56. 눈치빠르게 먼저 방에 들어가서 나는 무츠키의 침대에 다림질을 하였다. 이런 겨혼 생활도 괜찮다, 고 생각했다. 아무것도 바라지 않는다, 아무것도 추구하지 않는다. 아무것도 잃지 않는다, 아무것도 무섭지 않다. 불현듯, 물을 안는다는 시아버지의 말이 떠올랐다.
79. 새로운 하루는 새롭게 시작한다는 것이 무츠키의 기본 방침이다.
119. 내 눈꺼풀을 살며시 만지면서 무츠키는 들릴락말락한 소리로 말한다. 내가 깨어 있다는 것을 아는 것이다, 라고 생각했다. 마치 물의 우리처럼, 부드러운데 움직일 수 없다. 무츠키는 내 기분을, 나는 무츠키의 기분을, 이렇듯 또렷하게 알 수 있다. 하네기를 불러낸 일로도, 휴대폰이 울린 일로도, 나는 이미 무츠키를 비난할 수 없다. 눈꺼풀에 느껴지는 무츠키의 손가락. 왜 우리는 이렇게 늘 서로를 궁지에 몰아넣는 것일까.
129. 미즈호가, 나한테 아내로서의 자각이 부족하다고 그랬어. 나한테 필요한 것은 상식이 아니라 오히려 자각이라고.
138. 눈을 뜨자, 블라인드로 새어드는 햇살이 시트에 줄무늬를 그리고 있었다. 타올이불을 걷어차고 몸을 뒤척이면서 엎드려 두 손을 베개 밑에 집어넣는다. 무츠키는 벌써 나간 모양이다. 옆 침대는 반듯하게 정돈되어 있고, 나는 멍하니 방 안을 바라본다. 빛이 비치지 않으면 보이지 않을 공기 중의 미세한 먼지들. 여름 날의 아침은 왠지 무척 나른하다.
거실은 에어컨이 적당한 온도로 켜져 있고, 휑했다. 배경 음악으로는 프레스코발디의 오르간 곡이 흐르고 있다. 어항에는 금붕어, 냉장고에는 차가운 샐러드, 방 안은 밝고, 하얗고, 모든 것이 말끔하게 정돈되어 있다. 나는 멍한 머리로, 잠시 거기에 서 있었다.
152. 시간은 흐르고, 사람도 흘러가. 변하지 않을 수가 없는 거야.
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Monday, December 30, 2013
에쿠니 가오리- 달콤한 작은 거짓말: 2013. 12. 31
38. 정말 반가워하는 얼굴이다. 여자는 이렇듯 자기감정을 주저 없이 드러내는 용감한 생물이라는 것을, 사토시는 오랜만에 떠올렸다.
49. 사토시와 결혼하기 이전의 루리코를 잘 알면서 지금의 루리코를 알지 못하는 사람과 대화를 나누면 마음이 차분해진다. 이것은 루리코가 결혼하고 나서 발견한 것 중 하나이다.
59. 세상에는 참 여러 부류의 사람이 있구나, 하고 루리코는 감탄했다. 서른 살이 다 되어 번역가를 꿈꾸는 남자도, 연인을 위해 봉제 인형을 찾아다니는 남자도, 딱 두 번 만났을 뿐인 테디 베어 작가를 식사에 초대하는 남자도, 루리코는 난생 처음이었다.
63. 굶주림.문득 깨달았다. 사랑이 아니라 굶주림이다. 회사에 있는 남편에게 전화를 하는 것도, 게임을 하는 남편 옆에 붙어 앉아 있는 것도.
깨닫고 보니 정말 온전히 납득이 간다. 무슨 영문인지는 몰라도, 나는 사토시에게 굶주려 있다. 기아 상태. 그 생각은 루리코에게 크나큰 놀라움을 안겨주었다.
70. 난 당신 회사에도 책상에도, 상사에게도 동료에게도, 술집에서 우연히 옆에 앉은 여자에게도 질투를 느껴.
73. 쓰가와는 루리코를 집 앞까지 바래다주었다. 둘 다 아무 말 없었지만 어색한 느낌은 들지 않았다. 오히려 평온하고 마음 편한, 오랜만에 맛보는 해방감이었다고 루리코는 생각한다.
신기하게도 루리코는, 이것이 자신과 쓰가와만의 지극히 개인적인 일에 불과하다는 것을 알았다. 사토시와도, 까맣고 긴 머리를 한 쓰가와의 여자 친구와도 아무 상관 없는, 이곳만의 일.
78. 어려서부터 아버지와 둘이 살면서 혼자 지내는 시간이 많았던 탓인지, 사토시는 다른 사람과- 아는 사람과- 함께 있으면 거북해지는 구석이 있었다.
80. 애당초, 혼자인 게 편하고 다른 사람과 일정한 기를ㄹ 두는 것도 쾌적함을 위한 필수 요소라 여기는 듯한 면이야말로 사토시와 루리코의 공통점이라 할 수 있었다.
친구란 건 지나치게 과대평가되어 있다.
93. 대꾸한 사토시는 자신도 뭔가 말해야 할 것 같았지만 할 만한 이야기가 하나도 없어 잠자코 있었다. 회사에 갔다가 퇴근해 다시 회사에서 돌아오는, 그게 전부인 하루.
95. 남자와 잠자리를 하지 않는 것 또한 잠자리를 하는 것과 마찬가지로 루리코에게는 그리 어려운 일이 아니었다.
97. 이러고 있으면 거역할 수 없는 편안함이 느껴진다고 루리코는 생각한다. 이대로 잠들어버리면 얼마나 좋을까.
99. 스토리는 딱 한 번뿐이라서 아름다운 거예요. 우리 인생처럼.
116. 침대 시트 안에서 하루오는 토라진 얼굴로 물었다. 그 얼굴이 루리코는 좋았다. 말과 감정과 표정이 이어져 있다. 그것은 편안함을 안겨준다.
121. 시호는 확실히 귀엽지만, 시호와 함께 있으면 사토시는 왜 그런지 루리코의 좋은 점만 떠오른다.
125. "나 연애해." "That's normal." "하고 싶지 않은데." "하고 싶지 않아? 왜?" "사실은, 남편만 사랑하고 싶어." "난감하네."
131. 무딘 남자일수록 시시한 여자한테 낚이니까.
138. 대화는 신기할 정도로 매끄럽게 이어졌다. 숨겨야 할 일이 있다 보니 해야 할 이야기도 절로 술술 나온다.
150. 사이는 좋지만 대화가 별로 없는 걸. 마음속으로 덧붙인다. 내가 오늘 어떤 일을 했는지도, 하루오는 알지만 사토시는 알지 못한다. 내가 가장 좋아하는 영화도, 보이는 대로 독파해버리는 추리소설 작가 이름도.
155. 하루오를 생각했다.
얼른 도쿄로 돌아가 하루오를 보고 싶다, 고 생각한 것은 아니다. 사토시 곁에 있을 때면 루리코에게 하루오의 존재는 전혀 현실감이 없다. 이 세상에 쓰가와 하루오라는 남자가 정말로 존재하기는 하는지, 천장의 통나무를 노려보며 루리코는 생각했다. 천장의 통나무는 확실히 존재한다.
162. 침대는 눈앞에 있고, 모든 것이 너무나 순조롭게 진행되었다. 처음 본 이후 정말 오랜 시간이 걸렸지만, 마치 이렇게 될 것을 학창 시절부터 알았던 것처럼 생각되기도 했다. 시호는 사토시가 잊고 있던 무언가였다.
177. 시호의 쾌할함은 자신의 생활에 없어서는 안 될 작은 냇물이라고 사토시는 생각한다. 이 냇물만 있으면 루리코의 섬세함을 지킬 수 있을 것 같았다.
179. "지금 돌아가지 않으면 영영 못 돌아갈지도 몰라. 그게 두려워서 가는 거야." "그럼, 못 돌아가면 되겠네." 말을 꺼내기 무섭게 하루오는 막무가내로 루리코를 끌어당겨 안았다. "돌아갈 수 없다면, 안 돌아가면 돼."
184. 시호와 함께 왔던 가게에 루리코를 데려오는 행위는 시호에게 못할 짓일까 루리코에게 못할 짓일까. 아마도 양쪽 모두에게 못할 짓이지 싶었지만 사토시에게는 죄책감이 피부에 와 닿지 않았다. 이제는 두 여자 모두 소중했다.
185. 사토시는 말이 없다. 변변히 먹지도 않는다. 그것은 어제오늘 시작된 일은 아니다. 가게를 나와 역까지 걷는 동안, 루리코는 그것에 대해 되도록 생각하지 않으려 했다. 하루오와 식사할 때와 같은 행복을 사토시에게 바라는 것은 잘못이다. 사토시는 온화하다. 사토시는 성실하다. 그건 루리코도 알고 있었다.
187. 하루의 시작. 이런 일상에 불만은 없다고 루리코는 생각한다. 쓸쓸함은 아마도 인간이 안은 근원적인 문제이지 사토시 탓은 아닐 것이다. 자기 스스로 대처해야 하는 것이지 누군가가- 설사 남편이라도- 구원해줄 수 있는 성격의 문제는 아닐 것이다.
하지만. 사토시가 좋아하는 복숭아를 깎으면서 루리코는 생각한다. 하지만 그렇다면, 하루오와 함께 있을 때 쓸쓸하지 않은 것은 대체 어떻게 설명할 수 있을까. 그토록 충만감에 사로잡히고 마는 것은.
194. 머리맡 라디오에서 고리타분한 테크노 팝이 흘러나온다. 열어둔 창문으로 들어오는 공기가 침대까지 와 닿아 뺨을 어루만지는 듯한 기분이다. 하루오의 방은 숲 속 같다고 ,루리코는 생각했다.
196. "왜 거짓말을 못하는지 알아? 사람은 지키고 싶은 사람에게 거짓말을 해. 혹은 지키려는 사람에게."
203. 요즘 루리코는 매 순간 흔들린다. 이 집에 있을 때는 사토시가 전부인 듯 느껴지고 하루오와 헤어지려 마음먹는다. 반대로 하루오 곁에 있을 때는 하루오만 있으면 될 것 같고 사토시와 헤어지고 싶어진다. 내게는 생각이란 것이 없는지도 모른다고, 뺨을 괴고 앉아 베어 하나를 바라보면서 루리코는 생각한다. 나는 눌 눈앞의 일만으로도 힘겨워지고 만다.
208. 하루오의 인격이 좋았다. 하루오의 인격이 깃든 모든 것, 사소한 표정 변화며 팔이며 입술, 체온, 정강이, 머리카락, 그리고 감정에 솔직한 그 목소리가 좋았다.
215. 루리코는 잘 모르겠다. 펑펑 울고 나면 과연 후련해질까.
하루오가 만드는 공기, 하루오가 선택하는 언어, 그 방에서 마시는 커피. 하루오의 손목뼈, 발바닥 모양. 목이 좀 늘어난 티셔츠 사이로 엿보이는 쇄골. 갑자기 활짝 웃는 얼굴. 토라진 말투, 담배를 피울 때 찡그리는 눈썹. 루리코를 끌어안는 힘 있는 팔, 입술이 녹고 허리가 부러질 것 같은 키스, 하루오의 살냄새.
하나하나 떠올릴 때마다 현기증이 난다.
227. 둘이 있어도 외롭지만, 그럼에도 둘이 있고 싶은 것.
49. 사토시와 결혼하기 이전의 루리코를 잘 알면서 지금의 루리코를 알지 못하는 사람과 대화를 나누면 마음이 차분해진다. 이것은 루리코가 결혼하고 나서 발견한 것 중 하나이다.
59. 세상에는 참 여러 부류의 사람이 있구나, 하고 루리코는 감탄했다. 서른 살이 다 되어 번역가를 꿈꾸는 남자도, 연인을 위해 봉제 인형을 찾아다니는 남자도, 딱 두 번 만났을 뿐인 테디 베어 작가를 식사에 초대하는 남자도, 루리코는 난생 처음이었다.
63. 굶주림.문득 깨달았다. 사랑이 아니라 굶주림이다. 회사에 있는 남편에게 전화를 하는 것도, 게임을 하는 남편 옆에 붙어 앉아 있는 것도.
깨닫고 보니 정말 온전히 납득이 간다. 무슨 영문인지는 몰라도, 나는 사토시에게 굶주려 있다. 기아 상태. 그 생각은 루리코에게 크나큰 놀라움을 안겨주었다.
70. 난 당신 회사에도 책상에도, 상사에게도 동료에게도, 술집에서 우연히 옆에 앉은 여자에게도 질투를 느껴.
73. 쓰가와는 루리코를 집 앞까지 바래다주었다. 둘 다 아무 말 없었지만 어색한 느낌은 들지 않았다. 오히려 평온하고 마음 편한, 오랜만에 맛보는 해방감이었다고 루리코는 생각한다.
신기하게도 루리코는, 이것이 자신과 쓰가와만의 지극히 개인적인 일에 불과하다는 것을 알았다. 사토시와도, 까맣고 긴 머리를 한 쓰가와의 여자 친구와도 아무 상관 없는, 이곳만의 일.
78. 어려서부터 아버지와 둘이 살면서 혼자 지내는 시간이 많았던 탓인지, 사토시는 다른 사람과- 아는 사람과- 함께 있으면 거북해지는 구석이 있었다.
80. 애당초, 혼자인 게 편하고 다른 사람과 일정한 기를ㄹ 두는 것도 쾌적함을 위한 필수 요소라 여기는 듯한 면이야말로 사토시와 루리코의 공통점이라 할 수 있었다.
친구란 건 지나치게 과대평가되어 있다.
93. 대꾸한 사토시는 자신도 뭔가 말해야 할 것 같았지만 할 만한 이야기가 하나도 없어 잠자코 있었다. 회사에 갔다가 퇴근해 다시 회사에서 돌아오는, 그게 전부인 하루.
95. 남자와 잠자리를 하지 않는 것 또한 잠자리를 하는 것과 마찬가지로 루리코에게는 그리 어려운 일이 아니었다.
97. 이러고 있으면 거역할 수 없는 편안함이 느껴진다고 루리코는 생각한다. 이대로 잠들어버리면 얼마나 좋을까.
99. 스토리는 딱 한 번뿐이라서 아름다운 거예요. 우리 인생처럼.
116. 침대 시트 안에서 하루오는 토라진 얼굴로 물었다. 그 얼굴이 루리코는 좋았다. 말과 감정과 표정이 이어져 있다. 그것은 편안함을 안겨준다.
121. 시호는 확실히 귀엽지만, 시호와 함께 있으면 사토시는 왜 그런지 루리코의 좋은 점만 떠오른다.
125. "나 연애해." "That's normal." "하고 싶지 않은데." "하고 싶지 않아? 왜?" "사실은, 남편만 사랑하고 싶어." "난감하네."
131. 무딘 남자일수록 시시한 여자한테 낚이니까.
138. 대화는 신기할 정도로 매끄럽게 이어졌다. 숨겨야 할 일이 있다 보니 해야 할 이야기도 절로 술술 나온다.
150. 사이는 좋지만 대화가 별로 없는 걸. 마음속으로 덧붙인다. 내가 오늘 어떤 일을 했는지도, 하루오는 알지만 사토시는 알지 못한다. 내가 가장 좋아하는 영화도, 보이는 대로 독파해버리는 추리소설 작가 이름도.
155. 하루오를 생각했다.
얼른 도쿄로 돌아가 하루오를 보고 싶다, 고 생각한 것은 아니다. 사토시 곁에 있을 때면 루리코에게 하루오의 존재는 전혀 현실감이 없다. 이 세상에 쓰가와 하루오라는 남자가 정말로 존재하기는 하는지, 천장의 통나무를 노려보며 루리코는 생각했다. 천장의 통나무는 확실히 존재한다.
162. 침대는 눈앞에 있고, 모든 것이 너무나 순조롭게 진행되었다. 처음 본 이후 정말 오랜 시간이 걸렸지만, 마치 이렇게 될 것을 학창 시절부터 알았던 것처럼 생각되기도 했다. 시호는 사토시가 잊고 있던 무언가였다.
177. 시호의 쾌할함은 자신의 생활에 없어서는 안 될 작은 냇물이라고 사토시는 생각한다. 이 냇물만 있으면 루리코의 섬세함을 지킬 수 있을 것 같았다.
179. "지금 돌아가지 않으면 영영 못 돌아갈지도 몰라. 그게 두려워서 가는 거야." "그럼, 못 돌아가면 되겠네." 말을 꺼내기 무섭게 하루오는 막무가내로 루리코를 끌어당겨 안았다. "돌아갈 수 없다면, 안 돌아가면 돼."
184. 시호와 함께 왔던 가게에 루리코를 데려오는 행위는 시호에게 못할 짓일까 루리코에게 못할 짓일까. 아마도 양쪽 모두에게 못할 짓이지 싶었지만 사토시에게는 죄책감이 피부에 와 닿지 않았다. 이제는 두 여자 모두 소중했다.
185. 사토시는 말이 없다. 변변히 먹지도 않는다. 그것은 어제오늘 시작된 일은 아니다. 가게를 나와 역까지 걷는 동안, 루리코는 그것에 대해 되도록 생각하지 않으려 했다. 하루오와 식사할 때와 같은 행복을 사토시에게 바라는 것은 잘못이다. 사토시는 온화하다. 사토시는 성실하다. 그건 루리코도 알고 있었다.
187. 하루의 시작. 이런 일상에 불만은 없다고 루리코는 생각한다. 쓸쓸함은 아마도 인간이 안은 근원적인 문제이지 사토시 탓은 아닐 것이다. 자기 스스로 대처해야 하는 것이지 누군가가- 설사 남편이라도- 구원해줄 수 있는 성격의 문제는 아닐 것이다.
하지만. 사토시가 좋아하는 복숭아를 깎으면서 루리코는 생각한다. 하지만 그렇다면, 하루오와 함께 있을 때 쓸쓸하지 않은 것은 대체 어떻게 설명할 수 있을까. 그토록 충만감에 사로잡히고 마는 것은.
194. 머리맡 라디오에서 고리타분한 테크노 팝이 흘러나온다. 열어둔 창문으로 들어오는 공기가 침대까지 와 닿아 뺨을 어루만지는 듯한 기분이다. 하루오의 방은 숲 속 같다고 ,루리코는 생각했다.
196. "왜 거짓말을 못하는지 알아? 사람은 지키고 싶은 사람에게 거짓말을 해. 혹은 지키려는 사람에게."
203. 요즘 루리코는 매 순간 흔들린다. 이 집에 있을 때는 사토시가 전부인 듯 느껴지고 하루오와 헤어지려 마음먹는다. 반대로 하루오 곁에 있을 때는 하루오만 있으면 될 것 같고 사토시와 헤어지고 싶어진다. 내게는 생각이란 것이 없는지도 모른다고, 뺨을 괴고 앉아 베어 하나를 바라보면서 루리코는 생각한다. 나는 눌 눈앞의 일만으로도 힘겨워지고 만다.
208. 하루오의 인격이 좋았다. 하루오의 인격이 깃든 모든 것, 사소한 표정 변화며 팔이며 입술, 체온, 정강이, 머리카락, 그리고 감정에 솔직한 그 목소리가 좋았다.
215. 루리코는 잘 모르겠다. 펑펑 울고 나면 과연 후련해질까.
하루오가 만드는 공기, 하루오가 선택하는 언어, 그 방에서 마시는 커피. 하루오의 손목뼈, 발바닥 모양. 목이 좀 늘어난 티셔츠 사이로 엿보이는 쇄골. 갑자기 활짝 웃는 얼굴. 토라진 말투, 담배를 피울 때 찡그리는 눈썹. 루리코를 끌어안는 힘 있는 팔, 입술이 녹고 허리가 부러질 것 같은 키스, 하루오의 살냄새.
하나하나 떠올릴 때마다 현기증이 난다.
227. 둘이 있어도 외롭지만, 그럼에도 둘이 있고 싶은 것.
Sunday, December 29, 2013
Michael Ende- The Neverending Story: 2013. 12. 30
127. Humans live by beliefs. And beliefs can be manipulated. The power to manipulate beliefs is the only thing that counts.
When your turn comes to jump into the Nothing, you too will be a nameless servant of power, with no will of your own. Who knows what use they will make of you? Maybe you'll help them persuade people to buy things they don't need, or hate things they know nothing about, or hold beliefs that make them easy to handle, or doubt the truths that might save them.
The human world is full of weak-minded people, who think they're as clever as can be and are convinced that it's terribly important to persuade even the children that Fantastica doesn't exist.
He now realized that not only was Fantastica sick, but the human world as well. The two were connected. He had always felt this, though he could not have explained why it was so. He had never been willing to believe that life had to be as gray and dull as people claimed. He heard them saying: 'Life is like that,' but he couldn't agree. He never stopped believing in mysteries and miracles.
149. Only the right name gives beings and things their reality. A wrong name makes everything unreal. That's what lies do.
200. You must go from wish to wish. What you don't wish for will always be beyond your reach. That is what the words 'far' and 'near' mean in Fantastica. And wishing to leave a place is not enough. You must wish to go somewhere else and let your wishes guide you.
201. It means that you must do what you really and truly want. And nothing is more difficult.
By going the way of your wishes, from one to another, from first to last. It will take you to what you really and truly want.
It requires the greatest honesty and vigilance, because there's no other journey on which it's so easy to lose yourself forever.
323. Without a past you can't have a future.
368. He drank till his thirst was quenched. And joy filled him from head to foot, the joy of living and the joy of being himself. He was newborn. And the best part of it was that he was now the very person he wanted to be. If he had been free to choose, he would have chosen to be no one else. Because now he knew that there were thousands and thousands of forms of joy in the world, but that all were essentially one and the same, namely, the joy of being able to love.
