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“I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself, forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
― Albert Camus

“Yet the moonlight sonatas of the world don't simply discharge our emotions; they elevate them. Also, it's only sad music that elicits exalted states of communion and awe. Music conveying other negative emotions, such as fear and anger, produces no such effect. Even happy music produces fewer psychological rewards than sad music, concluded Sachs, Damasio, and Habibi. Upbeat tunes make us want to dance around our kitchens and invite friends for dinner. But it's sad music that makes us want to touch the sky.”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

“The longing comes through Yahweh or Allah, Christ or Krishna, no more and no less than it comes through the books and the music; they are equally the divine, or none of them are the divine, and the distinction makes no difference; they are all it.”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

“Life is running away from us, and it would be one thing if we had something to look forward to, if you and I could enjoy a bit of luxury once we're fifty or sixty, but that's never going to happen, is it? This is what life is like now, and it's only going to get worse. All of it. The best we can hope for is that we die before it becomes completely unbearable. With the heat, the water, the food. That we can keep society functioning for a few more years, until the next pandemic shuts everything down again. That we don't have to eat insects. That the racists and lunatics don't take over even more of the world. That there's still coffee in the rest home . . . And ultimately it doesn't really matter all that much, the fact that humanity is collapsing isn't a problem, not from a cosmic or evolutionary perspective, the planet will still be here, life will go on, for millions of years I'm sure, it's just us that doesn't have a future . . . So I want to enjoy myself. I want to live life to the max. I want to burn through every last krona. I don't want to waste a single day on a life I'm not happy with. There's no point waiting for things to get better, because nothing is going to get better. This is the world we live in now. Don't be ashamed to be human, be proud."

- Didrik”
― Jens Liljestrand, Even If Everything Ends