Pretend, for example, that you were born in Chicago and have never had the remotest desire to visit Hong Kong, which is only a name on a map for you; pretend that some convulsion, sometimes called accident, throws you into connection with a man or a woman who lives in Hong Kong; and that you fall in love. Hong Kong will immediately cease to be a name and become the center of your life. And you may never know how many people live in Hong Kong. But you will know that one man or one woman lives there without whom you cannot live. And this is how our lives are changed, and this is how we are redeemed.

What a journey this life is! Dependent, entirely, on things unseen. If your lover lives in Hong Kong and cannot get to Chicago, it will be necessary for you to go to Hong Kong. Perhaps you will spend your life there, and never see Chicago again. And you will, I assure you, as long as space and time divide you from anyone you love, discover a great deal about shipping routes, airlines, earth quake, famine, disease, and war. And you will always know what time it is in Hong Kong, for you love someone who lives there. And love will simply have no choice but to go into battle with space and time and, furthermore, to win.

—James Baldwin, The Price of the Ticket

Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995-)

Creator/Dir: Hideaki Anno

"While we wait for life, life passes..༄"

Seneca .

(Art: Photograph by Tony Luciani)

* * * *

Contrary to popular belief, time does not heal, time does not fly, time does not do anything. Time has no consciousness. It does nothing for you. The key to happiness now is what you choose to do with your time right now. Are you, right now, making the most valuable use of your time? This moment is, after all, the time of your life. Your choices are what make each moment.

~Robert Holden (Book: Happiness Now!) [Philo Thoughts]

II.

My tutor taught me not to favour either green or blue at chariot races, nor in the contests of gladiators, to be a supporter either of light or heavy armed. He taught me also to endure labour; not to need many things; to serve myself without troubling others; not to intermeddle in the affairs of others, and not easily to listen to slanders against them.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book I

Philo Thoughts

I just love how some of plato's greatest philosophical ideas essentially come from a dialogue format text in which his teacher (socrates) is low key flirting with some random dude

The emotionally intelligent person knows that love is a skill, not a feeling, and will require trust, vulnerability, generosity, humor, sexual understanding, and selective resignation. The emotionally intelligent person awards themselves the time to determine what gives their working life meaning and has the confidence and tenacity to try to find an accommodation between their inner priorities and the demands of the world. The emotionally intelligent person knows how to hope and be grateful, while remaining steadfast before the essentially tragic structure of existence. The emotionally intelligent person knows that they will only ever be mentally healthy in a few areas and at certain moments, but is committed to fathoming their inadequacies and warning others of them in good time, with apology and charm. There are few catastrophes, in our own lives or in those of nations, that do not ultimately have their origins in emotional ignorance.

Ich bin ein Mensch wie jeder andere auch. Ja ich mache Fehler, ja ich denke zu viel nach, ja ich werd auch nicht immer der selben Meinung meines Gegenübers sein, aber schlussendlich sind wir alles Menschen mit der gleichen Intention hinterm Leben.

Wir wollen alle glücklich sein, und wir alle haben es verdient glücklich zu sein. In den vergangenen Monaten bin ich durch Himmel und Hölle gegangen, nun steh ich hier und habe meinen Frieden zu mir selber gefunden. Ich weiß wer ich bin, ich weiß wer gut und wer schlecht für mich ist. Ich habe mit dem Hauch von Gesindel nichts mehr am Hut und plötzlich hat mein Leben eine ganz andere Bedeutung.

Ich kann endlich behaupten dass ich glücklich bin, ohne mir groß Mühe gegeben zu haben. Ich habe angefangen zu lesen, wo ich dachte nur die “Streber” würden Bücher lesen. Ich habe angefangen einen Nächtlichen Spaziergang zu machen, statt meine Gefühle mit Drogen und Alkohol zu betäuben.

Ich habe aufgehört meine Laune von Menschen abhängig zu machen die mir nur im Weg stehen und das kleine Hauch an Glück was ich hatte, nichtmal vom Herzen gönnen.

Ich dachte ich würde einsam sein, ich dachte ich würde durch diese “Einsamkeit” zu Boden gehen. Ich habe mich so unglaublich leer gefühlt, bis mir bewusst wurde, das alles was ich brauche Ich selber bin.