When your turn comes to jump into the Nothing, you too will be a nameless servant of power, with no will of your own. Who knows what use they will make of you? Maybe you'll help them persuade people to buy things they don't need, or hate things they know nothing about, or hold beliefs that make them easy to handle, or doubt the truths that might save them.
The human world is full of weak-minded people, who think they're as clever as can be and are convinced that it's terribly important to persuade even the children that Fantastica doesn't exist.
He now realized that not only was Fantastica sick, but the human world as well. The two were connected. He had always felt this, though he could not have explained why it was so. He had never been willing to believe that life had to be as gray and dull as people claimed. He heard them saying: 'Life is like that,' but he couldn't agree. He never stopped believing in mysteries and miracles.
149. Only the right name gives beings and things their reality. A wrong name makes everything unreal. That's what lies do.
200. You must go from wish to wish. What you don't wish for will always be beyond your reach. That is what the words 'far' and 'near' mean in Fantastica. And wishing to leave a place is not enough. You must wish to go somewhere else and let your wishes guide you.
201. It means that you must do what you really and truly want. And nothing is more difficult.
By going the way of your wishes, from one to another, from first to last. It will take you to what you really and truly want.
It requires the greatest honesty and vigilance, because there's no other journey on which it's so easy to lose yourself forever.
323. Without a past you can't have a future.
368. He drank till his thirst was quenched. And joy filled him from head to foot, the joy of living and the joy of being himself. He was newborn. And the best part of it was that he was now the very person he wanted to be. If he had been free to choose, he would have chosen to be no one else. Because now he knew that there were thousands and thousands of forms of joy in the world, but that all were essentially one and the same, namely, the joy of being able to love.
에쿠니 가오리- 도쿄 타워: 2013. 12. 29
15. 자신의 일은 자신이 결정해라. 결정했으면 행동으로 보여라.
36. 사람과 사람은 말야, 공기로 인해 서로 끌리는 것 같아. 성격이나 외모에 앞서 우선 공기가 있어. 그 사람이 주변에 발하는 공기. 나는, 그런 동물적인 것을 믿어.
47. 유부녀를 유혹하는 방법은 간단하다. 그때도 지금도, 코우지는 그렇게 생각한다. 그 사람들은 즐거움에 굶주려 있는 것이다. 은밀한 즐거움에, 일상으로부터의 탈출에.
54. 사랑은 하는 것이 아니라, 빠져드는 거야.
58. 토오루는 드디어 자신도 자신만의 생활을 찾아냈다고 느낀다. 그것은 홀연히 모습을 드러냈다. 아버지와 있을 때의 자신도, 어머니와 있을 때의 자신도, 코우지와 있을 때의 자신도 아닌, 전혀 다른 자신이 존재했다. 집에 있는 시간도, 학교에 잇는 시간도 아닌, 전혀 다른 시간을 발견한 것이기도 했다. 시후미와의 시간.
토오루는 그 어디에도 속해 있지 않은 자신을 비로소 발견했고, 그러한- 본래의 자신일 수도 있는- 자신이 마음에 들었다. 자연스럽고 자유롭고 행복했다. 그리고 그러한 자신은 '시후미로 인하여 존재하고 있다.'
61. 그러나 오늘밤의 토오루는 전혀 그렇지 않았다. 시후미 얘기를 아버지에게 할 생각은 물론 없었지만, 시후미의 존재가 자신을 느긋하게 만들어 주고 있는 것만큼은 분명했다. 느긋하게, 아버지와 대등한 존재로서.
114. 가능성만으로 매사를 걱정한다면 한도 끝도 없다.
115. 기다리는 것은 힘들지만, 기다리지 않는 시간보다 훨씬 행복하다.
143. 여자는 대체 왜 이리 제멋대로 일까. 사람에겐 각자 개인 사정이 있다는 것을 완전히 무시하고 살아간다. 어린애도 알만한 일을.
163. 아버지가 싫지는 않지만, 아버지와 이야기할 때면 어쩐지 겉도는 느낌이었다. 말이 말로서 제대로 기능하지 않는 것 같은.
164. 토오루는 시후미와 함께가 아니면, 무슨 말을 주고받든 아무 의미가 없다는 생각이 들었다. 시후미에 대해서만, 자신의 말이 제대로 기능한다. 시후미와 함께가 아니면 식사 따위 하고 싶지 않았다.
169. 내내 보고 싶었던 사람이 곁에 있다.
토오루는 그 사실을 맛보는 것만으로도 벅찰 지경이었다. '주말'도 '별장'도, 멀어서 실감이 나지 않는다.
줄곧 보고 싶었다. 시후미만을 생각했다. 시후미가 읽은 책을 읽고, 시후미가 듣던 음악을 들었다. 병일지도 모른다고 생각될 정도였다. 정신이 돌아버린 건지도 모른다고.
185. 시후미는 끼여드는 일 없이 잠자코 듣고 있었다. 이상한 느낌이었다. 시간도 장소도 알 수 없게 되어 가는 듯한. 가게 안의 공기와 바깥과는 전혀 다른 밀도에서 흐르고 있는 듯한. 도쿄며 고등학교며, 유리며 코우지는 마치 먼 이야기 속 일 인양 느껴졌다. 이 세상에 자신과 시후미 두 사람만 이 존재하고 있다. 토오루는 그렇게 생각하고, 거의 현기증이 날만큼 행복을 느꼈다.
238. 의지나 노력은 발휘할 방향이 정해지고 나서 발휘해야 한다.
301. 스스로 생각해도 이상한 일이었지만, 키미코를 잃었다기보다 자기 자신을 잃은 것 같은 느낌이었다.
36. 사람과 사람은 말야, 공기로 인해 서로 끌리는 것 같아. 성격이나 외모에 앞서 우선 공기가 있어. 그 사람이 주변에 발하는 공기. 나는, 그런 동물적인 것을 믿어.
47. 유부녀를 유혹하는 방법은 간단하다. 그때도 지금도, 코우지는 그렇게 생각한다. 그 사람들은 즐거움에 굶주려 있는 것이다. 은밀한 즐거움에, 일상으로부터의 탈출에.
54. 사랑은 하는 것이 아니라, 빠져드는 거야.
58. 토오루는 드디어 자신도 자신만의 생활을 찾아냈다고 느낀다. 그것은 홀연히 모습을 드러냈다. 아버지와 있을 때의 자신도, 어머니와 있을 때의 자신도, 코우지와 있을 때의 자신도 아닌, 전혀 다른 자신이 존재했다. 집에 있는 시간도, 학교에 잇는 시간도 아닌, 전혀 다른 시간을 발견한 것이기도 했다. 시후미와의 시간.
토오루는 그 어디에도 속해 있지 않은 자신을 비로소 발견했고, 그러한- 본래의 자신일 수도 있는- 자신이 마음에 들었다. 자연스럽고 자유롭고 행복했다. 그리고 그러한 자신은 '시후미로 인하여 존재하고 있다.'
61. 그러나 오늘밤의 토오루는 전혀 그렇지 않았다. 시후미 얘기를 아버지에게 할 생각은 물론 없었지만, 시후미의 존재가 자신을 느긋하게 만들어 주고 있는 것만큼은 분명했다. 느긋하게, 아버지와 대등한 존재로서.
114. 가능성만으로 매사를 걱정한다면 한도 끝도 없다.
115. 기다리는 것은 힘들지만, 기다리지 않는 시간보다 훨씬 행복하다.
143. 여자는 대체 왜 이리 제멋대로 일까. 사람에겐 각자 개인 사정이 있다는 것을 완전히 무시하고 살아간다. 어린애도 알만한 일을.
163. 아버지가 싫지는 않지만, 아버지와 이야기할 때면 어쩐지 겉도는 느낌이었다. 말이 말로서 제대로 기능하지 않는 것 같은.
164. 토오루는 시후미와 함께가 아니면, 무슨 말을 주고받든 아무 의미가 없다는 생각이 들었다. 시후미에 대해서만, 자신의 말이 제대로 기능한다. 시후미와 함께가 아니면 식사 따위 하고 싶지 않았다.
169. 내내 보고 싶었던 사람이 곁에 있다.
토오루는 그 사실을 맛보는 것만으로도 벅찰 지경이었다. '주말'도 '별장'도, 멀어서 실감이 나지 않는다.
줄곧 보고 싶었다. 시후미만을 생각했다. 시후미가 읽은 책을 읽고, 시후미가 듣던 음악을 들었다. 병일지도 모른다고 생각될 정도였다. 정신이 돌아버린 건지도 모른다고.
185. 시후미는 끼여드는 일 없이 잠자코 듣고 있었다. 이상한 느낌이었다. 시간도 장소도 알 수 없게 되어 가는 듯한. 가게 안의 공기와 바깥과는 전혀 다른 밀도에서 흐르고 있는 듯한. 도쿄며 고등학교며, 유리며 코우지는 마치 먼 이야기 속 일 인양 느껴졌다. 이 세상에 자신과 시후미 두 사람만 이 존재하고 있다. 토오루는 그렇게 생각하고, 거의 현기증이 날만큼 행복을 느꼈다.
238. 의지나 노력은 발휘할 방향이 정해지고 나서 발휘해야 한다.
301. 스스로 생각해도 이상한 일이었지만, 키미코를 잃었다기보다 자기 자신을 잃은 것 같은 느낌이었다.
Saturday, December 28, 2013
에쿠니 가오리- 부드러운 양상추: 2013. 12. 28
19. 오랜만에 여동생과 쇼핑에 나섰다. 그냥 장을 보는 것과는 다르다. 옷이나 구두, 목도리나 과자 같은 좋아하는 것, 아름다운 것, 마음이 화사해지는 것을 사는 게 쇼핑이다.
34. 내가 모르는 것이 바로 그 부분이다. 그리고 내 문제는 무슨 일이든 그만둘 때를 모른다는 것이다. 콩을 뿌리는 일도, 비눗방울을 날리고 그림을 그리는 놀이도, 이제 더는 기회가 없을지 모르는 연애도.
참 싫증을 안 내네, 사람들은 그렇게 말한다. 비눗방울을 날리거나 그림을 그릴 때. 하지만 나는 싫증을 내지 않는 것이 아니라 익숙해지지 못하는 것이다.
74. 내가 알기 전부터 미역귀는 분명히 가게에 존재했을 텐데, 그걸 본 기억도, 저게 뭘까 궁금해한 적도 없다는 사실이 신기하다. 사람이란 관심 없는 것은 보지 못하는지도 모르겠다.
그리니치 빌리지의 청춘- 수지 로톨로
128. '된장'의 긍지는 과연 무엇일까. '마지막까지 관찰자로 있는 것'이라고 나는 생각한다. 때로 무리에 끼워준다 해도 그것은 그들의 진정이 아니다. '된장'은 거기에 있으면서 없는 자이고, 그 본분은 어디까지나 세계의 관찰에 있다. 가만히, 빈틈없이, 지속적으로 관찰하는 것.
147. 그 시절은 그 시절 나름대로 즐거웠다. 발 닿은 곳이 어디든 혼자서도 충분히 할 수 있다는 것을 자신에게 증명하고 싶었던 것이리라. 하지만 이제는 증명하지 않아도 된다. 세상이나 인생이나 안심할 것은 하나도 없으니까, 여행이나 외식 같은 소소한 즐거움만은 안심하고 즐기고 싶어 예약을 하고 나선다.
220. 해가 쨍쨍하고 기온도 높았지만 때로 시원한 바람이 불었고, 고추잠자리가 날아다녔다.
여행지에서의 그 무모할 정도의 식욕이, 나는 유쾌하다. 어떻게 그럴수 있는지는 모르겠지만 아무튼 그렇다. 일상이 아니니까 모든 것이 가공의 얘기 같고, 음식도 몸에 흡수되는 것이 아니라 쓱 사라지는 듯한 기분이 든다.
226. 고요한 음식이다 (음식에는 고요한 것과 시끌벅적한 것이 있다). 포타주는 철저하게 고요하고, 나는 그 점을 좋아하는지도 모른다.
227. 기계의 최대 위협은 주종 관계가 뒤틀린다는 것이다. 내가 사용하고 있는데 사용되고 있는 듯한 기분이 든다. 조심 조심 무서워 절절매면서, 아무쪼록 화내지 마세요, 작동해 주세요, 하고 부탁해야 한다. 부탁한다기보다 기도한다는 편이 옳을지도 모르겠다. 작동하지 않아도 기계는 사과하는 법이 없으니 내가 사과할 수밖에 없다. 미안해요, 내가 뭘 잘못했나 보군요, 그런 거군요.
한편 기계는 손도 발도 없어 스스로 자유롭게 움직일 수 없기 때문에 인간이 보살펴줘야 한다. 그것도 위협이다. 코드를 뽑으면 순식간에 죽으니까 그런 횡포를 부릴 수는 없다. 약한 것을 괴롭히는 듯한 느낌이 들고 만다.
34. 내가 모르는 것이 바로 그 부분이다. 그리고 내 문제는 무슨 일이든 그만둘 때를 모른다는 것이다. 콩을 뿌리는 일도, 비눗방울을 날리고 그림을 그리는 놀이도, 이제 더는 기회가 없을지 모르는 연애도.
참 싫증을 안 내네, 사람들은 그렇게 말한다. 비눗방울을 날리거나 그림을 그릴 때. 하지만 나는 싫증을 내지 않는 것이 아니라 익숙해지지 못하는 것이다.
74. 내가 알기 전부터 미역귀는 분명히 가게에 존재했을 텐데, 그걸 본 기억도, 저게 뭘까 궁금해한 적도 없다는 사실이 신기하다. 사람이란 관심 없는 것은 보지 못하는지도 모르겠다.
그리니치 빌리지의 청춘- 수지 로톨로
128. '된장'의 긍지는 과연 무엇일까. '마지막까지 관찰자로 있는 것'이라고 나는 생각한다. 때로 무리에 끼워준다 해도 그것은 그들의 진정이 아니다. '된장'은 거기에 있으면서 없는 자이고, 그 본분은 어디까지나 세계의 관찰에 있다. 가만히, 빈틈없이, 지속적으로 관찰하는 것.
147. 그 시절은 그 시절 나름대로 즐거웠다. 발 닿은 곳이 어디든 혼자서도 충분히 할 수 있다는 것을 자신에게 증명하고 싶었던 것이리라. 하지만 이제는 증명하지 않아도 된다. 세상이나 인생이나 안심할 것은 하나도 없으니까, 여행이나 외식 같은 소소한 즐거움만은 안심하고 즐기고 싶어 예약을 하고 나선다.
220. 해가 쨍쨍하고 기온도 높았지만 때로 시원한 바람이 불었고, 고추잠자리가 날아다녔다.
여행지에서의 그 무모할 정도의 식욕이, 나는 유쾌하다. 어떻게 그럴수 있는지는 모르겠지만 아무튼 그렇다. 일상이 아니니까 모든 것이 가공의 얘기 같고, 음식도 몸에 흡수되는 것이 아니라 쓱 사라지는 듯한 기분이 든다.
226. 고요한 음식이다 (음식에는 고요한 것과 시끌벅적한 것이 있다). 포타주는 철저하게 고요하고, 나는 그 점을 좋아하는지도 모른다.
227. 기계의 최대 위협은 주종 관계가 뒤틀린다는 것이다. 내가 사용하고 있는데 사용되고 있는 듯한 기분이 든다. 조심 조심 무서워 절절매면서, 아무쪼록 화내지 마세요, 작동해 주세요, 하고 부탁해야 한다. 부탁한다기보다 기도한다는 편이 옳을지도 모르겠다. 작동하지 않아도 기계는 사과하는 법이 없으니 내가 사과할 수밖에 없다. 미안해요, 내가 뭘 잘못했나 보군요, 그런 거군요.
한편 기계는 손도 발도 없어 스스로 자유롭게 움직일 수 없기 때문에 인간이 보살펴줘야 한다. 그것도 위협이다. 코드를 뽑으면 순식간에 죽으니까 그런 횡포를 부릴 수는 없다. 약한 것을 괴롭히는 듯한 느낌이 들고 만다.
Friday, December 27, 2013
에쿠니 가오리- 당신의 주말은 몇 개입니까: 2013. 12. 27
40. 월요일 아침, 나는 회사로 가는 남편이 싫어서 그만 입이 부루퉁해진다. 어서 다음 주말이 오면 좋을 텐데, 하고 생각하면서 현관에다 구두를 내 놓는다. 그리고 남편을 배웅하고 난 순간, 나 자신도 놀라울 만큼 안도감의 물결이 밀려온다. 안도와 피로, 그리고 잠.
나는 침대로 돌아와 죽은 듯이 잠을 잔다. 평일이다. 다시 눈을 뜨면 청소도 하고 빨래도 하자, 일도 꽤 진척이 있을 것이다. 저녁때가 되면 칵테일을 만들어 가볍게 한 잔 하자. 창문도 활짝 열고, 오늘 하루를 멋지게 보내리라. 남편은 창문을 열어 놓으면 왜 그렇게 싫어하는지 모르겠다.
55. 정말 나는 몰랐으니까. 남자란 존재가 얼마나 좋은 것인지도. 연인과 함께 지내는 밤의 달콤한 친밀감이 아니라, 그저 함께 자는 남자의 팔이 얼마나 편안한 것인지. 남자의 단순함, 남자의 복잡함. 남자의 관용, 남자의 안심.
56. 나는 십대 후반에서 이십대 중반까지 매일 꼼꼼하게 일기를 썼는데, 그러다 보니 월요일마다 목표를 쓰는 습관이 생겼다. 거창하게 목표랄 것도 없는, 이번 달에는 대청소를 한다, 리포트를 완성한다, 몸무게를 2킬로그램 줄인다는 등의 메모에 불과했지만, 마지막에는 꼭, 혼자서도 무슨 일이든 할 수 있도록, 이라고 썼다. 매달, 몇 년 동안이나.
63. 그렇게 오늘도 우리는 같은 장소에서 전혀 다른 풍경을 보고 있다. 하지만, 생각해 보면 다른 풍경이기에 멋진 것이다. 사람이 사람을 만났을 때, 서로가 지니고 있는 다른 풍경에 끌리는 것이다. 그때까지 혼자서 쌓아올린 풍경에.
나는 남편과 함께 본 도치기의 별 밤과 나가노의 고추냉이밭 만큼이나 내가 보아 온 풍경과 남편이 보아 온 풍경을 사랑한다.
1년에 몇 번 남편의 고향에 간다. 시댁에는 시부모님과 시할머니가 계신다. 근처에 친척과 친구들도 산다. 그 동네의 색채와 따스한 햇살, 큰길과 신호와 너른 강과 초등학교와 책방과 옛날 현청건물과 어렸을 때부터 단골이라는 허름한 중국집, 지름길과 샛길, 그 풍경 하나 하나의 멀고 먼 느낌, 그 친밀감.
나는 남편을 타인으로 의식하는 순간을 좋아한다.
65. 바로 얼마 전까지만 해도 아침에 화장을 하는 습관이 없었던 나다. 깨끗하게 세수를 하고 그냥 있는 편이 상쾌하기도 하고, 무엇보다 집안에서는 화장을 안 한 채로 지냈다. 밤새 일하고 남편이 출근을 한 후에야 잠자리에 들어 그럴 여유가 없는 경우도 있다.
그런데 요즘은 립스틱이라도 바르고 있다. 실제로는 립스틱이 아니라 립글로스를 살짝 바르는 정도지만, 그래도 화장은 화장이다.
인생이란 어디서 어떻게 변할지 알 수가 없다. 언제 헤어지게 되더라도, 헤어진 후에 남편의 기억에 남아 있는 풍경 속의 내가 다소나마 좋은 인상이기를, 하고 생각한 것이다.
72. 느닷없는 말이지만, 나는 곧잘 노래를 부른다. 낮이면 방에 멍하니 있을 때, 밤이면 산책을 하면서, 노래를 부르면 몸에 좋다는 것을 결혼하고 알았다. 머릿속이 텅 비어서 좋다. 폐로 공기가 빨려 들어가는 듯한 느낌이 드는 것도 좋고.
73. 노래는 참 신기하다. 단박에 몸과 마음으로 파고들어 마음을 가볍게 해준다. 노래를 불러도 그렇고 들어도 그렇고.
사랑의 생활은 가혹하니까 도피 수단 하나 둘쯤은 반드시 필요하다.
77. 1년에 한 번 정도는 초심으로 돌아가고 싶은 것이다. 아니 초심으로 돌아간다기보다 초심을 억지로 되새긴다고 해야 정확한 표현일 될 테지만.
84. 애정이란 병의 한 종류라고 생각한다. 애정이 있기에 모든 것이 골치아파진다.
87. 결혼한 (또는 결혼한 적이 있는) 많은 사람들이 왜 결혼에 대해 별 얘기를 하지 않는지, 스스로 해 보고야 알았다. 꿀처럼 행복하고 아까워서 말하지 않는 것은 물론 아니고, 그렇다고 괴롭고 고통스럽고 우울해서 말하지 않는 것도 아니다. 그저 모두들 입을 다물고 있을 수밖에 없는 것이다. 그 결혼이 너무도 특수하고 개인적이어서, 우연과 필연이 꽈배기처럼 꼬여 설명하기 곤란한 양상을 띠고 있기에.
102. 결혼은 움직이는 보도 같은 것이어서, 가만히 있어도 앞으로 나아가고 만다. 어딘지도 모르고, 어쩌면 가고 싶지도 않은 장소로. 그래서, 거기서 가만히 있자고 생각하면 그만 뒤로 걷게 된다. 움직이는 보도에 저항하기 위해.
111. 외로움만이 늘 신선하다.
117. 올바름이란 전혀 문제가 안 된다.
