From d59e75f153016646a01ec7347fdcd00459ee387a Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Matt Vogel Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2023 22:10:11 -0400 Subject: [PATCH] content --- content/Meaning in Life.md | 50 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++ content/dating outside architecture.md | 3 +- content/index.md | 5 +-- 3 files changed, 55 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) create mode 100644 content/Meaning in Life.md diff --git a/content/Meaning in Life.md b/content/Meaning in Life.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000000000..571e8e887c616 --- /dev/null +++ b/content/Meaning in Life.md @@ -0,0 +1,50 @@ +--- +title: Meaning in Life +date: 2021-01-17 +status: seedlings +tags: + - writing + - religion + - spirituality + - life +--- + +Either God is not omniscient/all good or he's not all powerful take your pick. That's how suffering is justified. + +Here's what I think: I think that there is a grand design, a needle's path that does its best to minimize suffering and provides meaning and joy to all lives. I also believe we as people have the option to ignore that path and forge our own, less optimal one. We ***have*** to be allowed to do that. Without free will faith is *meaningless*. God or the higher power, he wants us to be happy but he don't *control* us, that's not benevolence that's not what he wants for his children. He wants us to be kind, and caring, and funny, and happy but those things only mean anything if we find them ourselves. + +That's not to say that every bad thing, every painful moment, is our **individual** fault. That bad things happen because we stray from the "path of the light" or some crock like that. It's just what happens with a multivariable system. The larger it gets, the more variables there are, the less every action is free from influence. + +Think about causality, everything happens for a reason. I'm not talking about a **Reason** as in a grand design but a reason as in the unbroken chain of causality. Pool balls bouncing off the bumpers creating the infinite complexity of reality. + +So where does that leave us? In a boundlessly uncontrollable random world where our own actions, even the most well intentioned, can still lead to ruin? + +Yes + +But that shouldn't demoralize you because if others can have that much of an impact on us than **We** can have that much of an impact on **Others**. + +It's no different than flattening the curve. The world will never be a perfectly balanced watch with everyone on their perfectly blissful loops but the struggle, the attempt to bring some semblance of joy into this world has an **affect**. + +So what do we do? We *try*. We try to be kind, and understanding, and joyful. We try to think of the whole just as much as ourselves. + +
+ +> [!quote] And that’s how you go on. You lay laughter over the dark parts. The more dark parts, the more you have to laugh. With defiance, with abandon, with hysteria, any way you can. +> +>Laini Taylor + +### Notes: + +The world doesn't care. That's not to put down the world or the people in it but more about understanding that the machinations of your own mind have no purchase outside of it. + +It took me a very long time to grasp how *"everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story"*. We're all just words on paper.. we need to be careful what stories we tell ourselves. + +If you want to read the tea leaves, fine; if it brings you some peace I would never infringe on that but it doesn't mean it has any bearing on the world around you. +Nobody exists on purpose, nobody belongs anywhere, every one is going to die. + +I love you + +In a world like that love is a radical act because if nothing we do matters than all that matters is what we do, especially to each other, for it reveals who we truly are. From cold random meanlessness comes meaning + +In the same way that your heart feels and your mind thinks you are the instrument with which the universe cares. If you choose to care then the universe cares if you Don't then it doesn't + diff --git a/content/dating outside architecture.md b/content/dating outside architecture.md index 400a5017b45c9..4f69c7959eedf 100644 --- a/content/dating outside architecture.md +++ b/content/dating outside architecture.md @@ -23,4 +23,5 @@ And then on top of it looking around and seeing people start relationships and g Cut to 2020 covid hits and I'm immediately let go and there's sort of an understanding that no architecture firms are hiring they're not going to be hiring for a long time and for the first time in ever I had no way to move forward. Nothing I could do would improve my chances of moving forward I just had to sit and evaluate and obsess and find something else to value beyond professional prowess -I think when time didn't mean anything that's when it really hit me in the face that it *did* mean something not that I was wasting mine but not using it in a way that contributed to my own happiness and that the things I always thought there would be time for I wasn't making time for. I have to __actively__ make time for them \ No newline at end of file +I think when time didn't mean anything that's when it really hit me in the face that it *did* mean something not that I was wasting mine but not using it in a way that contributed to my own happiness and that the things I always thought there would be time for I wasn't making time for. I have to __actively__ make time for them +- Tags:: #favorite \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/content/index.md b/content/index.md index f7907d8bd236a..783a0662d6253 100644 --- a/content/index.md +++ b/content/index.md @@ -22,8 +22,9 @@ All the bits of my #writing on their way to becoming [[Evergreen Notes]] ### __What am I working on right__ [[NOW]]? - Following [[curiosity trails]] wherever they lead -- [experimenting]([[experiment]]) with creating new [[Roam Research]] components -- Writing [[How to communicate with empathy and collaboration]] +- Creating new [[Roam Research]] components +- Getting more into writing + You can peruse some of my #favorite stuff here - [[How to Be the Greatest Improviser on Earth#^971708|know, care, say]]