”
Comforting Thought: Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself
To forgive is to assume a larger identity than the person who was first hurt, to mature and bring to fruition an identity that can put its arm not only around the afflicted one within, but also around the memories we carry of the searing emotional blow. We imagine ourselves in the light of ourContinue reading “Comforting Thought: Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself”
The high-spirited thoroughbred
The great affair, the love affair with life, is to live as variously as possible, to groom one’s curiosity like a high-spirited thoroughbred, climb aboard, and gallop over the thick, sunstruck hills every day. Diane Ackerman
Comforting Thought: Some teachers walk on two legs, others on four or more.
“I am still learning how to be a good creature. Though I try earnestly, I often fail. But I am having a great life trying – a life exploring this sweet green world – and returning to a world where I am blessed with a multispecies family offering me comfort and joy. “I wish IContinue reading “Comforting Thought: Some teachers walk on two legs, others on four or more.”
Comforting Thought: Doubt is a virtue, certainty is blinkered tunnel vision
If I know, then I don’t need to listen “In our risky society, you have to be sure about things to be heard. You need to issue out confident proclamations: ‘Research shows that serotonin deficiency in the brain is the cause of depression’; ‘We now finally have a diagnostic system that deals with mental illness.Continue reading “Comforting Thought: Doubt is a virtue, certainty is blinkered tunnel vision”
The wisdom of children
Children often use rich metaphor to describe their inner states. Far from being meaningless ramblings, often their insights into how the mind works are profound, philosophical and meaningful. In this TED talk Alise Shafer Ivey shows how children’s open minds reveal a Jungian and symbolic way of understanding consciousness, creative ideas, ancestral knowledge and howContinue reading “The wisdom of children”
Comforting Thought: The pursuit of our ‘true feelings’ infantilises us
Or to put it more bluntly and less delicately – Fuck your feelings! At least that’s the general idea that I extracted from this quote by Danish philosopher and psychologist Svend Brinkmann. “There is nothing about feelings in themselves that means we must trust them – let alone express them. In an ever-changing cultural situation,Continue reading “Comforting Thought: The pursuit of our ‘true feelings’ infantilises us”
Comforting Thought: ‘Being yourself’ has no intrinsic value whatsoever
It is without a doubt better to be an inauthentic Mother Theresa than to be an authentic Anders Breivik. Indeed, being yourself has no intrinsic value whatsoever. “On the other hand, what does have intrinsic value is fulfilling your obligations to the people around you, with whom you are connected (i.e. doing your duty). WhetherContinue reading “Comforting Thought: ‘Being yourself’ has no intrinsic value whatsoever”
Begin with brokenness, begin again
“Stories have endings, that’s why we tell them, for reassurance that there is meaning our lives. But like a diagnosis, a story can become a prison, a straight road mapped out by the people who went before. Stories are not the truth. Begin with brokenness, begin again. We are not all, not only, the charactersContinue reading “Begin with brokenness, begin again”
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