(August 9, 2013 at 4:28 am)Big Blue Sky Wrote: 1.Often those who aren’t the easiest to love are the ones who need it the most.
Or they need a kick in the pants. How do we know that they need love? Maybe they need to pass a kidney stone, is all.
Quote:2.Money is not the root of all evil, fear is.
How much fear did Hitler have behind the fortified ranks of his regime? Conversely, people can do pretty horrendous things with loads of money.
Quote:4.Heaven and hell exist here and now, within your own mind.
Which still makes them nonexistent.
Quote:5.Music is one of the most supreme expressions of life. It is art in it’s most transitory form. It is gone within an instant, and therefore, extremely precious.
It's gone until it's recorded, and then it's around in many different forms indefinitely. How are other forms of art not as expressive as music?
Quote:6.Follow your gut, you’ll thank yourself later.
My gut says..."Tacos and Tequila!" I will not thank myself later.
Quote:8.Be grateful for this moment, it is all there is.
9.The source of most of your frustrations and anxiety are the result of living in the future, or the past.
Because past and future don't matter? How are we to learn from our mistakes if we are only ever living in the present? Why do we learn about history? We are we doing science if the future doesn't matter?
Quote:10.Spend time alone with yourself every day.
Okay, but why?
Quote:11.Always go with yourself, never against yourself.
So if I want to kill someone, should I?
Quote:13.If you don’t like what someone else says to you, you can walk away. But if you don’t like what you say to yourself, you can’t walk away. Therefore, if you’re going to be with yourself all the time, you might as well be nice to yourself.
I'm sensing some redundancy. Perhaps there are really only a handful of life lessons here, and not 52. Some of these aren't lessons, but are actually just suggestions.
Quote:15.The biggest lie is the lie of your imperfection.
How is being imperfect a lie? I thought you said in #14 that the truth shall set you free. Why are you lying now?
Quote:16.Being kind is more important than being right.
You can't be both? What ever happened to #14: The truth shall indeed set you free? This set of 52 life lessons is as contradictory as the Bible.
Quote:18.Love is the supreme expression of life, it is the essence and ground of all creation.
How many supreme expressions do you have in here? One for life, and one for love? Also, how do you know that all things are created? This is a lesson out of ignorance.
Quote:21.Sometimes the best answer is silence.
And yet you weren't...just now.
Quote:22.Love and compassion can heal the deepest wounds.
Please specify with "emotional wounds" because deep wounds need a surgeon in most cases.
Quote:23.Your perception of others is a reflection of your own reality.
There is only one reality, and any reality that you make up for yourself that contradicts it is inevitably false. If you base your personal reality with actual reality, then your perception of others becomes much more accurate.
Quote:24.This moment is your life.Your life is between now and your next breath.So live each moment in full, in kindness and peace, without fear and regret
25. A lifetime isn’t very long.This is your life, and you’ve got to fight for it. Fight for what’s right. Fight for what you believe in. Fight for what’s important to you.Whatever you still need to do, start doing it today.
These two points say the exact same things, but in slightly varying iterations. The Beastie Boys said it best and in fewer words than you, "You've gotta fight for your right to party!"
Quote:26.Failures are only lessons. So never regret anything that has happened in your life; it cannot be changed, undone or forgotten. Take it all as lessons learned and move on with grace.
Then what's all this bullcrap earlier about not worrying about the past? Obviously regrets can bog a person down, but forgetting the past is a mistake that can lead to more mistakes. You obviously forgot the past when forgot that you wrote point #9.
Quote:27.You are your most important relationship.Happiness is when you feel good about yourself without feeling the need for anyone else’s approval. You must first have a healthy relationship with yourself before you can have a healthy relationship with others
I think this is the fourth iteration of this point about loving yourself. These "lessons" are quickly becoming tautological, if not already. At least you're not as big an offender as Jesus Christ was.
Quote:28.Smile at people who look like they are having a rough day. Be kind to them. Kindness is the only investment that never fails. And wherever there is a human being, there’s an opportunity for kindness. Learn to give, even if it’s just a smile, not because you have too much, but because you understand there are so many others who feel like they have nothing at all.
So show off your smug attitude and elite behavior to those less fortunate than you. Fuck you.
Quote:31. Look at the circles below. The black circles represent our relative life experiences. Mine is larger because I am older and have experienced more in my lifetime. The smaller red circles represent a negative event in our lives. Assume we both experienced the same exact event, whatever the nature. Notice that the negative event circles are the same size for each of us; but also notice what percentage of the area they occupy in each of the black circles. Your negative event seems much larger to you because it is a greater percentage of your total life experiences. I am not diminishing the importance of this event; I simply have a different perspective on it. What you need to understand is that an overwhelmingly painful event in your life right now will one day be part of your much larger past and not nearly as significant as it seems.
Asshole Logic 101. Shit, now you've got me throwing out the Ad Homs here. What were you thinking the moment
just before you posted this?
