Something never achieved

"I left them to go to the lavatory, clear embroidered hand-towel, new soap, the bowl a frothy, disinfectant blue, a small bowl of potpourri; I noted and despised it all. On my quiet return I saw that, sitting a little apart, they had stretched their hands across the gap to each other, then, hearing my step, had quickly, almost guiltily drawn apart. That moment of delicacy, tact, perhaps even of pity, produced a second of conflicting emotions, experienced so faintly that they passed almost as soon as I recognized their nature. But I knew that what I had felt was envy and regret, not for something lost but for something never achieved." 

Pacquiao'd

A warning: don't go for a semi-serious run 12 hours after giving blood. Apparently, I'm not Wolverine.

Eating

The more important point here, though, is that the whole animal-cruelty-and-eating issue is not just complex, it’s also uncomfortable. It is, at any rate, uncomfortable for me, and for just about everyone I know who enjoys a variety of foods and yet does not want to see herself as cruel or unfeeling. As far as I can tell, my own main way of dealing with this conflict has been to avoid thinking about the whole unpleasant thing. I should add that it appears to me unlikely that many readers of gourmet wish to think hard about it, either, or to be queried about the morality of their eating habits in the pages of a culinary monthly. Since, however, the assigned subject of this article is what it was like to attend the 2003 MLF, and thus to spend several days in the midst of a great mass of Americans all eating lobster, and thus to be more or less impelled to think hard about lobster and the experience of buying and eating lobster, it turns out that there is no honest way to avoid certain moral questions.

- David Foster Wallace

http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_lobster

The crenellated mind

"I suppose, in old age, there is advantage in retreating into a world of one's own, but not if the place one finds is hell."
                                - P.D. James, Children of Men

Being There

About four years ago, I was told to read Jerzy Kosinski's Being There. In those four years, I moved 3 times and donated a ton of books. Yet this one always managed to retain a spot on each bookshelf variation I purchased after moving. It was also the first book I decided to read.

"Yet plants were different from people. No plant is able to think about itself or able to know itself; there is no mirror in which the plant can recognize its face; no plant can do anything intentionally: it cannot help growing, and its growth has no meaning, since a plant cannot reason or dream."

Kosinski is conflicted about ambition. Chauncey Gardiner, the main character, is a plant--no growth, no ambition, no meaning, no dreams. He simply exists, things happen to him, and because of his guileless nature, a world filled with cloying ambition reacts to him as a refreshing antidote to a cynical world.

As I read the book, I was reminded of Winston Groom's Forrest Gump, which featured a character similar to Kosinski's Gardiner. In both stories, it is aspirational to live with childlike wonder, not expecting good things to happen; instead, just letting things happen.

It is reminiscent of Buddhist philosophy, much of which is intended to control desire. It paints a sharp contrast to Coelho's idea: "When a person really desires something, all the universe conspires to help that person to realize his dream."

It is difficult to find balance between these two philosophies. Most would agree that Gardiner and Gump have good things happen to them precisely because they are not looking. 

However, when a lack of desire turns into a lack of motivation, there is an arguably greater risk. When do we just sit around waiting for good things to happen in our lives? 

The universe conspires

When a person really desires something, all the universe conspires to help that person to realize his dream.

Ancestors

One of my professors recently tweeted: Sounds weird, but as exams begin, think about grandparents. Studies show parts of brain used for achievement are activated.

Years ago, I took an undergraduate religion class. I don't remember what the topic was, but as I was taking notes, I had this overwhelming thought.

I wrote: What would my ancestors think if they could see my life?

I think about that sometimes.