Was ich damit eigentlich ausdrücken möchte, es ist besser alleine seinen Weg einzuschlagen als mit Menschen die dir nur die Steine in den Weg legen.

Du bist für dein Leben verantwortlich. Lass es dir von niemandem kaputt machen !

friendly reminder that “men” and “meh” have one-letter difference

When people talk listen completely. Don’t be thinking what you’re going to say. Most people never listen. Nor do they observe. You should be able to go into a room and when you come out know everything that you saw there and not only that. If that room gave you any feeling you should know exactly what it was that gave you that feeling.

Ernest Hemingway, Across the River and into the Trees

🎶🎶 why are we all trapped inside our own desires that we all think are ours but it's just a bunch of consumism/capitalistic goals that society have inflicted upon us 🎶🤟🏼 why do we seem like we are real when there isn't even a such thing as our own willpower 🎶 our so denominated willpower is just a series of biochemical processes in our minds that we call hormones and emotions 🎶🎶

Nothing is real.

Everything is a lie.

🎶🎶

#this is not even a proper song #its probably just a bunch of inflicted opinions over my brain that have been previously manufactured by other thinkers and nihilistic cat owners #i am becoming very nihilistic lately and nothing is helping me to pull the other way

#im probably writing a book about this fr

"There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will"

Epictetus .

The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love — whether we call it friendship or family or romance — is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light.

~James Baldwin

(Book: Nothing Personal)

[Philo Thoughts]

When I see something and I miss the opportunity to capture it well somehow, capture it either in my mind or read it again, or even see it again, just as I have not have had enough of it yet; I hold my breath and close my mind and go to look for it intensely. I avoid everything that comes my way, any other piece that could distract me because the way that object interacted with me in a particular manner, it might not be unique, maybe belonging to a set, and I know if I allow anything else to get to me before I experience that object in that same state again will be different. If I allow any other thing, it will culminate to an impure mix and I will not be able to experience that object in the same manner again. It will become an alloyed experience. I hold a distaste to this impurity, although, it is highly probable for it to occur and at times even leads me other things, just as I write right now, yet, I have this impractical wish to be able to experience that object in the same manner again.

— from mio’s i am yet to categorise my writings and hence it perfectly fits “excerpt from a book i will never write”

A Theory on Human Impetus

From my life experiences, I have found that, as flawed and confusing as humans can be, we all, for the most part, are pulled by an unerring force to take action when something is wrong.

By this I don't mean people will naturally just spring into action and help someone if something wrong is happening. No, by and large we tend to avoid situations where something wrong is happening in efforts to avoid conflict.

I mean wrong in a sense of discomfort. That feeling when you're in the wrong classroom and don't quite know it but everything is off, or when you show up to work and it was a day off. Something feels wrong and uncomfortable inside

My theory states that once a person has discovered this feeling, and discovers the nature of the cause, they MUST take action to resolve it, or else it will become worse and worse and do more damage to their life.

In the instances described above, if you go to the wrong classroom, once you learn the error you either,

A) make your way out and find the right classroom

B) remain in the classroom to avoid the embarrassment

Or C) remain in the classroom because you simply don't care enough, in which case it wouldn't have felt very uncomfortable to begin with

Option A is following human impetus, the urge to correct that which you know is off. It's an embarrassment but you feel relief as soon as you're out and in the right place.

Option B is going against that urge and the longer you stay to avoid the embarrassment, the more uncomfortable and agitated you will become.

This becomes a much bigger deal as the stakes become larger.

I am a transgender woman, and once I realized something felt off inside, I needed to know what it was. Once I realized it was dysphoria and a desire to transition, I pushed it away as hard as I could. That would make everything more complicated and messy. But the longer I waited, the more it affected me, until it got to a point that I no longer could avoid the need to take action.

The point here is I regret that delay. The longer that call to action was ignored, the worse the symptoms became. The same pattern happened when I considered the prospect of getting a divorce, and once again, I feel I would've saved us both a lot of pain if I had just given in to the need to take action.

Anyways, what do I know lol. I'm a ditzy queer girl in her 20s. I'm mostly just reflecting for myself, but hey if it's helpful at all for you feel free to listen 🤗

The Philosopher's Daughter