Quote:33.Life is too short not to enjoy it.
Dude...seriously. "Live each moment like it's your last" "Live for the moment" "Carpe Diem". You only needed to post it once here, and in only one iteration.
Quote:34.Don’t buy stuff you don’t need.
So I shouldn't buy gifts for others? I shouldn't buy something I'm going to enjoy, like a book or a tv? Do you own a tv? Well, you don't need it, so you should go sell it.
Quote:36.Don’t compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
How do you know to do better if you can't see the good in other peoples' experiences? What's the point of being social? One good way is to find out what the other person is going through, and then, suddenly, you
do know what their journey is all about. How about this one? "Knowledge is power." Live by that lesson, please, not this other meta-physical bullshit.
Quote:37.Get rid of anything that isn’t useful. Clutter weighs you down in many ways.
I'm still waiting on you to toss out that TV of yours.
Quote:38.Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don’t save it for a special occasion. Today is special.
Ah, shit, you wasted your money on something you didn't need.
Quote:39.No one is in charge of your happiness but you.
As well as our natural physiological responses to stimuli in our environments. Other than that, yes, it's mostly us.
Quote:40.What other people think of you is none of your business.
If the President of any country took up this motto, then he would do whatever the fuck he pleased because he wouldn't care to know if he's making his people unhappy. This is probably one of the worst lessons you've presented thus far. Saving the best ones for last, eh?
Quote:41.Time heals almost everything. Give Time time.
Oh great. Another adage about healing. If drop a missile on Bobby Sander's house while he's at work, killing his entire family including the dog, will he simply forgive me if I wait a few years? Will his close relatives forgive me? Will their children and their children's children? No...I'm always going to be that asshole that killed his wife and kids.
Quote:42.All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.
This directly contradicts point #40. According to the earlier point, it's none of our business to know what others think about us, so whether or not we're loved is moot. Which point is true? #40 or #42?
Quote:43.Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.
Define "miracles"...no, wait, don't! ronedee might get in on the action and then we'll have another fiasco on our hands!
Quote:45.Doing anything specifically to impress people is stupid.People are impressed by those who aren’t trying to impress them and are comfortable in themselves and social and interesting.
Except during a job interview. This is where you need to impress the fuck out of your future boss or bosses.
Quote:46.Make Your Own Rules.Life often doesn’t make sense,you have to make up rules as you go
Let me try! I decree that every Wednesday will be Tuna Fish Salad day. Anyone not eating an entire bowl of Tuna Fish Salad at precisely 3 pm will be shot in the head. Any questions about my new rule? Life doesn't make sense, so neither do my rules, apparently.
Quote:47.Embrace Your Weirdness.To act any other way, to be any other person, is an option that never even should eneter yout head
Who are you to decide what's weird and what's normal? Are you a bigot, or just a fool?
Quote:48. Nothing risked, nothing gained. If you find yourself feeling miserable about something like your job, JUST QUIT. You will make it work for yourself. You will unleash your inner-hustler.
Or don't JUST QUIT. Find your dream job first, get hired on to it, and THEN quit. Yeesh...there are some risks not worth taking, especially if other people are depending on you.
Quote:49.You don’t need everyone to like you.When people don’t like you, nothing actually happens. The world does not end. You don’t feel them breathing down your neck. In fact, the more you ignore them and just go about your business, the better off you are.
I'm beginning to not like you. How does that make you feel? If the blacks had just ignored the fact that whites were bigoted towards them, then we would still be in the same situation that we were during times of segregation.
Quote:50.Awareness is the most precious kind of freedom.This is yet another reason why minimalism is so appealing to so many people. It removes many of the obstructions and allows us to focus on what’s important. Minimalism is a tool to rid ourselves of superfluous excess in favor of a meaningful life, it is a tool to take a seemingly intricate and convoluted world, cluttered with its endless embellishments, and make it simpler, easier, realer.
Were you practicing minimalism when you wrote this post? You, sir, are a walking contradiction.
Quote:51.Goals aren’t as important as we think. Try working without them for a week. Turns out, you can do amazing things without goals. And you don’t have to manage them, cutting out on some of the bureaucracy of your life. You’re less stressed without goals, and you’re freer to choose paths you couldn’t have foreseen without them.
So the Theory of Relativity was discovered without the use of goals? The Berlin Wall fell simply because the universe willed it to? Problems aren't solved by doing away with goals...more problems are caused if people run about willy nilly. Chew on this one a bit longer, please.
Quote:52.The moment is all there is. All our worries and plans about the future, all our replaying of things that happened in the past — it’s all in our heads, and it just distracts us from fully living right now. Let go of all that, and just focus on what you’re doing, right at this moment. In this way, any activity can be meditation.
And you end it all with probably the 5th or 6th iteration of the "Live in the Moment" adage. Minimalism indeed...