결혼하고서 딱 한 가지 배운 것이 바로 그것이다. 올바름에 집착하면 결혼 생활 따위 유지할 수 없다. 나는 남편이 내게 어리광을 피우도록 해줬으면 좋겠다. 올바르지 않아도 마음껏 어리광을 피우게, 남편이 없으면 아무 것도 못하는 사람으로 만들어 주었으면 좋겠다. 그렇게 해주면 여기에 있는 것이 나의 필연이 되고, 반대로 그렇지 않으면 나는 여기에 있을 필연성이 없어지고 만다. 이웃에 사는 연인처럼 행세해서 안 될 것이 무어란 말인가?
나는 가능한 한 그렇게 하고 있다. 어리광을 피우고 어리광을 피우게 하는 것은 어른의 특권이라고 생각하니까.
124. 화해란 요컨대 이 세상에 해결 따위 없다는 것을 아는 것이고, 그것을 받아들이는 것이다. 그러면서도 그 사람의 인생에서 떠나가지 않는 것, 자신의 인생에서 그 사람을 쫓아내지 않는 것, 코스에서 벗어나게 하지 않는 것.
킵 레프트는 정말 처절하다. 그리고 때로는 터무니없을 만큼 어리석다. 해결된 것은 하나도 없는데, 그래도 편하니까.
125. "목욕하기 전에는 침대에 들어오지 마."
끝내 그런 말을 뱉는다. 그러면 남편은 거실에서 잔다.
나는 잠시 모르는 척하지만, 그러다 불안해진다. 미안하기도 하고, 또 왠지 유난히 외롭기도 해서 여름이면 타월 이불을 겨울이면 이불과 베개 두 개를 들고 거실로 나간다. 우선은 자고 있는 남편의 머리 밑에 베개를 끼워놓고, 그 옆에 내 베개를 놓고 나란히 눕는다. 신기하게도 그러면 편히 잠든다. 남편에게 딱 달라붙어서.
130. 결국 결혼이란 그럼에도 혼자이길 선택하지 않는 것이라고 생각한다. 같이 있지 않는 편이 마음 편하다는 것을 알면서도 같이 있는 것.
131. 단 일주일도 혼자 자기 싫다.
132. 생활이란 맛보는 것이다. "Relish", 내가 좋아하는 단어다. 그렇게 살고 싶다. 케이크나 아이스크림을 맛보듯이.
찰나적이고 싶다. 늘 그때 그때의 상황에 따라 결정하고 싶다.
지금까지는 남편과 같이 있다. 그것이 전부다. 그리고 같이 있는 동안은 함께하는 생활을 마음껏 맛볼 수 있다면 좋겠다고 생각한다. 언젠가 헤어질 때가 오면 조금은 울지도 모르겠지만. '죽음이 우리 둘을 갈라놓을 때까지' 함께한다면, 아마 더 울지도 모르겠다.
135. 버들가지에 부는 바람처럼, 그저 받아넘기기만 할 뿐 세월이 흘러도 서로에게 길들지 않는 남녀의 행복하고 불행한 이야기.
143. 가장 중요한 거짓말은 자신을 위해서 한다.
나는 침대로 돌아와 죽은 듯이 잠을 잔다. 평일이다. 다시 눈을 뜨면 청소도 하고 빨래도 하자, 일도 꽤 진척이 있을 것이다. 저녁때가 되면 칵테일을 만들어 가볍게 한 잔 하자. 창문도 활짝 열고, 오늘 하루를 멋지게 보내리라. 남편은 창문을 열어 놓으면 왜 그렇게 싫어하는지 모르겠다.
55. 정말 나는 몰랐으니까. 남자란 존재가 얼마나 좋은 것인지도. 연인과 함께 지내는 밤의 달콤한 친밀감이 아니라, 그저 함께 자는 남자의 팔이 얼마나 편안한 것인지. 남자의 단순함, 남자의 복잡함. 남자의 관용, 남자의 안심.
56. 나는 십대 후반에서 이십대 중반까지 매일 꼼꼼하게 일기를 썼는데, 그러다 보니 월요일마다 목표를 쓰는 습관이 생겼다. 거창하게 목표랄 것도 없는, 이번 달에는 대청소를 한다, 리포트를 완성한다, 몸무게를 2킬로그램 줄인다는 등의 메모에 불과했지만, 마지막에는 꼭, 혼자서도 무슨 일이든 할 수 있도록, 이라고 썼다. 매달, 몇 년 동안이나.
63. 그렇게 오늘도 우리는 같은 장소에서 전혀 다른 풍경을 보고 있다. 하지만, 생각해 보면 다른 풍경이기에 멋진 것이다. 사람이 사람을 만났을 때, 서로가 지니고 있는 다른 풍경에 끌리는 것이다. 그때까지 혼자서 쌓아올린 풍경에.
나는 남편과 함께 본 도치기의 별 밤과 나가노의 고추냉이밭 만큼이나 내가 보아 온 풍경과 남편이 보아 온 풍경을 사랑한다.
1년에 몇 번 남편의 고향에 간다. 시댁에는 시부모님과 시할머니가 계신다. 근처에 친척과 친구들도 산다. 그 동네의 색채와 따스한 햇살, 큰길과 신호와 너른 강과 초등학교와 책방과 옛날 현청건물과 어렸을 때부터 단골이라는 허름한 중국집, 지름길과 샛길, 그 풍경 하나 하나의 멀고 먼 느낌, 그 친밀감.
나는 남편을 타인으로 의식하는 순간을 좋아한다.
65. 바로 얼마 전까지만 해도 아침에 화장을 하는 습관이 없었던 나다. 깨끗하게 세수를 하고 그냥 있는 편이 상쾌하기도 하고, 무엇보다 집안에서는 화장을 안 한 채로 지냈다. 밤새 일하고 남편이 출근을 한 후에야 잠자리에 들어 그럴 여유가 없는 경우도 있다.
그런데 요즘은 립스틱이라도 바르고 있다. 실제로는 립스틱이 아니라 립글로스를 살짝 바르는 정도지만, 그래도 화장은 화장이다.
인생이란 어디서 어떻게 변할지 알 수가 없다. 언제 헤어지게 되더라도, 헤어진 후에 남편의 기억에 남아 있는 풍경 속의 내가 다소나마 좋은 인상이기를, 하고 생각한 것이다.
72. 느닷없는 말이지만, 나는 곧잘 노래를 부른다. 낮이면 방에 멍하니 있을 때, 밤이면 산책을 하면서, 노래를 부르면 몸에 좋다는 것을 결혼하고 알았다. 머릿속이 텅 비어서 좋다. 폐로 공기가 빨려 들어가는 듯한 느낌이 드는 것도 좋고.
73. 노래는 참 신기하다. 단박에 몸과 마음으로 파고들어 마음을 가볍게 해준다. 노래를 불러도 그렇고 들어도 그렇고.
사랑의 생활은 가혹하니까 도피 수단 하나 둘쯤은 반드시 필요하다.
77. 1년에 한 번 정도는 초심으로 돌아가고 싶은 것이다. 아니 초심으로 돌아간다기보다 초심을 억지로 되새긴다고 해야 정확한 표현일 될 테지만.
84. 애정이란 병의 한 종류라고 생각한다. 애정이 있기에 모든 것이 골치아파진다.
87. 결혼한 (또는 결혼한 적이 있는) 많은 사람들이 왜 결혼에 대해 별 얘기를 하지 않는지, 스스로 해 보고야 알았다. 꿀처럼 행복하고 아까워서 말하지 않는 것은 물론 아니고, 그렇다고 괴롭고 고통스럽고 우울해서 말하지 않는 것도 아니다. 그저 모두들 입을 다물고 있을 수밖에 없는 것이다. 그 결혼이 너무도 특수하고 개인적이어서, 우연과 필연이 꽈배기처럼 꼬여 설명하기 곤란한 양상을 띠고 있기에.
102. 결혼은 움직이는 보도 같은 것이어서, 가만히 있어도 앞으로 나아가고 만다. 어딘지도 모르고, 어쩌면 가고 싶지도 않은 장소로. 그래서, 거기서 가만히 있자고 생각하면 그만 뒤로 걷게 된다. 움직이는 보도에 저항하기 위해.
111. 외로움만이 늘 신선하다.
117. 올바름이란 전혀 문제가 안 된다.
결혼하고서 딱 한 가지 배운 것이 바로 그것이다. 올바름에 집착하면 결혼 생활 따위 유지할 수 없다. 나는 남편이 내게 어리광을 피우도록 해줬으면 좋겠다. 올바르지 않아도 마음껏 어리광을 피우게, 남편이 없으면 아무 것도 못하는 사람으로 만들어 주었으면 좋겠다. 그렇게 해주면 여기에 있는 것이 나의 필연이 되고, 반대로 그렇지 않으면 나는 여기에 있을 필연성이 없어지고 만다. 이웃에 사는 연인처럼 행세해서 안 될 것이 무어란 말인가?
나는 가능한 한 그렇게 하고 있다. 어리광을 피우고 어리광을 피우게 하는 것은 어른의 특권이라고 생각하니까.
124. 화해란 요컨대 이 세상에 해결 따위 없다는 것을 아는 것이고, 그것을 받아들이는 것이다. 그러면서도 그 사람의 인생에서 떠나가지 않는 것, 자신의 인생에서 그 사람을 쫓아내지 않는 것, 코스에서 벗어나게 하지 않는 것.
킵 레프트는 정말 처절하다. 그리고 때로는 터무니없을 만큼 어리석다. 해결된 것은 하나도 없는데, 그래도 편하니까.
125. "목욕하기 전에는 침대에 들어오지 마."
끝내 그런 말을 뱉는다. 그러면 남편은 거실에서 잔다.
나는 잠시 모르는 척하지만, 그러다 불안해진다. 미안하기도 하고, 또 왠지 유난히 외롭기도 해서 여름이면 타월 이불을 겨울이면 이불과 베개 두 개를 들고 거실로 나간다. 우선은 자고 있는 남편의 머리 밑에 베개를 끼워놓고, 그 옆에 내 베개를 놓고 나란히 눕는다. 신기하게도 그러면 편히 잠든다. 남편에게 딱 달라붙어서.
130. 결국 결혼이란 그럼에도 혼자이길 선택하지 않는 것이라고 생각한다. 같이 있지 않는 편이 마음 편하다는 것을 알면서도 같이 있는 것.
131. 단 일주일도 혼자 자기 싫다.
132. 생활이란 맛보는 것이다. "Relish", 내가 좋아하는 단어다. 그렇게 살고 싶다. 케이크나 아이스크림을 맛보듯이.
찰나적이고 싶다. 늘 그때 그때의 상황에 따라 결정하고 싶다.
지금까지는 남편과 같이 있다. 그것이 전부다. 그리고 같이 있는 동안은 함께하는 생활을 마음껏 맛볼 수 있다면 좋겠다고 생각한다. 언젠가 헤어질 때가 오면 조금은 울지도 모르겠지만. '죽음이 우리 둘을 갈라놓을 때까지' 함께한다면, 아마 더 울지도 모르겠다.
135. 버들가지에 부는 바람처럼, 그저 받아넘기기만 할 뿐 세월이 흘러도 서로에게 길들지 않는 남녀의 행복하고 불행한 이야기.
143. 가장 중요한 거짓말은 자신을 위해서 한다.
Monday, December 16, 2013
Erich Fromm- The Art of Being: 2013. 12. 16
ix. The person who is oriented toward having always makes use of crutches rather than his or her own two feet. That person uses an external object in order to exist, in order to be oneself as he or she wishes. He or she is himself or herself only insofar as that person has something. That individual determines being as a subject according to the having of an object. he or she is possessed by objects, and thus by the object of having them.
x. Love, reason, and productive activity = psychic forces
Ch 1. On the Art of Being
2. Question of the aim and meaning of life leads us to the problem of the nature of human needs.
4. Overcoming of greed, illusions, and hate, and the attainment of love and compassion, are the conditions for attaining optimal being.
6. Inner liberation= freedom from the shackles of greed and illusions.
7. That man can be a slave without chains is of crucial importance in our situation today. The outer chains have simply been put inside of man. The desires and thoughts that the suggestion-apparatus of society fills him with, chain him more thoroughly than outer chains. This is so because man can at least be aware of outer chains but be unaware of inner chains, carrying them with the illusion that he is free. He can try to overthrow the outer chains, but how can he rid himself of chains of whose existence he is unaware?
9. Masters of Living- e.g. Meister Eckhart
Ch 2. Great Shams
20. Simple one= He does not deceive but he is also not deceived.
Ch 3. Trivial Talk
22. Modern man is alienated from others and confronted with a dilemma: He is afraid of close contact with another and equally afraid to be alone and have no contact. It is the function of trivial conversation to answer the question 'How do I remain alone without being lonely?'
24. One should see the insincerity behind the mask of friendliness, the destructiveness behind the mask of eternal complaints about unhappiness, the narcissism behind the charm. One should also not act as if he or she were taken in by the other's deceptive appearance- in order to avoid being forced into a certain dishonesty oneself.
If other people do not understand our behavior- so what? Their request that we must only do what they understand is an attempt to dictate to us. If this is being 'asocial' or 'irrational' in their eyes, so be it. Mostly they resent our freedom and our courage to be ourselves. We owe nobody an explanation or an accounting, as long as our acts do not hurt or infringe on them. How many lives have been ruined by this need to 'explain,' which usually implies that the explanation be 'understood,' i.e., approved. Let your deeds be judged, and from your deeds your real intentions, but know that a free person owes an explanation only to himself- to his reason and his conscience- and to the few who may have a justified claim for explanation.
Ch 4. "No Effort, No Pain"
26. Solidarity among men has one of its strongest foundations in the experience of sharing one's own suffering with the suffering of all.
Ch 5. "Anti-authoritarianism"
27. Liberty- The need to be oneself and not a means to be used for the purposes of others.
28. It tried to establish freedom of whim instead of the freedom of will.
This "Why not?" implies that one does something simply because there is no reason against doing it, not because there is a reason for it. It implies that it is a whim but not a manifestation of the will. Following a whim is, in fact, the result of deep inner passivity blended with a wish to avoid boredom. Will is based on activity, whim on passivity.
29. The greater the sense of powerlessness and the greater the lack of authentic will, the more grows either submission or an obsessional desire for satisfaction of one's whims and the insistence on arbitrariness.
Ch 6. "To Will One Thing"
31. To will one thing presupposes having made a decision, having committed oneself to one goal. It means that the whole person is geared and devoted to the one thing he has decided on, that all his energies flow in the direction of this chosen goal.
Where energies are split in different directions, an aim is not only strive n for with diminished energy, but the split of energies has the effect of weakening them in both directions by the constant conflicts that are engendered.
Ch 8. To be Aware
39. If I am aware of feeling joy, love, sadness, fear, or hate, this means that I feel and that the feeling is not repressed; it does not mean I think or reflect about my feeling.
41. The strength of man's position in the world depends on the degree of adequacy of his perception of reality. The less adequate it is, the more disoriented and hence insecure he is and hence in need of idols to lean on and thus find security.
43. If avoidance of pain and maximal comfort are supreme values, then indeed illusions are preferable to the truth. If, on the other hand, we consider that every man, at any time in history, is born with the potential of being a full man and that, furthermore, with his death the one chance given to him is over, then indeed much can be said for the personal fulfillment. In addition, the more seeing individuals will become, the more likely that they can produce changes- social and individual ones- at the earliest possible moment, rather than, as is often the case, waiting until the chances for change have disappeared because their mind, their courage, their will have become atrophied.
Ch 9. To Concentrate
45. Concentration is such a rare phenomenon because one's will is not directed to one thing; nothing is worth the effort to concentrate on it, because no goal is pursued passionately. But there is more to it; People are afraid to concentrate because they are afraid of losing themselves if they are too absorbed in another person, in an idea, in a n event. The less strong their self, the greater the fear of losing themselves in the act of concentration on the non-self. For the person with a dominant having orientation this fear of losing oneself is one of the main factors that operates against concentration. Finally, to concentrate requires inner activity, not busy-ness, and this activity is rare today when busy-ness is the key to success.
Lack of concentration makes one tired, while concentration wakes one up.
Ch 11. Psychoanalysis and Self-Awareness
57. He questioned all conscious thought, intentions, and virtues and demonstrated how often they are nothing but forms of resistance to hide the inner reality.
64. The trans-therapuetic goal is that of man's self-liberation by optimal self-awareness; of the attaining of well-being, independence; of the capacity to love; and of critical, dis-illusioned thinking, of being rather than having.
65. A person who seeks optimal growth may also have neurotic symptoms and thus need analysis as a therapy. A person who has not been completely alienated, who has remained sensitive and able to feel, who has not lost the sense of dignity, who is not yet 'for sale,' who can still suffer over the suffering of others, who has not acquired fully the having mode of existence- briefly, a person who has remained a person and not become a thing- cannot help feeling lonely, powerless, isolated in present-day society. He cannot help doubting himself and his own convictions, if not his sanity. He cannot help suffering, even though he can experience moments of joy and clarity that are absent in the life of his 'normal' contemporaries.
Ch 13. Methods of Self-Analysis
70. One may try to remember the thoughts that were intruding while one tried to be still, and then 'feel one's way into them' with the aim of seeing whether they have any connection, and what it might be. Or one may proceed by observing certain symptoms such as feeling tired, or depressed, or angry, and then 'feel around' what it was a reaction to and what was the unconscious experience behind the manifest feeling.
72. Still another approach is an autobiographical one. By this I mean speculations about one's history, beginning with one's early childhood and ending with one's projected future development. Try to get a picture of significant events, of your early fears, hopes, disappointments, events that decreased your trust and faith in people, and in yourself.
Ask: On whom am I dependent? What are my main fears? Who was I meant to be at birth? What were my goals and how did they change? What were the forks of the road where I took the wrong direction and went the wrong way? What efforts did I make to correct the error and return to the right way? Who am I now, and who would I be if I had always made the right decisions and avoided crucial errors? Whom Did I want to be long ago, now, and in the future? What is my image of myself? What is the image I wish others to have of me? Where are the discrepancies between the two images, both between themselves and with what I sense is my real self? Who will I be if I continue to live as I am living now? What are the conditions responsible for the development as it happened? What are the alternatives for further development open to me now? What must I do to realize the possibility I choose?
73. The degree of discrepancy between the conscious and unconscious plots varies enormously in many people. On the one end of the continuum are those persons for whom there is no secret plot because the person has grown so far that he has become entirely one with himself, and need not repress anything. On the other extreme there may be no secret plot because the person has identified with his /evil/ self to a degree that he does not even try to pretend that there is a 'better self'.
77. What can I know of myself as long as I do not know that the self I do know is largely a synthetic product; that most people lie without knowing it, that 'defense' means 'war' and 'duty' submission; that 'virtue' means 'obedience' and 'sin' disobedience; that the idea that parents instinctively love their children is a myth; that fame is only rarely based on admirable human qualities, and even not too often on real achievements; that history is a distorted record because it is written by the victors; that over-modesty is not necessarily the proof of a lack of vanity; that loving is the opposite of craving and greed; that everyone tries to rationalize evil intentions and actions and to make them appear noble and beneficial ones; that the pursuit of power means the persecution of truth, justice and love; that present-day industrial society is centered around the principle of selfishness, having and consuming, and not on principles of love and respect for life, as it preaches. Unless I am able to analyze the unconscious aspects of the society in which I live, I cannot know who I am, because I don't know which part of me is not me.
79. The pains of labor are different from the pains of an illness. What matters is the entire context in which the effort is made or the pain is suffered, and which gives it its specific quality.
Ch 14. On the Culture of Having
89. The average man today thinks very little for himself. He remembers data as presented by the schools and the mass media; he knows practically nothing of what he knows by his own observing or thinking. Nor does his use of things require much thought or skill.
90. Primitive man is in an entirely different situation. He has very little education, in the modern sense of spending a certain amount of time in an educational institution. He himself is forced to observe an to learn from his observations. He observes the weather, the behavior of animals, the behavior of other human beings; his life depends on acquiring certain skills and he acquires them by his own doing and acting. His life is a constant process of learning.
93. Whatever filled their lives, it was largely a result of their own doing and their own experience.
He did not want to have or to consume more, because not the acquisition of riches but the productive use of his faculties and the enjoyment of being were his goal.
100. It is perhaps difficult for a person living in today's cybernetic society, in which everything is obsolete in a short time (and even if it is not, it will eventually be exchanged for something newer), to appreciate the personal character of the things of daily use. In using them one imparts something of his life and of his personality to them. They are not lifeless, sterile, or changeable things anymore. That this is true has been clearly demonstrated in the custom of many earlier cultures to put in a person's grave the very things of his personal and daily property. The equivalent in modern society is a person's last will and testament, which may have its consequences for years after his death. But his objects are not his personal things, but precisely the impersonal private property, he owned such as money, land, rights, and so forth.
101. A relationship is socially recognized as marriage as long as the man and the woman love each other, want each other, and want to stay together.
103. The change of function happens at the point where possession ceases to be an instrument for greater aliveness and productivity but is transformed into a means for passive-receptive consumption.
Neither is actively related to anything or anybody, neither changes and grows in the process of living; each only represents one of two different forms of non-aliveness. Showing the distinction between possession-having and use-having needs to take into account the double meaning of use: Passive use ("the consumer") and productive use (the artisan, artist, skilled worker). Functional having refers to productive use.
x. Love, reason, and productive activity = psychic forces
Ch 1. On the Art of Being
2. Question of the aim and meaning of life leads us to the problem of the nature of human needs.
4. Overcoming of greed, illusions, and hate, and the attainment of love and compassion, are the conditions for attaining optimal being.
6. Inner liberation= freedom from the shackles of greed and illusions.
7. That man can be a slave without chains is of crucial importance in our situation today. The outer chains have simply been put inside of man. The desires and thoughts that the suggestion-apparatus of society fills him with, chain him more thoroughly than outer chains. This is so because man can at least be aware of outer chains but be unaware of inner chains, carrying them with the illusion that he is free. He can try to overthrow the outer chains, but how can he rid himself of chains of whose existence he is unaware?
