Lessons
Have found attending to avoiding the negative feedback habit quite helpful. It was a trap I used to fall into a great deal I now realise. Yet another upbringing legacy: flowing from my mother’s relentless focus on what was wrong or could go wrong.
Going beyond that, learning to not take on other people’s emotions (including reactions to your belief about what other people think) is a difficult, but rewarding lesson. On which matter …
Donald: I loved Sarah, Charles, it was mine that love, I owned it. Even Sarah didn’t have the right to take it away. I can love who I want.
Charles: But Sarah thought you were pathetic.
Donald: That was her business, not mine. You are what you love, not what loves you. I decided that a long time ago.
From Adaptation, which I watched Wednesday night because my housemate Nick had borrowed it. Fine film. The above passage particularly resonated with me.
To become different from what we are, we much has some awareness of what we are. Whether this being different results in dissimulation or a real change of heart, it cannot be realised without self-awareness. Yet, it is remarkable that the very people who are most self-dissatisfied, who crave most for a new identity, have the least self-awareness. They have turned away from an unwanted self and, hence, never had a good look at it. The result is that most dissatisfied people can neither dissimulate nor attain a real change of heart. They are transparent and their unwanted qualities persist through all attempts at self-dramatization and self-transformation. It is the lack of self-awareness which renders us transparent. The soul that knows itself is opaque. Bruce Lee, Tao of Jeet Kune Do, page 205.
Finished Bruce Lee’s book on Wednesday. Excellent martial arts text plus, as one can see, a bit more.
Going beyond that, learning to not take on other people’s emotions (including reactions to your belief about what other people think) is a difficult, but rewarding lesson. On which matter …
Donald: I loved Sarah, Charles, it was mine that love, I owned it. Even Sarah didn’t have the right to take it away. I can love who I want.
Charles: But Sarah thought you were pathetic.
Donald: That was her business, not mine. You are what you love, not what loves you. I decided that a long time ago.
From Adaptation, which I watched Wednesday night because my housemate Nick had borrowed it. Fine film. The above passage particularly resonated with me.
To become different from what we are, we much has some awareness of what we are. Whether this being different results in dissimulation or a real change of heart, it cannot be realised without self-awareness. Yet, it is remarkable that the very people who are most self-dissatisfied, who crave most for a new identity, have the least self-awareness. They have turned away from an unwanted self and, hence, never had a good look at it. The result is that most dissatisfied people can neither dissimulate nor attain a real change of heart. They are transparent and their unwanted qualities persist through all attempts at self-dramatization and self-transformation. It is the lack of self-awareness which renders us transparent. The soul that knows itself is opaque. Bruce Lee, Tao of Jeet Kune Do, page 205.
Finished Bruce Lee’s book on Wednesday. Excellent martial arts text plus, as one can see, a bit more.