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I wanted to forget about it. Telling him would make it more serious than I wanted it to be. That was the closest I came to telling him.
“Reality happens only once.”
“Every story is made up. Even the real ones.”
“The most attractive thing in the world is the combination of confidence and self-consciousness. Blended together in the proper amounts. Too much of either and all is lost.
“I want to understand myself and recognize how others see me. I want to be comfortable being myself. How I reach that is almost less important, right? It means something to get to the next year. It’s significant.”
maybe it’s better to be alone. Why abandon the routine we each master? Why give up the opportunity for many diverse relationships in exchange for one? There’s plenty of good with coupling up, I get it, but is it better? When single, I tend to focus on how much the company of someone would improve my life, increase my happiness. But does it?
The idea that we are better off with one person for
the rest of our lives is not an innate truth of existence. It’s a belief we want to be true.
Forfeiting solitude, independence, is a much greater sacrifice than most of us realize. Sharing a habitat, a life, is for sure harder than being alone. In fact, coupled ...
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To find another person to...
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your life with? To age with and change with? To see every day, to respond to...
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What if intelligence is wasted? What if intelligence leads to more loneliness rather than to fulfillment? What if instead of productivity and clarity, it generates pain, isolation, and
Getting to know someone is like putting a never-ending puzzle together. We fit the smallest pieces first and we get to know ourselves better in the process.
“There are many around the university, students and profs whose biggest concern each day—and I’m not exaggerating—is how to burn the proper number of calories for their specific body type based on diet and amount of strenuous exercise. Think about that in the context of human history. Talk about sad.
Perspective.
“There’s something about modernity and what we value now. Our shift in morality. Is there a general lack of compassion? Of interest in others? In connections? It’s all related.
Focus on self instead of the collective.
How are we supposed to achieve a feeling of significance and purpose without feeling a link to something bigger than our own lives? The more I think about it, the more it seems happiness and fulfillment rely on the presence of others, even just one other. The same way sadness requires happiness, and vice versa. Alone is . . .”
This!! The overarching impact and result of the cotinuous shunning of God/higher power.
“It seems to me that in the context of life and existing and people and relationships and work, being sad is one correct answer. It’s truthful. Both are right answers. The more we tell ourselves that we should always be happy, that happiness is an end in itself, the worse it gets.
“There was no dependency. Dependency equates to seriousness.”
says. “It’s real when there are stakes, when something’s on the line.”
think what I want is for someone to know me. Really know me. Know me better than anyone else and maybe even me. Isn’t that why we commit to another? It’s not for sex. If it were for sex, we wouldn’t marry one person.
I think that’s it. Maybe that’s how we know when a relationship is real. When someone else previously unconnected to us knows us in a way we never thought or believed
But isn’t being alone closer to the truest version of ourselves, when we’re not linked to another, not diluted by their presence and judgments? We form relationships with others, friends, family. That’s fine. Those relationships don’t bind the way love does. We can still have lovers, short-term. But only when alone can we focus on ourselves, know ourselves. How can we know ourselves without this solitude? And not just when we sleep.
What’s unrealistic, I think, is the number of people who attempt an enduring, committed relationship, who believe it will work long-term.
considering the data that shows the majority of marriages don’t last, people still think marriage is the normal human state. Most people want to get married. Is there anything else that people do in such huge numbers, with such a terrible success rate?
tire and wilt, age and deplete. We get sick and better, or sick and worse. We don’t know when, or how, or why. We just carry on. Is it better to be paired up or alone?
“Allegory,” he said, “elaborate metaphor. We don’t just understand or recognize significance and validity through experience. We accept, reject, and discern through symbols.
Maybe even in the longest, closest, most successful marriages, the one partner doesn’t always know what the other is thinking. We’re never inside someone else’s head. We can never really know someone else’s thoughts. And it’s thoughts that count. Thought is reality. Actions can be faked.
I don't want to know their every thought
We can’t and don’t know what others are thinking. We can’t and don’t know what motivations people have for doing the things they do. Ever. Not entirely. This was my terrifying, youthful epiphany. We just never really know anyone. I don’t. Neither do you.
It’s amazing that relationships can form and last under the constraints of never fully knowing. Never knowing for sure what the other person is thinking. Never knowing for sure who a person is. We can’t do whatever we want. There are ways we have to act. There are things we have to
Thoughts are the only reality. It’s true. I’m sure of it now. Thoughts are never faked