9. Masters of Living- e.g. Meister Eckhart
Ch 2. Great Shams
20. Simple one= He does not deceive but he is also not deceived.
Ch 3. Trivial Talk
22. Modern man is alienated from others and confronted with a dilemma: He is afraid of close contact with another and equally afraid to be alone and have no contact. It is the function of trivial conversation to answer the question 'How do I remain alone without being lonely?'
24. One should see the insincerity behind the mask of friendliness, the destructiveness behind the mask of eternal complaints about unhappiness, the narcissism behind the charm. One should also not act as if he or she were taken in by the other's deceptive appearance- in order to avoid being forced into a certain dishonesty oneself.
If other people do not understand our behavior- so what? Their request that we must only do what they understand is an attempt to dictate to us. If this is being 'asocial' or 'irrational' in their eyes, so be it. Mostly they resent our freedom and our courage to be ourselves. We owe nobody an explanation or an accounting, as long as our acts do not hurt or infringe on them. How many lives have been ruined by this need to 'explain,' which usually implies that the explanation be 'understood,' i.e., approved. Let your deeds be judged, and from your deeds your real intentions, but know that a free person owes an explanation only to himself- to his reason and his conscience- and to the few who may have a justified claim for explanation.
Ch 4. "No Effort, No Pain"
26. Solidarity among men has one of its strongest foundations in the experience of sharing one's own suffering with the suffering of all.
Ch 5. "Anti-authoritarianism"
27. Liberty- The need to be oneself and not a means to be used for the purposes of others.
28. It tried to establish freedom of whim instead of the freedom of will.
This "Why not?" implies that one does something simply because there is no reason against doing it, not because there is a reason for it. It implies that it is a whim but not a manifestation of the will. Following a whim is, in fact, the result of deep inner passivity blended with a wish to avoid boredom. Will is based on activity, whim on passivity.
29. The greater the sense of powerlessness and the greater the lack of authentic will, the more grows either submission or an obsessional desire for satisfaction of one's whims and the insistence on arbitrariness.
Ch 6. "To Will One Thing"
31. To will one thing presupposes having made a decision, having committed oneself to one goal. It means that the whole person is geared and devoted to the one thing he has decided on, that all his energies flow in the direction of this chosen goal.
Where energies are split in different directions, an aim is not only strive n for with diminished energy, but the split of energies has the effect of weakening them in both directions by the constant conflicts that are engendered.
Ch 8. To be Aware
39. If I am aware of feeling joy, love, sadness, fear, or hate, this means that I feel and that the feeling is not repressed; it does not mean I think or reflect about my feeling.
41. The strength of man's position in the world depends on the degree of adequacy of his perception of reality. The less adequate it is, the more disoriented and hence insecure he is and hence in need of idols to lean on and thus find security.
43. If avoidance of pain and maximal comfort are supreme values, then indeed illusions are preferable to the truth. If, on the other hand, we consider that every man, at any time in history, is born with the potential of being a full man and that, furthermore, with his death the one chance given to him is over, then indeed much can be said for the personal fulfillment. In addition, the more seeing individuals will become, the more likely that they can produce changes- social and individual ones- at the earliest possible moment, rather than, as is often the case, waiting until the chances for change have disappeared because their mind, their courage, their will have become atrophied.
Ch 9. To Concentrate
45. Concentration is such a rare phenomenon because one's will is not directed to one thing; nothing is worth the effort to concentrate on it, because no goal is pursued passionately. But there is more to it; People are afraid to concentrate because they are afraid of losing themselves if they are too absorbed in another person, in an idea, in a n event. The less strong their self, the greater the fear of losing themselves in the act of concentration on the non-self. For the person with a dominant having orientation this fear of losing oneself is one of the main factors that operates against concentration. Finally, to concentrate requires inner activity, not busy-ness, and this activity is rare today when busy-ness is the key to success.
Lack of concentration makes one tired, while concentration wakes one up.
Ch 11. Psychoanalysis and Self-Awareness
57. He questioned all conscious thought, intentions, and virtues and demonstrated how often they are nothing but forms of resistance to hide the inner reality.
64. The trans-therapuetic goal is that of man's self-liberation by optimal self-awareness; of the attaining of well-being, independence; of the capacity to love; and of critical, dis-illusioned thinking, of being rather than having.
65. A person who seeks optimal growth may also have neurotic symptoms and thus need analysis as a therapy. A person who has not been completely alienated, who has remained sensitive and able to feel, who has not lost the sense of dignity, who is not yet 'for sale,' who can still suffer over the suffering of others, who has not acquired fully the having mode of existence- briefly, a person who has remained a person and not become a thing- cannot help feeling lonely, powerless, isolated in present-day society. He cannot help doubting himself and his own convictions, if not his sanity. He cannot help suffering, even though he can experience moments of joy and clarity that are absent in the life of his 'normal' contemporaries.
Ch 13. Methods of Self-Analysis
70. One may try to remember the thoughts that were intruding while one tried to be still, and then 'feel one's way into them' with the aim of seeing whether they have any connection, and what it might be. Or one may proceed by observing certain symptoms such as feeling tired, or depressed, or angry, and then 'feel around' what it was a reaction to and what was the unconscious experience behind the manifest feeling.
72. Still another approach is an autobiographical one. By this I mean speculations about one's history, beginning with one's early childhood and ending with one's projected future development. Try to get a picture of significant events, of your early fears, hopes, disappointments, events that decreased your trust and faith in people, and in yourself.
Ask: On whom am I dependent? What are my main fears? Who was I meant to be at birth? What were my goals and how did they change? What were the forks of the road where I took the wrong direction and went the wrong way? What efforts did I make to correct the error and return to the right way? Who am I now, and who would I be if I had always made the right decisions and avoided crucial errors? Whom Did I want to be long ago, now, and in the future? What is my image of myself? What is the image I wish others to have of me? Where are the discrepancies between the two images, both between themselves and with what I sense is my real self? Who will I be if I continue to live as I am living now? What are the conditions responsible for the development as it happened? What are the alternatives for further development open to me now? What must I do to realize the possibility I choose?
73. The degree of discrepancy between the conscious and unconscious plots varies enormously in many people. On the one end of the continuum are those persons for whom there is no secret plot because the person has grown so far that he has become entirely one with himself, and need not repress anything. On the other extreme there may be no secret plot because the person has identified with his /evil/ self to a degree that he does not even try to pretend that there is a 'better self'.
77. What can I know of myself as long as I do not know that the self I do know is largely a synthetic product; that most people lie without knowing it, that 'defense' means 'war' and 'duty' submission; that 'virtue' means 'obedience' and 'sin' disobedience; that the idea that parents instinctively love their children is a myth; that fame is only rarely based on admirable human qualities, and even not too often on real achievements; that history is a distorted record because it is written by the victors; that over-modesty is not necessarily the proof of a lack of vanity; that loving is the opposite of craving and greed; that everyone tries to rationalize evil intentions and actions and to make them appear noble and beneficial ones; that the pursuit of power means the persecution of truth, justice and love; that present-day industrial society is centered around the principle of selfishness, having and consuming, and not on principles of love and respect for life, as it preaches. Unless I am able to analyze the unconscious aspects of the society in which I live, I cannot know who I am, because I don't know which part of me is not me.
79. The pains of labor are different from the pains of an illness. What matters is the entire context in which the effort is made or the pain is suffered, and which gives it its specific quality.
Ch 14. On the Culture of Having
89. The average man today thinks very little for himself. He remembers data as presented by the schools and the mass media; he knows practically nothing of what he knows by his own observing or thinking. Nor does his use of things require much thought or skill.
90. Primitive man is in an entirely different situation. He has very little education, in the modern sense of spending a certain amount of time in an educational institution. He himself is forced to observe an to learn from his observations. He observes the weather, the behavior of animals, the behavior of other human beings; his life depends on acquiring certain skills and he acquires them by his own doing and acting. His life is a constant process of learning.
93. Whatever filled their lives, it was largely a result of their own doing and their own experience.
He did not want to have or to consume more, because not the acquisition of riches but the productive use of his faculties and the enjoyment of being were his goal.
100. It is perhaps difficult for a person living in today's cybernetic society, in which everything is obsolete in a short time (and even if it is not, it will eventually be exchanged for something newer), to appreciate the personal character of the things of daily use. In using them one imparts something of his life and of his personality to them. They are not lifeless, sterile, or changeable things anymore. That this is true has been clearly demonstrated in the custom of many earlier cultures to put in a person's grave the very things of his personal and daily property. The equivalent in modern society is a person's last will and testament, which may have its consequences for years after his death. But his objects are not his personal things, but precisely the impersonal private property, he owned such as money, land, rights, and so forth.
101. A relationship is socially recognized as marriage as long as the man and the woman love each other, want each other, and want to stay together.
103. The change of function happens at the point where possession ceases to be an instrument for greater aliveness and productivity but is transformed into a means for passive-receptive consumption.
Neither is actively related to anything or anybody, neither changes and grows in the process of living; each only represents one of two different forms of non-aliveness. Showing the distinction between possession-having and use-having needs to take into account the double meaning of use: Passive use ("the consumer") and productive use (the artisan, artist, skilled worker). Functional having refers to productive use.
Friday, November 29, 2013
* Erich Fromm- The Fear of Freedom: 2013. 11. 30
x. Modern man, freed from the bonds of pre-individualistic society, which simultaneously gave him security and limited him, has not gained freedom in the positive sense of the realization of his individual self; that is, the expression of his intellectual, emotional and sensuous potentialities. Freedom, though it has brought him independence and rationality, has made him isolated and, thereby, anxious and powerless. This isolation is unbearable and the alternatives he is confronted with are either to escape from the burden of this freedom into new dependencies and submission, or to advance to the full realization of positive freedom which is based upon the uniqueness and individuality of man.
9. Society has not only a suppressing function- although it has that too- but it has also a creative function.
10. In the Northern European countries, from the sixteenth century on, man developed an obsessional craving to work which had been lacking in a free man before that period.
14. He has to eat and drink, and therefore he has to work; and this means he has to work under the particular conditions and in the ways that are determined for him by the kind of society into which he is born. Both factors, his need to live and the social system, in principle are unalterable by him as an individual, and they are the factors which determine the development of those other traits that show greater plasticity.
15. To feel completely alone and isolated leads to mental disintegration just as physical starvation leads to death.
This lack of relatedness to values, symbols, patterns, we may call moral aloneness and state that moral aloneness is as intolerable as the physical aloneness, or rather that physical aloneness becomes unbearable only if it implies also moral aloneness.
Religion and nationalism, as well as any custom and any belief however absurd and degrading, if it only connects the individual with others, are refuges from what man most dreads: isolation.
17. Unless he belonged somewhere, unless his life had some meaning and direction, he would feel like a particle of dust and be overcome by his individual insignificance.
Human nature is neither a biologically fixed and innate sum total of drives nor is it a lifeless shadow of cultural patterns to which it adapts itself smoothly; it is the product of human evolution but it also has certain inherent mechanisms and laws. There are certain factors in man's nature which are fixed and unchangeable: the necessity to satisfy the physiologically conditioned drives and the necessity to avoid isolation and moral aloneness.
18. Man, the more he gains freedom in the sense of emerging from the original oneness with man and nature and the more he becomes an 'individual', has no choice but to unite himself with the world in the spontaneity of love and productive work or else to seek a kind of security by such ties with the world as destroy his freedom and the integrity of his individual self.
19. The growing process of the emergence of the individual from his original ties, a process which we may call 'individuation', seems to have reached its peak in modern history in the centuries between the Reformation and the present.
24. Spontaneous relationship to man and nature, a relationship that connects the individual with the world without eliminating his individuality. This kind of relationship- the foremost expressions of which are love and productive work- are rooted in the integration and strength of the total personality and are therefore subject to the very limits that exist for the growth of the self.
39. The masses who did not share the wealth and power of the ruling group had lost the security of their former status and had become a shapeless mass, to be flattered or to be threatened-but always to be manipulated and exploited by those in power.
40. All human relationships were poisoned by this fierce life-and-death struggle for the maintenance of power and wealth. Solidarity with one's fellowmen- or at least with the members of one's own class- was replaced by a cynical detached attitude; other individuals were looked upon as 'objects' to be used and manipulated, or they were ruthlessly destroyed if it suited one's own ends.
49. A spirit of restlessness began to pervade life towards the end of the Middle Ages. The concept of time in the modern sense began to develop. Minutes became valuable. ... Too many holidays began to appear as a misfortune. Time was so valuable that one felt one should never spend it for any purpose which was not useful. Work became increasingly a supreme value.
52. The individual is freed from the bondage of economic and political ties. He also gains in positive freedom by the active and independent role which he has to play in the new system. But simultaneously he is freed from those ties which used to give him security and a feeling of belonging. Life has ceased to be lived in a closed world the centre of which was man; the world has become limitless and at the same time threatening. By losing his fixed place in a closed world man loses the answer to the meaning of his life; the result is that doubt has befallen him concerning himself and the aim of life. He is threatened by powerful supra-personal forces, capital and the market. His relationship to his fellow men, with everyone a potential competitor, has become hostile and estranged; he is free- that is, he is alone, isolated, threatened from all sides. Not having the wealth or the power which the Renaissance capitalist had, and also having lost the sense of unity with men and the universe, he is overwhelmed with a sense of his individual nothingness and helplessness.
67. The modern attempts to silence the doubts, whether they consist in a compulsive striving for success, in the belief that unlimited knowledge of facts can answer the quest for certainty, or in the submission to a leader who assumes the responsibility for 'certainty'- all these solutions can only eliminate the awareness of doubt. The doubt itself will not disappear as long as man does not overcome his isolation and as long as his place in the world has not become a meaningful one in terms of his human needs.
78. The individual has to be active in order to overcome his feeling of doubt and powerlessness. This kind of effort and activity is not the result of inner strength and self-confidence; it is a desperate escape from anxiety.
80. It seems that for some groups of medieval society work was enjoyed as a realization of productive ability; that many others worked because they had to and felt this necessity was conditioned by pressure from the outside. What was new in modern society was that men came to be driven to work not so much by external pressure but by an internal compulsion, which made them work as only a very strict master could have made people do in other societies.
There is no other period in history in which free men have given their energy so completely for the one purpose: work.
84. 'Conscience' is a slave driver, put into man by himself. It drives him to act according to wishes and aims which he believes to be his own, while they are actually the internalization of external social demands. It drives him with harshness and cruelty, forbidding him pleasure and happiness, making his whole life the atonement for some mysterious sin.
87. The social process, by determining the mode of life of the individual, that is, his relation to others and to work, moulds his character structure; new ideologies- religious, philosophical, or political- result from and appeal to this changed character structure and thus intensify, satisfy, and stabilize it; the newly formed character traits in their turn become important factors in further economic development and influence the social process; while originally they have developed asa reaction to the threat of new economic forces, they slowly become productive forces furthering and intensifying the new economic development.
90. Modern men become more independent, self-reliant, and critical, and he becomes more isolated, alone, and afraid.
We feel that freedom of speech is the last step in the march of victory of freedom. We forget that, although freedom of speech constitutes an important victory in the battle against old restraints, modern man is in a position where much of what 'he' thinks and says are the things that everybody else thinks and says; that he has not acquired the ability to think originally- that is, for himself- which alone gives meaning to his claim that nobody can interfere with the expression of his thoughts. Again, we are proud that in his conduct of life man has become free from external authorities, which tell him what to do and what not to do. We neglect the role of the anonymous authorities like public opinion and 'common sense', which are so powerful because of our profound readiness to conform to the expectations everybody has about ourselves and our equally profound fear of being different. In other words, we are fascinated by the growth of freedom from powers outside ourselves and are blinded to the fact of inner restraints, compulsions, and fears, which tend to undermine the meaning of the victories freedom has won against its traditional enemies. We therefore are prone to think that the problem of freedom is exclusively that of gaining still more freedom of the kind we have gained in the course of modern history, and to believe that the defence of freedom against such powers that deny such freedom is all that is necessary. We forget that, although each of the liberties which have been won must be defended with utmost vigour, the problem of freedom is not only a quantitative one, but a qualitative one; that we not only have to preserve and increase the traditional freedom, but that we have to gain a new kind of freedom, one which enables us to realize our own individual self, to have faith in this self and in life.
94. In the medieval system capital was the servant of man, but in the modern system it became his master. In the medieval world economic activities were a means to an end; the end was life itself, or the spiritual salvation of man. ... In capitalism economic activity, success, material gains, become ends in themselves. It becomes man's fate to contribute to the growth of the economic system, to amass capital, not for purposes of his own happiness or salvation, but as an end in itself.
In theological teaching of Lutherism and Calvinism, they had laid the ground for this development by breaking man's spiritual backbone, his feeling of dignity and pride, by teaching him that activity had to further aims outside of himself. ... of feeling his own self to be insignificant and of being ready to subordinate his life exclusively for purposes which were not his own.
96. While the principle of work for the sake of the accumulation of capital objectively is of enormous value for the progress of mankind, subjectively it has made man work for extra-personal ends, made him servant to the very machine he built, and thereby has given him a feeling of personal insignificance and powerlessness.
97. In any society the spirit of the whole culture is determined by the spirit of those groups that are most powerful in that society. This is so partly because these groups have the power to control the educational system, schools, church, press, theatre, and thereby to imbue the whole population with their own ideas; furthermore, these powerful groups carry so much prestige that the lower classes are more than ready to accept and imitate their values and to identify themselves psychologically.
100. Close observation shows that while the selfish person is always anxiously concerned with himself, he is never satisfied, is always restless, always driven by the fear of not getting enough, of missing something, of being deprived of something. He is filled with burning envy of anyone who might have more. If we observe still closer, especially the unconscious dynamics, we find that this type of person is basically not fond of himself, but deeply dislikes himself.
101. The 'self' in the interest of which modern man acts is the social self, a self which is essentially constituted by the role the individual is supposed to play and which in reality is merely the subjective disguise for the objective social function of man in society. Modern selfishness is the greed that is rooted in the frustration of the real self and whose object is the social self.
102. The word 'employer' contains the whole story; the owner of capital employs another human being as he 'employs' a machine. They both use each other for the pursuit of their economic interests; their relationship is one in which both are means to an end, both are instrumental to each other. It is not a relationship of two human beings who have any interest in the other outside of this mutual usefulness.
In contrast to a medieval artisan, the modern manufacturer is not primarily interested in what he produces; he produces essentially in order to make a profit from his capital investment.
103. Man does not only sell commodities, he sells himself and feels himself to be a commodity. ... They have to have a 'personality' if they are to sell their products or services. This personality should be pleasing, but besides that its possessor should meet a number of other requirements; he should have energy, initiative, this, that, or the other ,as his particular position may require. ... If there is no use for the qualities a person offers, he has none; just as an unsaleable commodity is valueless though it might have tis use value. Thus, the self-confidence, the 'feeling of self', is merely an indication of what others think of the person. It is not he who is convinced of his value regardless of popularity and his success on the market. If he is sought after, he is somebody; if he is not popular, he is simply nobody.
104. A man's clothes or his house were parts of his self just as much as his body. The less he felt he was being somebody the more he needed to have possessions. If the individual had no property or lost it, he was lacking an important part of his 'self' and to a certain extent was not considered to be a full=fledged person, either by others or by himself.
111. These methods of dulling the capacity for critical thinking are more dangerous to our democracy than many of the open attacks against it, and more immoral- in terms of human integrity- than the indecent literature, publication of which we publish.
113. To have a job-regardless of what kind of a job it is- seems to many all they could want of life and something they should be grateful for.
114. Kierkegaard describes the helpless individual torn and tormented by doubts, overwhelmed by the feeling of aloneness and insignificance. Nietzsche visualizes the approaching nihilism which was to become manifest in Nazism and paints a picture of a 'superman' as the negation of the insignificant, directionless individual he saw in reality.
However, this feeling of individual isolation and powerlessness as it has been expressed by these writers and as it is felt by many so-called neurotic people, is nothing the average normal person is aware of. It is too frightening for that. It is covered over by the daily routine of his activities, byt he assurance and approval he finds in his private or social relations, by success in business, by any number of distractions, by 'having fun', 'making contacts', 'going places'. But whistling in the dark does not bring light. Aloneness, fear, and bewilderment remain.
122. Masochistic strivings: These people show a marked dependence on powers outside themselves, on other people, or institutions, or nature. They tend not to assert themselves, not to do what they want, but to submit to the factual or alleged orders of these outside forces. Often they are quite incapable of experiencing the feeling 'I want' or 'I am'. Life, as a whole, is felt by them as something overwhelmingly powerful, which they cannot master or control.
123. There are others who say things which antagonize those whom they love or on whom they are dependent, although actually they feel friendly towards them and did not intend to say those things. With such people, it almost seems as if they were following advice given them by an enemy to behave in such a way as to be most detrimental to themselves.
134. The other side is the attempt to become a part of a bigger and more powerful whole outside of oneself, to submerge and participate in it. This power can be a person, an institution, God, the nation, conscience, or a psychic compulsion. By becoming part of a power which is felt as unshakably strong, eternal, and glamorous, one participates in its strength and glory. One surrenders one's own self and renounces all strength and pride connected with it, one loses one's integrity as an individual and surrenders freedom; but one gains a new security and a new pride in the participation in the power in which one submerges.
136. Symbiosis, in this psychological sense, means the union of one individual self with another self in such a way as to make each lose the integrity of tis own self and to make them completely dependent on each other. The sadistic person needs his object just as much as the masochistic needs his.
It is always the inability to stand the aloneness of one's individual self that leads to the drive to enter into a symbiotic relationship with someone else.
144. Instead of overt authority, 'anonymous' authority reigns. It is disguised as common sense, science, psychic health, normality, public opinion. It does not demand anything except the self-evident. It seems to use no pressure but only mild persuasion.
