The "Life is..." thread.

[emjay]

I can relate to that

Yeah, sorry Hammy for the downer, just in a bit of a melancholy mood.

[Edwardo Piet]

I am too.

[emjay]

And the isolation of it sucks... everyone has to face their own trials alone. There are friends and family, sympathy and empathy, but ultimately everyone's phenomenal experience is their own and their own alone. I wish we could share consciousness. I wish, like a vulcan mind meld, we could connect with other minds, and share and diminish their pain. I wish CD didn't have to face his pain alone.

[Arkilogue]

Ever diminishing scope; the comforting lies we are told or tell ourselves in our youth - you can do anything, be anything - gradually or not so gradually giving way to the cold, hard, constricting  reality that er, no you can't.

Life is a sowing, a reaping and a learning what not to sow. Especially nothing.

And then there's this 80 year old Chinese guy who's still plowing and cropping with a smile.



'

[emjay]

Ever diminishing scope; the comforting lies we are told or tell ourselves in our youth - you can do anything, be anything - gradually or not so gradually giving way to the cold, hard, constricting  reality that er, no you can't.

Life is a sowing, a reaping and a learning what not to sow. Especially nothing.

And then there's this 80 year old Chinese guy who's still plowing and cropping with a smile.



'

Yeah, definitely sowing and reaping. The best word I can think for it really, though I doubt anyone will agree with me... though it's not meant in any supernatural sense, is Karma... good or bad it all comes back to you in the end.

[Arkilogue]

Much more than any physical thing, we inherit who we've become and what we have done.

[emjay]

Much more than any physical thing, we inherit who we've become and what we have done.

Yeah, I guess so. I was thinking more a gradual process though. I don't believe in luck or lucky streaks, good or bad, but nonetheless life has a tendency to snowball in one direction or another. Maladaptive behaviour or thoughts do tend to lead to greater difficulties in the long run just as adaptive behaviour leads to less diffculty/more resilience. So you reap what you sow psychologically, which is, I guess, another way of saying what you said.

[Edwardo Piet]

And the isolation of it sucks... everyone has to face their own trials alone. There are friends and family, sympathy and empathy, but ultimately everyone's phenomenal experience is their own and their own alone. I wish we could share consciousness. I wish, like a vulcan mind meld, we could connect with other minds, and share and diminish their pain. I wish CD didn't have to face his pain alone.

For me the good news is that a circle of support and true friendship makes all the difference in the world.

In the end everyone is alone but we all share our aloneness in common and when people get together and form close friendships they can share their humanity with each other and hold each other up, if only a little.

Hehe, sorry I'm feeling a lot better, in a very sentimental mood.

To go with the part I bolded:

The suffering or the bad memories are as important as the good memories, and the good experiences. If you sort of, can imagine life as being 99% of the time quite linear, and most of the time you're in a state of neither happiness nor sadness. And then that 1% of the time you experience moments of very crystalised happiness, or crystalised sadness, or loneliness or depression. And I believe all of those moments are very pertinant. It's like I said to you, that for me it's mostly those crystalised moments of melancholy which are more inspirational to me. And in a strange way they become quite beautiful in their own way. Music that is sad, melancholic, depressing, is in a kind of perverse way more uplifting. I find happy music extremely depressing, mostly - mostly quite depressing. It's particularly this happy music that has no spirituality behind it - if it's just sort of mindless party music, it'd be quite depressing. But largely speaking, I was the kind of person that responds more to melancholia, and it makes me feel good. And I think the reason for this is, I think if you respond strongly to that kind of art, it's because in a way it makes you feel like you're not alone. So when we hear a very sad song, it makes us realise that we do share this kind of common human experience, and we're all kind of bonded in sadness and melancholia and depression.

[chimp3]

Life is before I was born and is after I am dead.

[Expired]

Life is a loose term used in the British judicial system.