Anonymous authority is more effective than overt authority, since one never suspects that there is any order which one is expected to follow. In external authority it is clear that there is an order and who gives it; one can fight against the authority, and in this fight personal independence and moral courage can develop. But whereas in internalized authority the command, though an internal one, remains visible, in anonymous authority both command and commander have become invisible. It is like being fired at by an invisible enemy. There is nobody and nothing to fight back against.
154. Sadism aims at incorporation of the object; destructiveness at its removal. Sadism tends to strengthen the atomized individual by the domination over others.
155. In most cases the destructive impulses, however, are rationalized in such a way that at least a few other people or a whole social group share in the rationalization and thus make it appear to be 'realistic' to the member of such a group.
158. Destructiveness is the outcome of unlived life.
160. To put it briefly, the individual ceases to be himself; he adopts entirely the kind of personality offered to him by cultural patterns; and he therefore becomes exactly as all others are and as they expect him to be. The discrepancy between 'I' and the world disappears and with it the conscious fear of aloneness and powerlessness.
The price one pays, however, is high; it is the loss of one self.
167. In all these illustrations of pseudo thinking, the problem is whether the thought is the result of one's own thinking, that is, of one's own activity; the problem is not whether or not the contents of the thought are right.
168. The decisive point is not what is thought but how it is thought. The thought that is the result of active thinking is always new and original; original, not necessarily in the sense tat others have not thought it before, but always in the sense that the person who thinks, has used thinking asa tool to discover something new in the world outside or inside himself. Rationalizations are essentially lacking this quality of discovering and uncovering; they only confirm the emotional prejudice existing in oneself. Rationalizing is not a tool for penetration of reality but a post-factum attempt to harmonize one's own wishes with existing reality.
172. A great number of our decisions are not really our own but are suggested to us from the outside; we have succeeded in persuading ourselves that it is we who have made the decision, whereas we have actually conformed with expectations of others, driven by the fear of isolation and by more direct threats to our life, freedom, and comfort.
173. In watching the phenomenon of human decisions, one is struck by the extent to which people are mistaken in taking as 'their' decision what in effect is submission to convention, duty, or simple pressure. It almost seems that 'original' decision is a comparatively rare phenomenon in a society which supposedly makes individual decision the cornerstone of its existence.
174. Every repression eliminates parts of one's real self and enforces the substitution of a pseudo feeling for the one which has been repressed.
177. The loss of the self and its substitution by a pseudo self leave the individual in an intense state of insecurity. He is obsessed by doubt since, being essentially a reflex of other people's expectation of him, he has in a measure lost his identity. In order to overcome the panic resulting from such loss of identity, he is compelled to conform, to seek his identity by continuous approval and recognition by others. Since he does not know who he is, at least the others will know- if he acts according to their expectation.
181. It seems that nothing is more difficult for the average man to bear than the feeling of not being identified with a larger group.
207. The right to express our thoughts, however, means something only if we are able to have thoughts of our own.
210. In many instances the person is aware of merely making a gesture; in most cases, however, he loses that awareness and thereby the ability to discriminate between the pseudo feeling and spontaneous friendliness.
211. In our society emotions in general are discouraged. While there can be no doubt that any creative thinking- as well as any other creative activity- is inseparably linked with emotion, it has become an ideal to think and to live without emotions. To be 'emotional' has become synonymous with being unsound or unbalanced. By the acceptance of this standard the individual has become greatly weakened; his thinking is impoverished and flattened. On the other hand, since emotions cannot be completely killed, they must have their existence totally apart from the intellectual side of the personality; the result is the cheap and insincere sentimentality with which movies and popular songs feed millions of emotion-starved customers.
213. Some of the educational methods used today which in effect further discourage original thinking. One is the emphasis on knowledge of facts, or I should rather say on information. The pathetic superstition prevails that by knowing more and more facts one arrives at knowledge of reality. Hundreds of scattered and unrelated facts are dumped into the heads of students; their time and energy are taken up by learning more and more facts so that there is little left for thinking. To be sure, thinking without a knowledge of facts remains empty and factitious; but 'information' alone can be just as much of an obstacle to thinking as the lack of it.
215. The individual's greatest strength is based on the maximum of integration of his personality, and that means also on the maximum of transparence to himself. 'Know thyself' is one of the fundamental commands that aim at human strength and happiness.
217. All our energy is spent for the purpose of getting what we want, and most people never question the premise of this activity: that they know their true wants. They do not stop to think whether the aims they are pursuing are something they themselves want. In school they want to have good marks, as adults they want to be more and more successful, to make more money, to have more prestige, to buy a better car, to go places, and so on. Yet when they do stop to think in the midst of all this frantic activity, this question may come to their minds: 'If I do get this new job, if I get this better car, if I can take this trip- what then? What is the use of it all? Is it really I who wants all this? Am I not running after some goal which is supposed to make me happy and which eludes me as soon as I have reached it?' These questions, when they arise, are frightening, for they question the very basis on which man's whole activity is built, his knowledge of what he wants. People tend, therefore, to get rid as soon as possible of these disturbing thoughts. They feel that they have been bothered by these questions because they were tired or depressed- and they go on in the pursuit of the aims which they believe are their own.
218. Modern man lives under the illusion that he knows what he wants, while he ctually wants what he is supposed to want. In order to accept this it is necessary to realize that to know what one really wants is not comparatively easy, as most people think, but one of the most difficult problems any human being has to solve.
219. The loss of the self has increased the necessity to conform, for it results in a profound doubt of one's own identity.
I am 'as you desire me'.
By conforming with the expectations of others, by not being different, these doubts about one's own identity are silenced and a certain security is gained. However, the price paid is high. Giving up spontaneity and individuality results in a thwarting of life. Psychologically the automaton, while being alive biologically, is dead emotionally and mentally. While he goes through the motions of living, his life runs through his hands like sand.
222. This freedom man can attain by the realization of his self, by being himself.
The realization of the self is accomplished not only by an act of thinking but also by the realization of man's total personality, by the active expression of his emotional and intellectual potentialities.
Positive freedom consists in the spontaneous activity of the total, integrated personality.
223. One premise for this spontaneity is the acceptance of the total personality and the elimination of the split between 'reason' and 'nature'; for only if man does not repress essential parts of his self, only if he has become transparent to himself, and only if the different spheres of life have reached a fundamental integration, is spontaneous activity possible.
Spontaneity with thinking, feeling, and acting, is the expression of selves and not of an automaton. These individuals are mostly known to us as artists. ... Certain philosophers and scientists have to be called artists too, while others are as different from them as an old-fashioned photographer from a creative painter.
225. Spontaneous activity is the one way in which man can overcome the terror of aloneness without sacrificing the integrity of his self; for in the spontaneous realization of the self man unites himself anew with the world- with man, nature, and himself.
Love is the foremost component of such spontaneity; not love as the dissolution of the self in another person, not love as the possession of another person, but love as spontaneous affirmation of others, as the union of the individual with others on the basis of the preservation of the individual self. The dynamic quality of love lies in this very polarity: that it springs from the need of overcoming separateness, that it leads to oneness-and yet that individuality is not eliminated.
Work is the other component; not work as a compulsive activity in order to escape aloneness, not work as a relationship to nature which is partly one of dominating her, partly one of worship of and enslavement by the ery products of man's hands, but work as creation in which man becomes one with nature in the act of creation. What holds true of love and work holds true of all spontaneous action, whether it be the realization of sensuous pleasure or participation in the political life of the community. It affirms the individuality of the self and at the same time it unites the self with man and nature. The basic dichotomy that is inherent in freedom- the birth of individuality and the pain of aloneness- is dissolved on a higher plane by man's spontaneous action.
226. We produce not for a concrete satisfaction but for the abstract purpose of selling our commodity; we feel that we can acquire everything material or immaterial by buying it, and thus things become ours independently of any creative effort of our own in relation to them. In the same way we regard our personal qualities and the result of our efforts as commodities that can be sold for money, prestige, and power. The emphasis thus shifts from the present satisfaction of creative activity to the value of the finished product. Thereby man misses the only satisfaction that can give him real happiness- the experience of the activity of the present moment- and chases after a phantom that leaves him disappointed as soon as he believes he has caught it- the illusory happiness called success.
If the individual realizes his self by spontaneous activity and thus relates himself to the world, he ceases to be an isolated atom; he and the world become part of one structuralized whole; he has his rightful place, and thereby his doubt concerning himself and the meaning of life disappears. This doubt sprang from his separateness and from the thwarting of life; when he can live, neither compulsively nor automatically but spontaneously, the doubt disappears. He is aware of himself as an active and creative individual and recognizes that there is only one meaning of life: the at of living itself.
229. All genuine ideals have one thing in common: they express the desire for something which is not yet accomplished but which is desirable for the purposes of the growth and happiness of the individual.
We know that poverty, intimidation, isolation, are directed against life; that everything that serves freedom and furthers the courage and strength to be oneself is for life.
233. The cultural and political crisis of our day is not due to the fact that there is too much individualism but that what we believe to be individualism has become an empty shell. The victory of freedom is possible only if democracy develops into a society in which the individual, his growth and happiness, is the aim and purpose of culture, in which life does not need any justification in success or anything else, and in which the individual is not subordinated to or manipulated by any power outside himself, be it the State or the economic machine; finally, a society in which his conscience and ideals are not internalisation of external demands, but are really his and express the aims that result from the peculiarity of his self.
235. Today the vast majority of the people not only have no control over the whole of the economic machine, but they have little chance to develop genuine initiative and spontaneity at the particular job they are doing. They are 'employed', and nothing more is expected from them than that they do what they are told.
All that matters is that the opportunity for genuine activity be restored to the individual.
245. The social function of education is to qualify the individual to function in the role he is to play later on in society; that is to mould his character in such a way that it approximates the social character, that his desires coincide with the necessities of his social role.
253. Social conditions influence ideological phenomena through the medium of character; character, on the other hand, is not the result of passive adaptation to social conditions but of a dynamic adaptation on the basis of elements that either are biologically inherent in human nature or have become inherent as the result of historic evolution.
9. Society has not only a suppressing function- although it has that too- but it has also a creative function.
10. In the Northern European countries, from the sixteenth century on, man developed an obsessional craving to work which had been lacking in a free man before that period.
14. He has to eat and drink, and therefore he has to work; and this means he has to work under the particular conditions and in the ways that are determined for him by the kind of society into which he is born. Both factors, his need to live and the social system, in principle are unalterable by him as an individual, and they are the factors which determine the development of those other traits that show greater plasticity.
15. To feel completely alone and isolated leads to mental disintegration just as physical starvation leads to death.
This lack of relatedness to values, symbols, patterns, we may call moral aloneness and state that moral aloneness is as intolerable as the physical aloneness, or rather that physical aloneness becomes unbearable only if it implies also moral aloneness.
Religion and nationalism, as well as any custom and any belief however absurd and degrading, if it only connects the individual with others, are refuges from what man most dreads: isolation.
17. Unless he belonged somewhere, unless his life had some meaning and direction, he would feel like a particle of dust and be overcome by his individual insignificance.
Human nature is neither a biologically fixed and innate sum total of drives nor is it a lifeless shadow of cultural patterns to which it adapts itself smoothly; it is the product of human evolution but it also has certain inherent mechanisms and laws. There are certain factors in man's nature which are fixed and unchangeable: the necessity to satisfy the physiologically conditioned drives and the necessity to avoid isolation and moral aloneness.
18. Man, the more he gains freedom in the sense of emerging from the original oneness with man and nature and the more he becomes an 'individual', has no choice but to unite himself with the world in the spontaneity of love and productive work or else to seek a kind of security by such ties with the world as destroy his freedom and the integrity of his individual self.
19. The growing process of the emergence of the individual from his original ties, a process which we may call 'individuation', seems to have reached its peak in modern history in the centuries between the Reformation and the present.
24. Spontaneous relationship to man and nature, a relationship that connects the individual with the world without eliminating his individuality. This kind of relationship- the foremost expressions of which are love and productive work- are rooted in the integration and strength of the total personality and are therefore subject to the very limits that exist for the growth of the self.
39. The masses who did not share the wealth and power of the ruling group had lost the security of their former status and had become a shapeless mass, to be flattered or to be threatened-but always to be manipulated and exploited by those in power.
40. All human relationships were poisoned by this fierce life-and-death struggle for the maintenance of power and wealth. Solidarity with one's fellowmen- or at least with the members of one's own class- was replaced by a cynical detached attitude; other individuals were looked upon as 'objects' to be used and manipulated, or they were ruthlessly destroyed if it suited one's own ends.
49. A spirit of restlessness began to pervade life towards the end of the Middle Ages. The concept of time in the modern sense began to develop. Minutes became valuable. ... Too many holidays began to appear as a misfortune. Time was so valuable that one felt one should never spend it for any purpose which was not useful. Work became increasingly a supreme value.
52. The individual is freed from the bondage of economic and political ties. He also gains in positive freedom by the active and independent role which he has to play in the new system. But simultaneously he is freed from those ties which used to give him security and a feeling of belonging. Life has ceased to be lived in a closed world the centre of which was man; the world has become limitless and at the same time threatening. By losing his fixed place in a closed world man loses the answer to the meaning of his life; the result is that doubt has befallen him concerning himself and the aim of life. He is threatened by powerful supra-personal forces, capital and the market. His relationship to his fellow men, with everyone a potential competitor, has become hostile and estranged; he is free- that is, he is alone, isolated, threatened from all sides. Not having the wealth or the power which the Renaissance capitalist had, and also having lost the sense of unity with men and the universe, he is overwhelmed with a sense of his individual nothingness and helplessness.
67. The modern attempts to silence the doubts, whether they consist in a compulsive striving for success, in the belief that unlimited knowledge of facts can answer the quest for certainty, or in the submission to a leader who assumes the responsibility for 'certainty'- all these solutions can only eliminate the awareness of doubt. The doubt itself will not disappear as long as man does not overcome his isolation and as long as his place in the world has not become a meaningful one in terms of his human needs.
78. The individual has to be active in order to overcome his feeling of doubt and powerlessness. This kind of effort and activity is not the result of inner strength and self-confidence; it is a desperate escape from anxiety.
80. It seems that for some groups of medieval society work was enjoyed as a realization of productive ability; that many others worked because they had to and felt this necessity was conditioned by pressure from the outside. What was new in modern society was that men came to be driven to work not so much by external pressure but by an internal compulsion, which made them work as only a very strict master could have made people do in other societies.
There is no other period in history in which free men have given their energy so completely for the one purpose: work.
84. 'Conscience' is a slave driver, put into man by himself. It drives him to act according to wishes and aims which he believes to be his own, while they are actually the internalization of external social demands. It drives him with harshness and cruelty, forbidding him pleasure and happiness, making his whole life the atonement for some mysterious sin.
87. The social process, by determining the mode of life of the individual, that is, his relation to others and to work, moulds his character structure; new ideologies- religious, philosophical, or political- result from and appeal to this changed character structure and thus intensify, satisfy, and stabilize it; the newly formed character traits in their turn become important factors in further economic development and influence the social process; while originally they have developed asa reaction to the threat of new economic forces, they slowly become productive forces furthering and intensifying the new economic development.
90. Modern men become more independent, self-reliant, and critical, and he becomes more isolated, alone, and afraid.
We feel that freedom of speech is the last step in the march of victory of freedom. We forget that, although freedom of speech constitutes an important victory in the battle against old restraints, modern man is in a position where much of what 'he' thinks and says are the things that everybody else thinks and says; that he has not acquired the ability to think originally- that is, for himself- which alone gives meaning to his claim that nobody can interfere with the expression of his thoughts. Again, we are proud that in his conduct of life man has become free from external authorities, which tell him what to do and what not to do. We neglect the role of the anonymous authorities like public opinion and 'common sense', which are so powerful because of our profound readiness to conform to the expectations everybody has about ourselves and our equally profound fear of being different. In other words, we are fascinated by the growth of freedom from powers outside ourselves and are blinded to the fact of inner restraints, compulsions, and fears, which tend to undermine the meaning of the victories freedom has won against its traditional enemies. We therefore are prone to think that the problem of freedom is exclusively that of gaining still more freedom of the kind we have gained in the course of modern history, and to believe that the defence of freedom against such powers that deny such freedom is all that is necessary. We forget that, although each of the liberties which have been won must be defended with utmost vigour, the problem of freedom is not only a quantitative one, but a qualitative one; that we not only have to preserve and increase the traditional freedom, but that we have to gain a new kind of freedom, one which enables us to realize our own individual self, to have faith in this self and in life.
94. In the medieval system capital was the servant of man, but in the modern system it became his master. In the medieval world economic activities were a means to an end; the end was life itself, or the spiritual salvation of man. ... In capitalism economic activity, success, material gains, become ends in themselves. It becomes man's fate to contribute to the growth of the economic system, to amass capital, not for purposes of his own happiness or salvation, but as an end in itself.
In theological teaching of Lutherism and Calvinism, they had laid the ground for this development by breaking man's spiritual backbone, his feeling of dignity and pride, by teaching him that activity had to further aims outside of himself. ... of feeling his own self to be insignificant and of being ready to subordinate his life exclusively for purposes which were not his own.
96. While the principle of work for the sake of the accumulation of capital objectively is of enormous value for the progress of mankind, subjectively it has made man work for extra-personal ends, made him servant to the very machine he built, and thereby has given him a feeling of personal insignificance and powerlessness.
97. In any society the spirit of the whole culture is determined by the spirit of those groups that are most powerful in that society. This is so partly because these groups have the power to control the educational system, schools, church, press, theatre, and thereby to imbue the whole population with their own ideas; furthermore, these powerful groups carry so much prestige that the lower classes are more than ready to accept and imitate their values and to identify themselves psychologically.
100. Close observation shows that while the selfish person is always anxiously concerned with himself, he is never satisfied, is always restless, always driven by the fear of not getting enough, of missing something, of being deprived of something. He is filled with burning envy of anyone who might have more. If we observe still closer, especially the unconscious dynamics, we find that this type of person is basically not fond of himself, but deeply dislikes himself.
101. The 'self' in the interest of which modern man acts is the social self, a self which is essentially constituted by the role the individual is supposed to play and which in reality is merely the subjective disguise for the objective social function of man in society. Modern selfishness is the greed that is rooted in the frustration of the real self and whose object is the social self.
102. The word 'employer' contains the whole story; the owner of capital employs another human being as he 'employs' a machine. They both use each other for the pursuit of their economic interests; their relationship is one in which both are means to an end, both are instrumental to each other. It is not a relationship of two human beings who have any interest in the other outside of this mutual usefulness.
In contrast to a medieval artisan, the modern manufacturer is not primarily interested in what he produces; he produces essentially in order to make a profit from his capital investment.
103. Man does not only sell commodities, he sells himself and feels himself to be a commodity. ... They have to have a 'personality' if they are to sell their products or services. This personality should be pleasing, but besides that its possessor should meet a number of other requirements; he should have energy, initiative, this, that, or the other ,as his particular position may require. ... If there is no use for the qualities a person offers, he has none; just as an unsaleable commodity is valueless though it might have tis use value. Thus, the self-confidence, the 'feeling of self', is merely an indication of what others think of the person. It is not he who is convinced of his value regardless of popularity and his success on the market. If he is sought after, he is somebody; if he is not popular, he is simply nobody.
104. A man's clothes or his house were parts of his self just as much as his body. The less he felt he was being somebody the more he needed to have possessions. If the individual had no property or lost it, he was lacking an important part of his 'self' and to a certain extent was not considered to be a full=fledged person, either by others or by himself.
111. These methods of dulling the capacity for critical thinking are more dangerous to our democracy than many of the open attacks against it, and more immoral- in terms of human integrity- than the indecent literature, publication of which we publish.
113. To have a job-regardless of what kind of a job it is- seems to many all they could want of life and something they should be grateful for.
114. Kierkegaard describes the helpless individual torn and tormented by doubts, overwhelmed by the feeling of aloneness and insignificance. Nietzsche visualizes the approaching nihilism which was to become manifest in Nazism and paints a picture of a 'superman' as the negation of the insignificant, directionless individual he saw in reality.
However, this feeling of individual isolation and powerlessness as it has been expressed by these writers and as it is felt by many so-called neurotic people, is nothing the average normal person is aware of. It is too frightening for that. It is covered over by the daily routine of his activities, byt he assurance and approval he finds in his private or social relations, by success in business, by any number of distractions, by 'having fun', 'making contacts', 'going places'. But whistling in the dark does not bring light. Aloneness, fear, and bewilderment remain.
122. Masochistic strivings: These people show a marked dependence on powers outside themselves, on other people, or institutions, or nature. They tend not to assert themselves, not to do what they want, but to submit to the factual or alleged orders of these outside forces. Often they are quite incapable of experiencing the feeling 'I want' or 'I am'. Life, as a whole, is felt by them as something overwhelmingly powerful, which they cannot master or control.
123. There are others who say things which antagonize those whom they love or on whom they are dependent, although actually they feel friendly towards them and did not intend to say those things. With such people, it almost seems as if they were following advice given them by an enemy to behave in such a way as to be most detrimental to themselves.
134. The other side is the attempt to become a part of a bigger and more powerful whole outside of oneself, to submerge and participate in it. This power can be a person, an institution, God, the nation, conscience, or a psychic compulsion. By becoming part of a power which is felt as unshakably strong, eternal, and glamorous, one participates in its strength and glory. One surrenders one's own self and renounces all strength and pride connected with it, one loses one's integrity as an individual and surrenders freedom; but one gains a new security and a new pride in the participation in the power in which one submerges.
136. Symbiosis, in this psychological sense, means the union of one individual self with another self in such a way as to make each lose the integrity of tis own self and to make them completely dependent on each other. The sadistic person needs his object just as much as the masochistic needs his.
It is always the inability to stand the aloneness of one's individual self that leads to the drive to enter into a symbiotic relationship with someone else.
144. Instead of overt authority, 'anonymous' authority reigns. It is disguised as common sense, science, psychic health, normality, public opinion. It does not demand anything except the self-evident. It seems to use no pressure but only mild persuasion.
Anonymous authority is more effective than overt authority, since one never suspects that there is any order which one is expected to follow. In external authority it is clear that there is an order and who gives it; one can fight against the authority, and in this fight personal independence and moral courage can develop. But whereas in internalized authority the command, though an internal one, remains visible, in anonymous authority both command and commander have become invisible. It is like being fired at by an invisible enemy. There is nobody and nothing to fight back against.
154. Sadism aims at incorporation of the object; destructiveness at its removal. Sadism tends to strengthen the atomized individual by the domination over others.
155. In most cases the destructive impulses, however, are rationalized in such a way that at least a few other people or a whole social group share in the rationalization and thus make it appear to be 'realistic' to the member of such a group.
158. Destructiveness is the outcome of unlived life.
160. To put it briefly, the individual ceases to be himself; he adopts entirely the kind of personality offered to him by cultural patterns; and he therefore becomes exactly as all others are and as they expect him to be. The discrepancy between 'I' and the world disappears and with it the conscious fear of aloneness and powerlessness.
The price one pays, however, is high; it is the loss of one self.
167. In all these illustrations of pseudo thinking, the problem is whether the thought is the result of one's own thinking, that is, of one's own activity; the problem is not whether or not the contents of the thought are right.
168. The decisive point is not what is thought but how it is thought. The thought that is the result of active thinking is always new and original; original, not necessarily in the sense tat others have not thought it before, but always in the sense that the person who thinks, has used thinking asa tool to discover something new in the world outside or inside himself. Rationalizations are essentially lacking this quality of discovering and uncovering; they only confirm the emotional prejudice existing in oneself. Rationalizing is not a tool for penetration of reality but a post-factum attempt to harmonize one's own wishes with existing reality.
172. A great number of our decisions are not really our own but are suggested to us from the outside; we have succeeded in persuading ourselves that it is we who have made the decision, whereas we have actually conformed with expectations of others, driven by the fear of isolation and by more direct threats to our life, freedom, and comfort.
173. In watching the phenomenon of human decisions, one is struck by the extent to which people are mistaken in taking as 'their' decision what in effect is submission to convention, duty, or simple pressure. It almost seems that 'original' decision is a comparatively rare phenomenon in a society which supposedly makes individual decision the cornerstone of its existence.
174. Every repression eliminates parts of one's real self and enforces the substitution of a pseudo feeling for the one which has been repressed.
177. The loss of the self and its substitution by a pseudo self leave the individual in an intense state of insecurity. He is obsessed by doubt since, being essentially a reflex of other people's expectation of him, he has in a measure lost his identity. In order to overcome the panic resulting from such loss of identity, he is compelled to conform, to seek his identity by continuous approval and recognition by others. Since he does not know who he is, at least the others will know- if he acts according to their expectation.
181. It seems that nothing is more difficult for the average man to bear than the feeling of not being identified with a larger group.
207. The right to express our thoughts, however, means something only if we are able to have thoughts of our own.
210. In many instances the person is aware of merely making a gesture; in most cases, however, he loses that awareness and thereby the ability to discriminate between the pseudo feeling and spontaneous friendliness.
211. In our society emotions in general are discouraged. While there can be no doubt that any creative thinking- as well as any other creative activity- is inseparably linked with emotion, it has become an ideal to think and to live without emotions. To be 'emotional' has become synonymous with being unsound or unbalanced. By the acceptance of this standard the individual has become greatly weakened; his thinking is impoverished and flattened. On the other hand, since emotions cannot be completely killed, they must have their existence totally apart from the intellectual side of the personality; the result is the cheap and insincere sentimentality with which movies and popular songs feed millions of emotion-starved customers.
213. Some of the educational methods used today which in effect further discourage original thinking. One is the emphasis on knowledge of facts, or I should rather say on information. The pathetic superstition prevails that by knowing more and more facts one arrives at knowledge of reality. Hundreds of scattered and unrelated facts are dumped into the heads of students; their time and energy are taken up by learning more and more facts so that there is little left for thinking. To be sure, thinking without a knowledge of facts remains empty and factitious; but 'information' alone can be just as much of an obstacle to thinking as the lack of it.
215. The individual's greatest strength is based on the maximum of integration of his personality, and that means also on the maximum of transparence to himself. 'Know thyself' is one of the fundamental commands that aim at human strength and happiness.
217. All our energy is spent for the purpose of getting what we want, and most people never question the premise of this activity: that they know their true wants. They do not stop to think whether the aims they are pursuing are something they themselves want. In school they want to have good marks, as adults they want to be more and more successful, to make more money, to have more prestige, to buy a better car, to go places, and so on. Yet when they do stop to think in the midst of all this frantic activity, this question may come to their minds: 'If I do get this new job, if I get this better car, if I can take this trip- what then? What is the use of it all? Is it really I who wants all this? Am I not running after some goal which is supposed to make me happy and which eludes me as soon as I have reached it?' These questions, when they arise, are frightening, for they question the very basis on which man's whole activity is built, his knowledge of what he wants. People tend, therefore, to get rid as soon as possible of these disturbing thoughts. They feel that they have been bothered by these questions because they were tired or depressed- and they go on in the pursuit of the aims which they believe are their own.
218. Modern man lives under the illusion that he knows what he wants, while he ctually wants what he is supposed to want. In order to accept this it is necessary to realize that to know what one really wants is not comparatively easy, as most people think, but one of the most difficult problems any human being has to solve.
219. The loss of the self has increased the necessity to conform, for it results in a profound doubt of one's own identity.
I am 'as you desire me'.
By conforming with the expectations of others, by not being different, these doubts about one's own identity are silenced and a certain security is gained. However, the price paid is high. Giving up spontaneity and individuality results in a thwarting of life. Psychologically the automaton, while being alive biologically, is dead emotionally and mentally. While he goes through the motions of living, his life runs through his hands like sand.
222. This freedom man can attain by the realization of his self, by being himself.
The realization of the self is accomplished not only by an act of thinking but also by the realization of man's total personality, by the active expression of his emotional and intellectual potentialities.
Positive freedom consists in the spontaneous activity of the total, integrated personality.
223. One premise for this spontaneity is the acceptance of the total personality and the elimination of the split between 'reason' and 'nature'; for only if man does not repress essential parts of his self, only if he has become transparent to himself, and only if the different spheres of life have reached a fundamental integration, is spontaneous activity possible.
Spontaneity with thinking, feeling, and acting, is the expression of selves and not of an automaton. These individuals are mostly known to us as artists. ... Certain philosophers and scientists have to be called artists too, while others are as different from them as an old-fashioned photographer from a creative painter.
225. Spontaneous activity is the one way in which man can overcome the terror of aloneness without sacrificing the integrity of his self; for in the spontaneous realization of the self man unites himself anew with the world- with man, nature, and himself.
Love is the foremost component of such spontaneity; not love as the dissolution of the self in another person, not love as the possession of another person, but love as spontaneous affirmation of others, as the union of the individual with others on the basis of the preservation of the individual self. The dynamic quality of love lies in this very polarity: that it springs from the need of overcoming separateness, that it leads to oneness-and yet that individuality is not eliminated.
Work is the other component; not work as a compulsive activity in order to escape aloneness, not work as a relationship to nature which is partly one of dominating her, partly one of worship of and enslavement by the ery products of man's hands, but work as creation in which man becomes one with nature in the act of creation. What holds true of love and work holds true of all spontaneous action, whether it be the realization of sensuous pleasure or participation in the political life of the community. It affirms the individuality of the self and at the same time it unites the self with man and nature. The basic dichotomy that is inherent in freedom- the birth of individuality and the pain of aloneness- is dissolved on a higher plane by man's spontaneous action.
226. We produce not for a concrete satisfaction but for the abstract purpose of selling our commodity; we feel that we can acquire everything material or immaterial by buying it, and thus things become ours independently of any creative effort of our own in relation to them. In the same way we regard our personal qualities and the result of our efforts as commodities that can be sold for money, prestige, and power. The emphasis thus shifts from the present satisfaction of creative activity to the value of the finished product. Thereby man misses the only satisfaction that can give him real happiness- the experience of the activity of the present moment- and chases after a phantom that leaves him disappointed as soon as he believes he has caught it- the illusory happiness called success.
If the individual realizes his self by spontaneous activity and thus relates himself to the world, he ceases to be an isolated atom; he and the world become part of one structuralized whole; he has his rightful place, and thereby his doubt concerning himself and the meaning of life disappears. This doubt sprang from his separateness and from the thwarting of life; when he can live, neither compulsively nor automatically but spontaneously, the doubt disappears. He is aware of himself as an active and creative individual and recognizes that there is only one meaning of life: the at of living itself.
229. All genuine ideals have one thing in common: they express the desire for something which is not yet accomplished but which is desirable for the purposes of the growth and happiness of the individual.
We know that poverty, intimidation, isolation, are directed against life; that everything that serves freedom and furthers the courage and strength to be oneself is for life.
233. The cultural and political crisis of our day is not due to the fact that there is too much individualism but that what we believe to be individualism has become an empty shell. The victory of freedom is possible only if democracy develops into a society in which the individual, his growth and happiness, is the aim and purpose of culture, in which life does not need any justification in success or anything else, and in which the individual is not subordinated to or manipulated by any power outside himself, be it the State or the economic machine; finally, a society in which his conscience and ideals are not internalisation of external demands, but are really his and express the aims that result from the peculiarity of his self.
235. Today the vast majority of the people not only have no control over the whole of the economic machine, but they have little chance to develop genuine initiative and spontaneity at the particular job they are doing. They are 'employed', and nothing more is expected from them than that they do what they are told.
All that matters is that the opportunity for genuine activity be restored to the individual.
245. The social function of education is to qualify the individual to function in the role he is to play later on in society; that is to mould his character in such a way that it approximates the social character, that his desires coincide with the necessities of his social role.
253. Social conditions influence ideological phenomena through the medium of character; character, on the other hand, is not the result of passive adaptation to social conditions but of a dynamic adaptation on the basis of elements that either are biologically inherent in human nature or have become inherent as the result of historic evolution.
Friday, November 22, 2013
Sigmund Freud- Beyond the Pleasure Principle: 2013. 11. 22
9. First the chief causal factor seemed to lie in the element of surprise, in the fright; and secondly that an injury or wound sustained at the same time generally tended to prevent the occurrence of the neurosis.
Apprehension/ angst denotes a certain condition as of expectation of danger and preparation for it, even though it be an unknown one.
Fear requires a definite object of which one is afraid.
Fright is the name of the condition to which one is reduced if one encounters a danger without being prepared for it. It lays stress on the element of surprise.
32. Unconscious mental processes are in themselves 'timeless'. They are not arranged chronologically, time alters nothing in them, nor can the idea of time be applied to them.
37. The apprehensive preparation, together with the over-charging of the receptive systems, represents the last line of defence against stimuli.
These dreams are attempts at restoring control of the stimuli by developing apprehension, the pretermission of which caused the traumatic neurosis.
43. Novelty is always the necessary condition of enjoyment. However, in the case of children, it is evident that the repetition, the rediscovery of the identity, is itself a source of pleasure.
82. Life instincts have much more to do with our inner perception, since they make their appearance as disturbers of the peace, and continually bring along with them states of tension the resolution of which is experienced as pleasure; while the death instincts seem to fulfill their function unostentatiously. The pleasure principle seems directly to subserve the death instincts; it keeps guard, of course, also over the external stimuli, which are regarded as dangers by both kinds of instincts, but in particular over the inner increases in stimulation which have for their aim the complication of the task of living.
Apprehension/ angst denotes a certain condition as of expectation of danger and preparation for it, even though it be an unknown one.
Fear requires a definite object of which one is afraid.
Fright is the name of the condition to which one is reduced if one encounters a danger without being prepared for it. It lays stress on the element of surprise.
32. Unconscious mental processes are in themselves 'timeless'. They are not arranged chronologically, time alters nothing in them, nor can the idea of time be applied to them.
37. The apprehensive preparation, together with the over-charging of the receptive systems, represents the last line of defence against stimuli.
These dreams are attempts at restoring control of the stimuli by developing apprehension, the pretermission of which caused the traumatic neurosis.
43. Novelty is always the necessary condition of enjoyment. However, in the case of children, it is evident that the repetition, the rediscovery of the identity, is itself a source of pleasure.
82. Life instincts have much more to do with our inner perception, since they make their appearance as disturbers of the peace, and continually bring along with them states of tension the resolution of which is experienced as pleasure; while the death instincts seem to fulfill their function unostentatiously. The pleasure principle seems directly to subserve the death instincts; it keeps guard, of course, also over the external stimuli, which are regarded as dangers by both kinds of instincts, but in particular over the inner increases in stimulation which have for their aim the complication of the task of living.
Monday, November 18, 2013
Harvey and Marilyn Diamond- Fit For Life: 2013. 11. 16
20. Laughter, hope, faith and love are primary health ingredients.
Traditional and holistic medicine: diet, exercise, sunshine, rest, massage, and prayer
Ch 3. Natural Body Cycle (pg. 52)
4am to noon- elimination (of body wastes and food debris)
noon to 8 pm- appropriation (eating and digestion)
8pm to 4am- assimilation (absorption and use)
Ch 5. Principles of High-Water-Content Food
Eat vegetable and fruits 70% of meal.
72. Mineral water is not ideal for the human body, because it contains inorganic minerals that human body can neither use nor precipitate out. These inorganic minerals tend to hook up with cholesterol in the system and form a thick plaque in the arteries. Distilled water does not have this effect.
It is very debilitating to drink water with a meal.
Ch 6. The Principle of Proper Food Combining
76. The human body is not designed to digest more than one concentrated food in the stomach at the same time, and any food that is not a fruit or vegetable is concentrated.
(No protein + carb(grain))
Ch 7. The Principle of Correct Fruit Consumption
Waiting time to eat after eating:
Salad/ raw vege- 2 hrs
Properly combined meal without flesh- 3 hrs
Properly combined with flesh- 4 hrs
Improperly combined meal- 8 hrs
100. Don't gulp juice down. Because it is fragmented, you should take but a mouthful at a time and let it mix with your saliva before swallowing it.
Ch 9. Protein
128. It is not necessary to eat complete proteins at every meal or even every day.
129. Many fruits and vegetables contain most of the amino acids: carrots, bananas, brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, corn, cucumber, eggplant, kale, okra, pea, potato, summer squash, sweet potato, tomato, nuts, sunflower and sesame seeds, peanuts, and beans.
133. Minimizing negative effects of meat:
1. Seek a good source. Some of the chemicals given to animals destined for slaughter are dangerous. These can include penicillin, tetracycline, sewage-sludge pellets decontaminated with cesium-137, radioactive nuclear waste, fattening agents, a host of other chemicals and antibiotics to prime the animal for sale. Not to mention the chemical treatment some meat receives when it is routinely dipped in sodium sulfate to decrease the stench of decay and turn it red rather than the gray of dead flesh. Some cattle farmers have fed their steers hundreds of pounds of cement dust to get their weight up for sale. A consumer group, hearing of this ploy, complained to the FDA to halt it, and the FDA's statement after investigation was that since there has been no indication of harm ot humans by ingesting some cement dust, the practice can continue until some harm is proved. Can you imagine trying to be healthy while eating cement dust?
There are places that guarantee that their beef and chicken are naturally grazed and raised with absolutely no chemical additives at all. Seek out these sources.
2. Try to eat flesh no more than once a day, preferably later in the evening.
137. Unless eggs are eaten raw, the amino acids are coagulated by heat and thereby lost. Even if they are eaten raw, eggs are laid by hens that are fed arsenic to ill parasites and stimulate egg production, and you ingest some of that virulent poison. Also eggs contain much sulfur, which puts a heavy strain on the liver and kidneys.
Ch 10. Dairy Products
143. Casein in milk hardens and adheres to the lining of the intestines and prevents the absorption of nutrients into the body, resulting in lethargy. Also the by-products of milk digestion leave a great deal of toxic mucus in the body. It's very acidic, and some of it is stored in the body until it can be dealt with at a later time.
149. Half a cup of raw nuts a day is plenty for the average person.
Ch 11. Exercise
151. You don't have to exercise yourself into a state of exhaustion; that will only waste energy. But everyday you should see to it that your heart is exercised. An aerobics exercise is one that stimulates the respiratory and circulatory systems. This way fresh oxygenated blood reaches all areas of your body, a must if you want your body to operate efficiently.
152. Aerobic exercises: swimming, tennis, jumping rope, light jogging, bike riding, brisk walking, aerobic classes.
Rebounding is a terrific aerobics exercise that people of all ages can enjoy, without the risks to the bone structure that come from jogging on pavement, or to the lower back from strenuous aerobic calisthenics. It strengthens and tones every cell of the body because it works against the gravitational pull.
20 minute brisk walk is a minimum aerobic exercise to be performed every day.
The ideal time to do the exercise is early in the morning. The air is freshest then, and so is your body.
154. Few people realize how much nourishment our bodies obtain from the air we breathe. Fresh, clean air is a most valuable life force, along with sunshine, which is the source of all life on this planet. Make a point of supplying yourself with both of these important elements of health as often as you can.
A walk in the woods or at the seashore, or a hike in the country..
155. It is essential to have a window open when you sleep. Even if you must add extra blanket for warmth, fresh air circulating while you sleep is invaluable. The body can be more effective during the assimilation and elimination cycles if it is given fresh air while it works and is not forced to breathe air that is laden with toxins it has just eliminated.
Ch 12. You are what you think you are.
158. To be healthy we must start to believe we are healthy!
Part 2- The Program
194. Breakfast Guidelines:
1. Start your day with fresh fruit juice if you desire. (8-14 ounces)
2. Throughout the morning have pieces of fruit as you feel hungry.
3. Have a minimum of 2 servings of fruit in any 3 hour period.
4. Your maximum fruit intake should be governed by your needs. Have as much as you desire. Do not undereat or overeat fruit!
5. Eat melons before other fruit.
6. Eat bananas when you are particularly hungry and are craving heavier food.
207. Never cook avocado, cucumber, and particularly tomato. Tomatoes become very acid when cooked and acidify your whole system.
212. Avoid overeating nuts, and never eat them roasted. Roasted nuts are terribly acidifying to the sytem. Raw nuts are an excellent source of natural oil.
240. Never combine avocado with protein, only with vegetable and carbs.
Traditional and holistic medicine: diet, exercise, sunshine, rest, massage, and prayer
Ch 3. Natural Body Cycle (pg. 52)
4am to noon- elimination (of body wastes and food debris)
noon to 8 pm- appropriation (eating and digestion)
8pm to 4am- assimilation (absorption and use)
Ch 5. Principles of High-Water-Content Food
Eat vegetable and fruits 70% of meal.
72. Mineral water is not ideal for the human body, because it contains inorganic minerals that human body can neither use nor precipitate out. These inorganic minerals tend to hook up with cholesterol in the system and form a thick plaque in the arteries. Distilled water does not have this effect.
It is very debilitating to drink water with a meal.
Ch 6. The Principle of Proper Food Combining
76. The human body is not designed to digest more than one concentrated food in the stomach at the same time, and any food that is not a fruit or vegetable is concentrated.
(No protein + carb(grain))
Ch 7. The Principle of Correct Fruit Consumption
Waiting time to eat after eating:
Salad/ raw vege- 2 hrs
Properly combined meal without flesh- 3 hrs
Properly combined with flesh- 4 hrs
Improperly combined meal- 8 hrs
100. Don't gulp juice down. Because it is fragmented, you should take but a mouthful at a time and let it mix with your saliva before swallowing it.
Ch 9. Protein
128. It is not necessary to eat complete proteins at every meal or even every day.
129. Many fruits and vegetables contain most of the amino acids: carrots, bananas, brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, corn, cucumber, eggplant, kale, okra, pea, potato, summer squash, sweet potato, tomato, nuts, sunflower and sesame seeds, peanuts, and beans.
133. Minimizing negative effects of meat:
1. Seek a good source. Some of the chemicals given to animals destined for slaughter are dangerous. These can include penicillin, tetracycline, sewage-sludge pellets decontaminated with cesium-137, radioactive nuclear waste, fattening agents, a host of other chemicals and antibiotics to prime the animal for sale. Not to mention the chemical treatment some meat receives when it is routinely dipped in sodium sulfate to decrease the stench of decay and turn it red rather than the gray of dead flesh. Some cattle farmers have fed their steers hundreds of pounds of cement dust to get their weight up for sale. A consumer group, hearing of this ploy, complained to the FDA to halt it, and the FDA's statement after investigation was that since there has been no indication of harm ot humans by ingesting some cement dust, the practice can continue until some harm is proved. Can you imagine trying to be healthy while eating cement dust?
There are places that guarantee that their beef and chicken are naturally grazed and raised with absolutely no chemical additives at all. Seek out these sources.
2. Try to eat flesh no more than once a day, preferably later in the evening.
137. Unless eggs are eaten raw, the amino acids are coagulated by heat and thereby lost. Even if they are eaten raw, eggs are laid by hens that are fed arsenic to ill parasites and stimulate egg production, and you ingest some of that virulent poison. Also eggs contain much sulfur, which puts a heavy strain on the liver and kidneys.
Ch 10. Dairy Products
143. Casein in milk hardens and adheres to the lining of the intestines and prevents the absorption of nutrients into the body, resulting in lethargy. Also the by-products of milk digestion leave a great deal of toxic mucus in the body. It's very acidic, and some of it is stored in the body until it can be dealt with at a later time.
149. Half a cup of raw nuts a day is plenty for the average person.
Ch 11. Exercise
151. You don't have to exercise yourself into a state of exhaustion; that will only waste energy. But everyday you should see to it that your heart is exercised. An aerobics exercise is one that stimulates the respiratory and circulatory systems. This way fresh oxygenated blood reaches all areas of your body, a must if you want your body to operate efficiently.
152. Aerobic exercises: swimming, tennis, jumping rope, light jogging, bike riding, brisk walking, aerobic classes.
Rebounding is a terrific aerobics exercise that people of all ages can enjoy, without the risks to the bone structure that come from jogging on pavement, or to the lower back from strenuous aerobic calisthenics. It strengthens and tones every cell of the body because it works against the gravitational pull.
20 minute brisk walk is a minimum aerobic exercise to be performed every day.
The ideal time to do the exercise is early in the morning. The air is freshest then, and so is your body.
154. Few people realize how much nourishment our bodies obtain from the air we breathe. Fresh, clean air is a most valuable life force, along with sunshine, which is the source of all life on this planet. Make a point of supplying yourself with both of these important elements of health as often as you can.
A walk in the woods or at the seashore, or a hike in the country..
155. It is essential to have a window open when you sleep. Even if you must add extra blanket for warmth, fresh air circulating while you sleep is invaluable. The body can be more effective during the assimilation and elimination cycles if it is given fresh air while it works and is not forced to breathe air that is laden with toxins it has just eliminated.
Ch 12. You are what you think you are.
158. To be healthy we must start to believe we are healthy!
Part 2- The Program
194. Breakfast Guidelines:
1. Start your day with fresh fruit juice if you desire. (8-14 ounces)
2. Throughout the morning have pieces of fruit as you feel hungry.
3. Have a minimum of 2 servings of fruit in any 3 hour period.
4. Your maximum fruit intake should be governed by your needs. Have as much as you desire. Do not undereat or overeat fruit!
5. Eat melons before other fruit.
6. Eat bananas when you are particularly hungry and are craving heavier food.
207. Never cook avocado, cucumber, and particularly tomato. Tomatoes become very acid when cooked and acidify your whole system.
212. Avoid overeating nuts, and never eat them roasted. Roasted nuts are terribly acidifying to the sytem. Raw nuts are an excellent source of natural oil.
240. Never combine avocado with protein, only with vegetable and carbs.
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Carlos Castaneda- Journey to Ixtlan: 2013. 11. 13
viii. For a sorcerer, the world of everyday life is not real, or out there, as we believe it is. For a sorcerer, reality, or the world we all know, is only a description.
xi. A warrior proceeds strategically.
If one wants to stop our fellow men, one must always be outside the circle that presses them. That way one can always direct the pressure.
xii. Fright never injures anyone. What injures the spirit is having someone always on your back, beating you, telling you what to do and what not to do.
xiii. 'Stopping the world' was indeed an appropriate rendition of certain states of awareness in which the reality of everyday life is altered because the flow of interpretation, which ordinarily runs uninterruptedly, has been stopped by a set of circumstances alien to that flow.
8. People hardly ever realize that we can cut anything from our lives, any time, just like that.
A man can get agreements from everything around him.
12. The fact that I know whether I am a Yaqui or not does not make it personal history. Only when someone else knows that does it become personal history. And I assure you that no one will ever know that for sure.
15. What's wrong with people knowing me? - What's wrong is that once they know you, you are an affair taken for granted and from that moment on you won't be able to break the tie of their thoughts. I personally like the ultimate freedom of being unknown. No one knows me with steadfast certainty, the way people know you, for instance.
Lies are lies only if you have personal history.
17. We only have two alternatives: We either take everything for sure and real, or we don't. If we follow the first, we end up bored to death with ourselves and with the world. If we follow the second and erase personal history, we create a fog around us, a very exciting and mysterious state in which nobody knows where the rabbit will pop out, not even ourselves.
19. He said that I had to curl my fingers gently as I walked so I would keep my attention on the trail and the surroundings.
His idea was that by forcing the hands into a specific position one was capable of greater stamina and greater awareness.
21. He pointed out that the course of my life I had not ever finished anything because of that sense of disproportionate importance that I attached to myself.
23. As long as you feel that you are the most important thing in the world you cannot really appreciate the world around you. You are like a horse with blinders, all you see is yourself apart from everything else.
34. The thing to do when you're impatient, is to turn to your left and ask advice from your death. An immense amount of pettiness is dropped if your death makes a gesture to you, or if you catch a glimpse of it, or if you just have the feeling that your companion is there watching you.
Death is the only wise adviser that we have. Whenever you feel, as you always do, that everything is going wrong and you're about to be annihilated, turn to your death and ask if that is so. Your death will tell you that you're wrong; that nothing really matters outside its touch.
35. The sheer joy of just moving around without attaching any intellectual purpose to it.
39. He said that the only thing that counted was action, acting instead of talking.
When a man decides to do something he must go all the way, but he must take responsibility for what he does. No matter what he does, he must know first why he is doing it, and then he must proceed with his actions without having doubts or remorse about them.
40. You feel that you are immortal, and the decisions of an immortal man can be canceled or regretted or doubted. In a world where death is the hunter, my friend, there is not time for regrets or doubts. There is only time for decisions.
43. To assume the responsibility of one's decisions means that one is ready to die for them.
In a world where death is the hunter there are no small or big decisions. There are only decisions that we make in the face of our inevitable death.
53. In order to be a hunter one must be in perfect balance with everything else, otherwise hunting would become a meaningless chore. For instance, today we took a little snake. I had to apologize to her for cutting her life off so suddenly and so definitely; I did what I did knowing that my own life will also be cut off someday in very much the same fashion, suddenly and definitely. So, all in all, we and the snakes are on a par. One of them fed us today.
58. That I was not fighting my own battles but the battles of some unknown people. That I did not want to learn about plants or about hunting or about anything. And that his world of precise acts and feelings and decisions was infinitely more effective than the blundering idiocy I called 'my life'.
66. It makes no difference to hide if everyone knows that you are hiding. Your problems right now stem from that. When you are hiding, everyone knows that you are hiding, and when you are not, you are available for everyone to take a poke at you.
69. You lost her because you were accessible; you were always within her reach and your life was a routine one. The art of a hunter is to become inaccessible. In the case of that blond girl it would've meant that you had to become a hunter and meet her sparingly. Not the way you did. You stayed with her day after day, until the only feeling that remained was boredom.
To be inaccessible means that you touch the world around you sparingly. You don't use and squeeze people until they have shriveled to nothing, especially the people you love.
To be unavailable means that you deliberately avoid exhausting yourself and others.
70. The hunter is inaccessible because he's not squeezing his world out of shape. He taps it lightly, stays for as long as he needs to, and then swiftly moves away leaving hardly a mark.
79. A good hunter changes his ways as often as he needs.
He must know that there are powers on this earth that guide men and animals and everything that is living.
80. I am trying my best. - No. I disagree. You're not trying your best. You just said that because it sounds good to you; in fact, you've been saying the same thing about everything you do. You've been trying your best for years to no avail. Something must be done to remedy that.
For you the world is weird because if you're not bored with it you're at odds with it. For me the world is weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious, unfathomable; my interest has been to convince you that you must assume responsibility for being here, in this marvelous world, in this marvelous desert, in this marvelous time. I wanted to convince you that you are going to be here for only a short while, in fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it.
81. If you don't think your life is going to last forever, what are you waiting for?
82. The change I'm taking about never takes place by degrees; it happens suddenly. And you are not preparing yourself for that sudden act that will bring a total change.
83. There are some people who are very careful about the nature of their acts. Their happiness is to act with the full knowledge that they don't have time; therefore, their acts have a peculiar power.
Acts have power. Especially when the person acting knows that those acts are his last battle.
84. Focus your attention on the link between you and your death, without remorse or sadness or worrying. Focus your attention on the fact you don't have time and let your acts flow accordingly. Let each of your acts be your last battle on earth. Only under those conditions will your acts have their rightful power. Otherwise they will be, for as long as you live, the acts of a timid man.
Only a fool would fail to notice the advantage a hunter has over his fellow men. A hunter gives his last battle its due respect.
91. The difference between a hunter and a warrior is that a warrior is on his way to power, while a hunter knows nothing or very little about it.
98. Dreaming is as serious as seeing or dying or any other thing in this awesome, mysterious world. A man hunting for power has almost no limits in his dreaming.
99. Every time you look at anything in your dreams it changes shape. The trick in learning to set up dreaming is obviously not just to look at things but to sustain the sight of them. Dreaming is real when one has succeeded in bringing everything into focus. Then there is no difference between what you do when you sleep and what you do when you are not sleeping.
108. He said that if I really felt that my spirit was distorted I should simply fix it- purge it, make it perfect- because there was no other task in our entire lives which was more worthwhile. Not to fix the spirit was to seek death, and that was the same as to seek nothing, since death was going to overtake us regardless of anything.
109. I had been roaming for such a long time that I had become callous to pain and sadness, except on certain occasions when I would realize my aloneness and my helplessness.
110. It is of no use to be sad and complain and feel justified in doing so, believing that someone is always doing something to us. Nobody is doing anything to anybody, much less to a warrior.
118. It makes no difference whatsoever whether it was a lion or my pants. Your feelings at that moment were what counted.
120. A warrior is a hunter. He calculates everything. That's control. But once his calculations are over, he acts. He lets go. That's abandon. A warrior is not a leaf at the mercy of the wind. No one can push him; no one can make him do things against himself or against his better judgment.
168. A warrior is impeccable when he trusts his personal power regardless of whether it is small or enormous.
180. 'Not doing what I know how to do' is the key to power. In the case of looking at a tree, what I knew how to do was to focus immediately on the foliage. The shadows of the leaves or the spaces in between the leaves were never my concern. His last admonitions were to start focusing on the shadows of the leaves on one single branch and then eventually work my way to the whole tree, and not to let my eyes go back to the leaves, because the first deliberate step to storing personal power wast o allow the body to 'not-do'.
184. The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.
198. By reducing the world, I had enlarged it.
200. Instead of telling yourself the truth, that you are ugly and rotten and inadequate, you tell yourself that you are the complete opposite, knowing that you are lying and that you are absolutely beyond hope. It may hook you to another doing and then you may realize that both doings are lies, unreal, and that to hinge yourself to either one is a waste of time, because the only thing that is real is the being in you that is going to die. To arrive at that being is the not-doing of the self.
xi. A warrior proceeds strategically.
If one wants to stop our fellow men, one must always be outside the circle that presses them. That way one can always direct the pressure.
xii. Fright never injures anyone. What injures the spirit is having someone always on your back, beating you, telling you what to do and what not to do.
xiii. 'Stopping the world' was indeed an appropriate rendition of certain states of awareness in which the reality of everyday life is altered because the flow of interpretation, which ordinarily runs uninterruptedly, has been stopped by a set of circumstances alien to that flow.
8. People hardly ever realize that we can cut anything from our lives, any time, just like that.
A man can get agreements from everything around him.
12. The fact that I know whether I am a Yaqui or not does not make it personal history. Only when someone else knows that does it become personal history. And I assure you that no one will ever know that for sure.
15. What's wrong with people knowing me? - What's wrong is that once they know you, you are an affair taken for granted and from that moment on you won't be able to break the tie of their thoughts. I personally like the ultimate freedom of being unknown. No one knows me with steadfast certainty, the way people know you, for instance.
Lies are lies only if you have personal history.
17. We only have two alternatives: We either take everything for sure and real, or we don't. If we follow the first, we end up bored to death with ourselves and with the world. If we follow the second and erase personal history, we create a fog around us, a very exciting and mysterious state in which nobody knows where the rabbit will pop out, not even ourselves.
19. He said that I had to curl my fingers gently as I walked so I would keep my attention on the trail and the surroundings.
His idea was that by forcing the hands into a specific position one was capable of greater stamina and greater awareness.
21. He pointed out that the course of my life I had not ever finished anything because of that sense of disproportionate importance that I attached to myself.
23. As long as you feel that you are the most important thing in the world you cannot really appreciate the world around you. You are like a horse with blinders, all you see is yourself apart from everything else.
34. The thing to do when you're impatient, is to turn to your left and ask advice from your death. An immense amount of pettiness is dropped if your death makes a gesture to you, or if you catch a glimpse of it, or if you just have the feeling that your companion is there watching you.
Death is the only wise adviser that we have. Whenever you feel, as you always do, that everything is going wrong and you're about to be annihilated, turn to your death and ask if that is so. Your death will tell you that you're wrong; that nothing really matters outside its touch.
35. The sheer joy of just moving around without attaching any intellectual purpose to it.
39. He said that the only thing that counted was action, acting instead of talking.
When a man decides to do something he must go all the way, but he must take responsibility for what he does. No matter what he does, he must know first why he is doing it, and then he must proceed with his actions without having doubts or remorse about them.
40. You feel that you are immortal, and the decisions of an immortal man can be canceled or regretted or doubted. In a world where death is the hunter, my friend, there is not time for regrets or doubts. There is only time for decisions.
43. To assume the responsibility of one's decisions means that one is ready to die for them.
In a world where death is the hunter there are no small or big decisions. There are only decisions that we make in the face of our inevitable death.
53. In order to be a hunter one must be in perfect balance with everything else, otherwise hunting would become a meaningless chore. For instance, today we took a little snake. I had to apologize to her for cutting her life off so suddenly and so definitely; I did what I did knowing that my own life will also be cut off someday in very much the same fashion, suddenly and definitely. So, all in all, we and the snakes are on a par. One of them fed us today.
58. That I was not fighting my own battles but the battles of some unknown people. That I did not want to learn about plants or about hunting or about anything. And that his world of precise acts and feelings and decisions was infinitely more effective than the blundering idiocy I called 'my life'.
66. It makes no difference to hide if everyone knows that you are hiding. Your problems right now stem from that. When you are hiding, everyone knows that you are hiding, and when you are not, you are available for everyone to take a poke at you.
69. You lost her because you were accessible; you were always within her reach and your life was a routine one. The art of a hunter is to become inaccessible. In the case of that blond girl it would've meant that you had to become a hunter and meet her sparingly. Not the way you did. You stayed with her day after day, until the only feeling that remained was boredom.
To be inaccessible means that you touch the world around you sparingly. You don't use and squeeze people until they have shriveled to nothing, especially the people you love.
To be unavailable means that you deliberately avoid exhausting yourself and others.
70. The hunter is inaccessible because he's not squeezing his world out of shape. He taps it lightly, stays for as long as he needs to, and then swiftly moves away leaving hardly a mark.
79. A good hunter changes his ways as often as he needs.
He must know that there are powers on this earth that guide men and animals and everything that is living.
80. I am trying my best. - No. I disagree. You're not trying your best. You just said that because it sounds good to you; in fact, you've been saying the same thing about everything you do. You've been trying your best for years to no avail. Something must be done to remedy that.
For you the world is weird because if you're not bored with it you're at odds with it. For me the world is weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious, unfathomable; my interest has been to convince you that you must assume responsibility for being here, in this marvelous world, in this marvelous desert, in this marvelous time. I wanted to convince you that you are going to be here for only a short while, in fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it.
81. If you don't think your life is going to last forever, what are you waiting for?
82. The change I'm taking about never takes place by degrees; it happens suddenly. And you are not preparing yourself for that sudden act that will bring a total change.
83. There are some people who are very careful about the nature of their acts. Their happiness is to act with the full knowledge that they don't have time; therefore, their acts have a peculiar power.
Acts have power. Especially when the person acting knows that those acts are his last battle.
84. Focus your attention on the link between you and your death, without remorse or sadness or worrying. Focus your attention on the fact you don't have time and let your acts flow accordingly. Let each of your acts be your last battle on earth. Only under those conditions will your acts have their rightful power. Otherwise they will be, for as long as you live, the acts of a timid man.
Only a fool would fail to notice the advantage a hunter has over his fellow men. A hunter gives his last battle its due respect.
91. The difference between a hunter and a warrior is that a warrior is on his way to power, while a hunter knows nothing or very little about it.
98. Dreaming is as serious as seeing or dying or any other thing in this awesome, mysterious world. A man hunting for power has almost no limits in his dreaming.
99. Every time you look at anything in your dreams it changes shape. The trick in learning to set up dreaming is obviously not just to look at things but to sustain the sight of them. Dreaming is real when one has succeeded in bringing everything into focus. Then there is no difference between what you do when you sleep and what you do when you are not sleeping.
108. He said that if I really felt that my spirit was distorted I should simply fix it- purge it, make it perfect- because there was no other task in our entire lives which was more worthwhile. Not to fix the spirit was to seek death, and that was the same as to seek nothing, since death was going to overtake us regardless of anything.
109. I had been roaming for such a long time that I had become callous to pain and sadness, except on certain occasions when I would realize my aloneness and my helplessness.
110. It is of no use to be sad and complain and feel justified in doing so, believing that someone is always doing something to us. Nobody is doing anything to anybody, much less to a warrior.
118. It makes no difference whatsoever whether it was a lion or my pants. Your feelings at that moment were what counted.
120. A warrior is a hunter. He calculates everything. That's control. But once his calculations are over, he acts. He lets go. That's abandon. A warrior is not a leaf at the mercy of the wind. No one can push him; no one can make him do things against himself or against his better judgment.
168. A warrior is impeccable when he trusts his personal power regardless of whether it is small or enormous.
180. 'Not doing what I know how to do' is the key to power. In the case of looking at a tree, what I knew how to do was to focus immediately on the foliage. The shadows of the leaves or the spaces in between the leaves were never my concern. His last admonitions were to start focusing on the shadows of the leaves on one single branch and then eventually work my way to the whole tree, and not to let my eyes go back to the leaves, because the first deliberate step to storing personal power wast o allow the body to 'not-do'.
184. The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.
198. By reducing the world, I had enlarged it.
200. Instead of telling yourself the truth, that you are ugly and rotten and inadequate, you tell yourself that you are the complete opposite, knowing that you are lying and that you are absolutely beyond hope. It may hook you to another doing and then you may realize that both doings are lies, unreal, and that to hinge yourself to either one is a waste of time, because the only thing that is real is the being in you that is going to die. To arrive at that being is the not-doing of the self.
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Gandhi- The Story of My Experiments with Truth: 2013. 8. 20
XII. What I want to achieve is self-realization, to see God face to face, to attain Moksha.
XIII. Truth is the sovereign principle. This truth is not only truthfulness in word, but truthfulness in thought also, and not only the relative truth of our conception, but the Absolute Truth, the Eternal Principle, that is God.
16. A reformer cannot afford to have close intimacy with him whom he seeks to reform. True friendship is an identity of souls rarely to be found in this world. Only between like natures can friendship be altogether worthy and enduring. Friends react on one another. Hence in friendship there is very little scope for reform.
75. Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God is Within You, Ruskin's Unto this Last.
123. The very insistence on truth has taught me to appreciate the beauty of compromise.
129. It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honored by the humiliation of their fellow beings.
145. Such service can have no meaning unless one takes pleasure in it. When it is done for show or for fear of public opinion, it stunts the man and crushes his spirit. Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served. But all other pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service which is rendered in a spirit of joy.
151. We win justice quickest by rendering justice to the other party.
161. It is idle to adjudicate upon the right and wrong of incidents that have already happened. It is useful to understand them and, if possible, to learn a lesson from them for the future. It is difficult to say for certain how a particular man would act in a particular set of circumstances. We can also see that judging a man from his outward act is no more than a doubtful inference, inasmuch as it is not based on sufficient data.
176. Let no one think that it is impossible because it is difficult.
209. I think it is wrong to expect certainties in this world, where all else but God that is Truth is an uncertainty., All that appears and happens about and around us is uncertain, transient.
218. All good action is bound to bear fruit in the end.
230. Man and his deed are two distinct things. Whereas a good deed should call forth approbation and a wicked deed disapprobation, the doer of the deed, whether good or wicked, always deserves respect or pity as the case may be. 'Hate the sin and not the sinner.'
249. To allow a man to believe a thing which one has not fully verified is to compromise truth.
250. The teachings of Ruskin's Unto this Last:
1. That the good of the individual is contained in the good of all.
2. That a lawyer's work has the same value as the barber's, inasmuch as all have the same right of earning their livelihood from their work.
3. That a life of labor, the life of the tiller of the soil and the handicraftsman, is the life worth living.
254. I have found by experience that man makes his plans to be often upset by God, but at the same time where the ultimate goal is the search of truth, no matter how a man's plans are frustrated, the issue is never injurious and often better than anticipated.
332. This was not the first time I had been faced with such a trial. On all such occasions God has sent help at the last moment.
364. Civility does not here mean the mere outward gentleness of speech cultivated for the occasion, but an inborn gentleness and desire to do the opponent good.
381. You can wake a man only if he is really asleep; no effort that you may make will produce any effect upon him if he is merely pretending sleep.
XIII. Truth is the sovereign principle. This truth is not only truthfulness in word, but truthfulness in thought also, and not only the relative truth of our conception, but the Absolute Truth, the Eternal Principle, that is God.
16. A reformer cannot afford to have close intimacy with him whom he seeks to reform. True friendship is an identity of souls rarely to be found in this world. Only between like natures can friendship be altogether worthy and enduring. Friends react on one another. Hence in friendship there is very little scope for reform.
75. Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God is Within You, Ruskin's Unto this Last.
123. The very insistence on truth has taught me to appreciate the beauty of compromise.
129. It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honored by the humiliation of their fellow beings.
145. Such service can have no meaning unless one takes pleasure in it. When it is done for show or for fear of public opinion, it stunts the man and crushes his spirit. Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served. But all other pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service which is rendered in a spirit of joy.
151. We win justice quickest by rendering justice to the other party.
161. It is idle to adjudicate upon the right and wrong of incidents that have already happened. It is useful to understand them and, if possible, to learn a lesson from them for the future. It is difficult to say for certain how a particular man would act in a particular set of circumstances. We can also see that judging a man from his outward act is no more than a doubtful inference, inasmuch as it is not based on sufficient data.
176. Let no one think that it is impossible because it is difficult.
209. I think it is wrong to expect certainties in this world, where all else but God that is Truth is an uncertainty., All that appears and happens about and around us is uncertain, transient.
218. All good action is bound to bear fruit in the end.
230. Man and his deed are two distinct things. Whereas a good deed should call forth approbation and a wicked deed disapprobation, the doer of the deed, whether good or wicked, always deserves respect or pity as the case may be. 'Hate the sin and not the sinner.'
249. To allow a man to believe a thing which one has not fully verified is to compromise truth.
250. The teachings of Ruskin's Unto this Last:
1. That the good of the individual is contained in the good of all.
2. That a lawyer's work has the same value as the barber's, inasmuch as all have the same right of earning their livelihood from their work.
3. That a life of labor, the life of the tiller of the soil and the handicraftsman, is the life worth living.
254. I have found by experience that man makes his plans to be often upset by God, but at the same time where the ultimate goal is the search of truth, no matter how a man's plans are frustrated, the issue is never injurious and often better than anticipated.
332. This was not the first time I had been faced with such a trial. On all such occasions God has sent help at the last moment.
364. Civility does not here mean the mere outward gentleness of speech cultivated for the occasion, but an inborn gentleness and desire to do the opponent good.
381. You can wake a man only if he is really asleep; no effort that you may make will produce any effect upon him if he is merely pretending sleep.
Friday, August 9, 2013
Benjamin Franklin- Autobiography: 2013. 8. 9
3. Cotton Mather's Essays to Do Good.
4. Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
90. 1. Temperance- Eat not to dulness. Drink not to elevation.
2. Silence- Speak not but what may benefit others or your self. Avoid trifling conversation.
3. Order- Let all your things have their places. Leat each part of your business have its time.
4. Resolution- Resolve to perform what you ought. Perform without fail what you resolve.
5. Frugality- Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself. Waste nothing.
6. Industry- Lose no time- Be always employed in something useful. Cut off all unnecessary actions.
7. Sincerity- Use no hurtful deceit. Think innocently and justly; and if you speak, speak accordingly.
8. Justice- Wrong none, by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
9. Moderation- Avoid extremes. Forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
10. Cleanliness- Tolerate no uncleanness in body, clothes or habitation.
11. Tranquility- Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
12. Chastity- Rarely use venery but for health or offspring. Never to dulness, weakness or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.
13. Humility- Imitate Jesus and Socrates.
100. It is hard for an empty sack to stand upright.
105. He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.
122. I advised you to apply to all those whom you know will give something; next to those whom you are uncertain whether they will give any thing or not; and show them the List of those who have given: and lastly, do not neglect those who you are sure will give nothing; for in some of them you may be mistaken.
4. Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
90. 1. Temperance- Eat not to dulness. Drink not to elevation.
2. Silence- Speak not but what may benefit others or your self. Avoid trifling conversation.
3. Order- Let all your things have their places. Leat each part of your business have its time.
4. Resolution- Resolve to perform what you ought. Perform without fail what you resolve.
5. Frugality- Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself. Waste nothing.
6. Industry- Lose no time- Be always employed in something useful. Cut off all unnecessary actions.
7. Sincerity- Use no hurtful deceit. Think innocently and justly; and if you speak, speak accordingly.
8. Justice- Wrong none, by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
9. Moderation- Avoid extremes. Forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
10. Cleanliness- Tolerate no uncleanness in body, clothes or habitation.
11. Tranquility- Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
12. Chastity- Rarely use venery but for health or offspring. Never to dulness, weakness or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.
13. Humility- Imitate Jesus and Socrates.
100. It is hard for an empty sack to stand upright.
105. He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.
122. I advised you to apply to all those whom you know will give something; next to those whom you are uncertain whether they will give any thing or not; and show them the List of those who have given: and lastly, do not neglect those who you are sure will give nothing; for in some of them you may be mistaken.
Friday, August 2, 2013
C. G. Jung- Memories, Dreams, Reflections: 2013. 8. 2
40. In God's omnipotence He will see to it that nothing really evil comes of such tests of courage. If one fulfills the will of God one can be sure of going the right way.
It was obedience which brought me grace, and after that experience I knew what God's grace was. One must be utterly abandoned to God; nothing matters but fulfilling His will.
47. I must take the responsibility, it is up to me how my fate turns out. I had been confronted with a problem to which I had to find the answer. I knew that I had to find the answer out of my deepest self, that I was alone before God, and that God alone asked me these terrible things.
103. I realized that one gets nowhere unless one talks to people about the things they know.
113. In the end, man is an event which cannot judge itself, but, for better or worse, is left to the judgment of others.
117. Therapy only really begins after the investigation of that wholly personal story. If I know the secret story, I have a key to the treatment. The doctor's task is to find out how to gain that knowledge. - association test, dream interpretation, long and patient human contact. In therapy the problem is always the whole person, never the symptom alone. We must ask questions which challenge the whole personality.
123. For one who commits such a crime (murder) destroys his own soul.
131. Psychotherapy and analysis are as varied as are human individuals.
He must guard against falling into any specific, routine approach. In general one must guard against theoretical assumptions.
In dealing with individuals, only individual understanding will do. We need a different language for every patient.
I confront the patient as one human being to another. Analyst and patient sit facing one another, eye to eye; the doctor has something to say, but so has the patient.
132. It is equally important that he should understand himself. Only if the doctor knows how to cope with himself and his own problems will he be able to teach the patient to do the same.
133. When important matters are at stake, it makes all the difference whether the doctor sees himself as a part of the drama, or cloaks himself in his authority.
We must always be asking ourselves: How is our unconscious experiencing this situation(therapy)? We must therefore observe our dreams, pay the closest attention and study ourselves just as carefully as we do the patient.
137. The kernel of all jealousy is lack of love.
141. Resistances- especially when they are stubborn- merit attention, for they are often warnings which must not be overlooked. The cure may e a poison that not everyone can take, or an operation which, when it is contraindicated, can prove fatal.
166. People who know nothing about nature are of course neurotic, for they are not adapted to reality. They are too naive, like children, and it is necessary to tell them the facts of life, so to speak- to make it plain to them that they are human beings like all others.
One form of life cannot simply be abandoned unless it is exchanged for another.
186. Give away all that thou hast, then shalt thou receive.
192. I took great care to try to understand every single image, every item of my psychic inventory, and to classify them scientifically and, above all, to realize them in actual life. That is what we usually neglect to do. We allow the images to rise up, and maybe we wonder about them, but that is all. We do not take the trouble to understand them, let alone draw ethical conclusions from them. This stopping-short conjures up the negative effects of the unconscious. It is equally a grave mistake to think that it is enough to gain some understanding of the images and that knowledge can here make a halt. Insight into them must be converted into an ethical obligation. Not to so is to fall prey to the power principle, and this produces dangerous effects which are destructive not only to others but even to the knower. The images of the unconscious place a great responsibility upon a man. Failure to understand them, or a shirking of ethical responsibility, deprives him of his wholeness and imposes a painful fragmentariness on his life.
197. Uniform development exists, at most, only at the beginning; later, everything points toward the center. This insight gave me stability, and gradually my inner peace returned.
215. I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.
Blind acceptance never leads to a solution.
233. It often seems as if there were an impersonal karma within a family, which is passed on from parents to children. It has always seemed to me that I had to answer questions which fate had posed to my forefathers, and which had not yet been answered, or as if I had to complete, or perhaps continue, things which previous ages had left unfinished.
A collective problem, if not recognized as such, always appears as a personal problem, and in individual cases may give the impression that something is out of order in the realm of the personal psyche.
234. The cause of disturbance is not to be sought in the personal surroundings, but rather in the collective situation.
236. It is precisely the loss of connection with the past, our uprootedness which has given rise to the 'discontents' of civilization.
We rush impetuously into novelty, driven by a mounting sense of insufficiency, dissatisfaction, and restlessness. We no longer live on what we have, but on promises, no longer in the light of the present day, but in the darkness of the future, which, we expect, will at last bring the proper sunrise. We refuse to recognize that everything better is purchased at the price of something worse.
248. They are always seeking something. What are they seeking? The whites always want something. They are always uneasy and restless.
256. On determinism: This act we usually ascribe to the Creator alone, without considering that in so doing we view life as a machine calculated down to the last detail, which ,along with the human psyche, runs on senselessly, obeying foreknown and predetermined rules. In such a cheerless clockwork fantasy there is no drama of man, world and God.
Man is indispensable for the completion of creation; that, in fact, he himself is the second creator of the world, who alone has given to the world its objective existence.
269. The moment in which light comes is God. That moment brings redemption, release. To say that the sun is God is to blur and forget the archetypal experience of that moment.
The longing for light is the longing for consciousness.
275. I studiously avoided all so-called 'holy men'. I did so because I had to make do with my own truth, not accept from others what I could not attain on my own.
I must shape my life out of myself- out of what my inner being tells me, or what nature brings to me.
277. Whenever we give up, leave behind, and forget too much, there is always the danger that the things we have neglected will return with added force.
291. I am this bundle of what has been, and what has been accomplished.
297. Illness has brought acceptance of the conditions of existence as I see them and understand them, acceptance of my own nature, as I happen to be. At the beginning of the illness I had the feeling that there was something wrong with my attitude, and that I was to some extent responsible for the mishap. But when one follows the path of individuation, when one lives one's own life, one must take mistakes into the bargain; life would not be complete without them. There is no guarantee-not for a single moment-that we will not fall into error or stumble into deadly peril. We may think there is a sure road. But that would be the road of death. Then nothing happens any longer. Anyone who takes the sure road is as good as dead.
311. Only here, in life on earth, where the opposites clash together, can the general level of consciousness be raised.
318. The meaning of my existence is that life has addressed a question to me.
325. Self-knowledge is the road to knowledge of God.
Only if we know that the thing which truly matters is the infinite can we avoid fixing our interest upon futilities, and upon all kinds of goals which are not of real importance.
The more a man lays stress on false possessions, and the less sensitivity he has for what is essential, the less satisfying is his life. He feels limited because he has limited aims, and the result is envy and jealousy.
341. Everything through which the 'other will' is expressed proceeds from man-his thinking, his words, his images, and even his limitations. Consequently he has the tendency to refer everything to himself, when he begins to think in clumsy psychological terms, and decides that everything proceeds out of his intentions and out of himself. With childlike naivete he assumes that he knows all his own reaches and knows what he is 'in himself'. Yet all the while he is fatally handicapped by the weakness of his consciousness and the corresponding fear of the unconscious. Therefore he is utterly unable to separate what he has carefully reasoned out from what has spontaneously flowed to him from another source.
343. In fact, he will be at odds with himself, and will find great difficulty in uniting his own multiplicity for purposes of common action. Even if he is outwardly protected by the social forms of the intermediary stage, he will have no defense against his inner multiplicity. The disunion within himself may cause him to give up, to lapse into identity with his surroundings.
They are the neurotics, who necessarily play hide-and-seek with others as well as with themselves, without being able to take the game really seriously. As a rule they end by surrendering their individual goal to their craving for collective conformity- a procedure which all the opinions, beliefs, and ideals of their environment encourage.
356. Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.
Companionship thrives only when each individual remembers his individuality and does not identify himself with others.
One must sense that he lives in a world which in some respects is mysterious; that things happen and can be experienced which remain inexplicable.
395. Individuation means becoming a single, homogenous being, and in so far as 'individuality' embraces our innermost, last, and incomparable uniqueness, it also implies becoming one's own self.
It was obedience which brought me grace, and after that experience I knew what God's grace was. One must be utterly abandoned to God; nothing matters but fulfilling His will.
47. I must take the responsibility, it is up to me how my fate turns out. I had been confronted with a problem to which I had to find the answer. I knew that I had to find the answer out of my deepest self, that I was alone before God, and that God alone asked me these terrible things.
103. I realized that one gets nowhere unless one talks to people about the things they know.
113. In the end, man is an event which cannot judge itself, but, for better or worse, is left to the judgment of others.
117. Therapy only really begins after the investigation of that wholly personal story. If I know the secret story, I have a key to the treatment. The doctor's task is to find out how to gain that knowledge. - association test, dream interpretation, long and patient human contact. In therapy the problem is always the whole person, never the symptom alone. We must ask questions which challenge the whole personality.
123. For one who commits such a crime (murder) destroys his own soul.
131. Psychotherapy and analysis are as varied as are human individuals.
He must guard against falling into any specific, routine approach. In general one must guard against theoretical assumptions.
In dealing with individuals, only individual understanding will do. We need a different language for every patient.
I confront the patient as one human being to another. Analyst and patient sit facing one another, eye to eye; the doctor has something to say, but so has the patient.
132. It is equally important that he should understand himself. Only if the doctor knows how to cope with himself and his own problems will he be able to teach the patient to do the same.
133. When important matters are at stake, it makes all the difference whether the doctor sees himself as a part of the drama, or cloaks himself in his authority.
We must always be asking ourselves: How is our unconscious experiencing this situation(therapy)? We must therefore observe our dreams, pay the closest attention and study ourselves just as carefully as we do the patient.
137. The kernel of all jealousy is lack of love.
141. Resistances- especially when they are stubborn- merit attention, for they are often warnings which must not be overlooked. The cure may e a poison that not everyone can take, or an operation which, when it is contraindicated, can prove fatal.
166. People who know nothing about nature are of course neurotic, for they are not adapted to reality. They are too naive, like children, and it is necessary to tell them the facts of life, so to speak- to make it plain to them that they are human beings like all others.
One form of life cannot simply be abandoned unless it is exchanged for another.
186. Give away all that thou hast, then shalt thou receive.
192. I took great care to try to understand every single image, every item of my psychic inventory, and to classify them scientifically and, above all, to realize them in actual life. That is what we usually neglect to do. We allow the images to rise up, and maybe we wonder about them, but that is all. We do not take the trouble to understand them, let alone draw ethical conclusions from them. This stopping-short conjures up the negative effects of the unconscious. It is equally a grave mistake to think that it is enough to gain some understanding of the images and that knowledge can here make a halt. Insight into them must be converted into an ethical obligation. Not to so is to fall prey to the power principle, and this produces dangerous effects which are destructive not only to others but even to the knower. The images of the unconscious place a great responsibility upon a man. Failure to understand them, or a shirking of ethical responsibility, deprives him of his wholeness and imposes a painful fragmentariness on his life.
197. Uniform development exists, at most, only at the beginning; later, everything points toward the center. This insight gave me stability, and gradually my inner peace returned.
215. I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.
Blind acceptance never leads to a solution.
233. It often seems as if there were an impersonal karma within a family, which is passed on from parents to children. It has always seemed to me that I had to answer questions which fate had posed to my forefathers, and which had not yet been answered, or as if I had to complete, or perhaps continue, things which previous ages had left unfinished.
A collective problem, if not recognized as such, always appears as a personal problem, and in individual cases may give the impression that something is out of order in the realm of the personal psyche.
234. The cause of disturbance is not to be sought in the personal surroundings, but rather in the collective situation.
236. It is precisely the loss of connection with the past, our uprootedness which has given rise to the 'discontents' of civilization.
We rush impetuously into novelty, driven by a mounting sense of insufficiency, dissatisfaction, and restlessness. We no longer live on what we have, but on promises, no longer in the light of the present day, but in the darkness of the future, which, we expect, will at last bring the proper sunrise. We refuse to recognize that everything better is purchased at the price of something worse.
248. They are always seeking something. What are they seeking? The whites always want something. They are always uneasy and restless.
256. On determinism: This act we usually ascribe to the Creator alone, without considering that in so doing we view life as a machine calculated down to the last detail, which ,along with the human psyche, runs on senselessly, obeying foreknown and predetermined rules. In such a cheerless clockwork fantasy there is no drama of man, world and God.
Man is indispensable for the completion of creation; that, in fact, he himself is the second creator of the world, who alone has given to the world its objective existence.
269. The moment in which light comes is God. That moment brings redemption, release. To say that the sun is God is to blur and forget the archetypal experience of that moment.
The longing for light is the longing for consciousness.
275. I studiously avoided all so-called 'holy men'. I did so because I had to make do with my own truth, not accept from others what I could not attain on my own.
I must shape my life out of myself- out of what my inner being tells me, or what nature brings to me.
277. Whenever we give up, leave behind, and forget too much, there is always the danger that the things we have neglected will return with added force.
291. I am this bundle of what has been, and what has been accomplished.
297. Illness has brought acceptance of the conditions of existence as I see them and understand them, acceptance of my own nature, as I happen to be. At the beginning of the illness I had the feeling that there was something wrong with my attitude, and that I was to some extent responsible for the mishap. But when one follows the path of individuation, when one lives one's own life, one must take mistakes into the bargain; life would not be complete without them. There is no guarantee-not for a single moment-that we will not fall into error or stumble into deadly peril. We may think there is a sure road. But that would be the road of death. Then nothing happens any longer. Anyone who takes the sure road is as good as dead.
311. Only here, in life on earth, where the opposites clash together, can the general level of consciousness be raised.
318. The meaning of my existence is that life has addressed a question to me.
325. Self-knowledge is the road to knowledge of God.
Only if we know that the thing which truly matters is the infinite can we avoid fixing our interest upon futilities, and upon all kinds of goals which are not of real importance.
The more a man lays stress on false possessions, and the less sensitivity he has for what is essential, the less satisfying is his life. He feels limited because he has limited aims, and the result is envy and jealousy.
341. Everything through which the 'other will' is expressed proceeds from man-his thinking, his words, his images, and even his limitations. Consequently he has the tendency to refer everything to himself, when he begins to think in clumsy psychological terms, and decides that everything proceeds out of his intentions and out of himself. With childlike naivete he assumes that he knows all his own reaches and knows what he is 'in himself'. Yet all the while he is fatally handicapped by the weakness of his consciousness and the corresponding fear of the unconscious. Therefore he is utterly unable to separate what he has carefully reasoned out from what has spontaneously flowed to him from another source.
343. In fact, he will be at odds with himself, and will find great difficulty in uniting his own multiplicity for purposes of common action. Even if he is outwardly protected by the social forms of the intermediary stage, he will have no defense against his inner multiplicity. The disunion within himself may cause him to give up, to lapse into identity with his surroundings.
They are the neurotics, who necessarily play hide-and-seek with others as well as with themselves, without being able to take the game really seriously. As a rule they end by surrendering their individual goal to their craving for collective conformity- a procedure which all the opinions, beliefs, and ideals of their environment encourage.
356. Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.
Companionship thrives only when each individual remembers his individuality and does not identify himself with others.
One must sense that he lives in a world which in some respects is mysterious; that things happen and can be experienced which remain inexplicable.
395. Individuation means becoming a single, homogenous being, and in so far as 'individuality' embraces our innermost, last, and incomparable uniqueness, it also implies becoming one's own self.
Saturday, July 20, 2013
Helen Keller- The Story of My Life: 2013. 7.20
ix. Whenever people write they cannot help putting something of their personality-their very selves- into what they say.
After all, what does it matter what we are? The important thing is what we are able to do.
7. They tell me I walked the day I was a year old. My mother had just taken me out of the bath-tub and was holding me in her lap, when I was suddenly attracted by the flickering shadows of leaves that danced in the sunlight on the smooth floor. I slipped from my mother's lap and almost ran toward them. The impulse gone, I fell down and cried for her to take me up in her arms.
60. My work was practice, practice, practice. Discouragement and weariness cast me down frequently; but the next moment the thought that I should soon be at home and show my loved ones what I had accomplished, spurred me on, and I eagerly looked forward to their pleasure in my achievement.
89. In a word, every study had its obstacles. Sometimes I lost all courage and betrayed my feelings in a way I am ashamed to remember.
97. I used to have time to think, to reflect, my mind and I. We would sit together of an evening and listen to the inner melodies of the spirit, which one hears only in leisure moments when the words of some loved poet touch a deep, sweet chord in the soul that until then had been silent.
One goes to college to learn, it seems, not to think. When one enters the portals of learning, one leaves the dearest pleasures- solitude, books and imagination- outside with the whispering pines. I suppose I ought to find some comfort in the thought that I am laying up treasures for future enjoyment, but I am improvident enough to prefer present joy to hoarding riches against a rainy day.
115. German puts strength before beauty, and truth before convention, both in life and in literature.
129. Is it not true, then, that my life with all its limitations touches at many points the life of the World Beautiful? Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.
195. The eyes of the mind are stronger, more penetrating, and more reliable than our physical eyes. We can see a lot of things with a little common-sense light to aid our perceptions.
After all, what does it matter what we are? The important thing is what we are able to do.
7. They tell me I walked the day I was a year old. My mother had just taken me out of the bath-tub and was holding me in her lap, when I was suddenly attracted by the flickering shadows of leaves that danced in the sunlight on the smooth floor. I slipped from my mother's lap and almost ran toward them. The impulse gone, I fell down and cried for her to take me up in her arms.
60. My work was practice, practice, practice. Discouragement and weariness cast me down frequently; but the next moment the thought that I should soon be at home and show my loved ones what I had accomplished, spurred me on, and I eagerly looked forward to their pleasure in my achievement.
89. In a word, every study had its obstacles. Sometimes I lost all courage and betrayed my feelings in a way I am ashamed to remember.
97. I used to have time to think, to reflect, my mind and I. We would sit together of an evening and listen to the inner melodies of the spirit, which one hears only in leisure moments when the words of some loved poet touch a deep, sweet chord in the soul that until then had been silent.
One goes to college to learn, it seems, not to think. When one enters the portals of learning, one leaves the dearest pleasures- solitude, books and imagination- outside with the whispering pines. I suppose I ought to find some comfort in the thought that I am laying up treasures for future enjoyment, but I am improvident enough to prefer present joy to hoarding riches against a rainy day.
115. German puts strength before beauty, and truth before convention, both in life and in literature.
129. Is it not true, then, that my life with all its limitations touches at many points the life of the World Beautiful? Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.
195. The eyes of the mind are stronger, more penetrating, and more reliable than our physical eyes. We can see a lot of things with a little common-sense light to aid our perceptions.
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