“I don’t know what scares me more — the horrors that are inflicted upon us, or our ability to endure them.”

Why do we put up with the things that we do?

If ignorance is bliss and knowledge is power – what happens to people who are happy when they have power?  Or those that feel powerful when they are happy?  Do they know they are ignorant?  Or are they ignorant of what they know?

Sacrificial lamb.

What you call it, some unfortunate person always ends up being it in a situation gone bad.

All we can do is take steps to ensure that we are as covered as we can possibly be because we can’t stop situations from going bad, but we can (hopefully) ensure we don’t take the fall when it comes time for heads to roll.

Wish I’d had it in me to write more about what happened before.  So many ups and downs, and all I was concerned about was (is) how to move on, how to escape.

Did I learn lessons?  Yes.  Will I remember them?  I don’t know, since I don’t remember everything that happened because I didn’t write them down.

It should be done, though – it should be recorded somewhere before the memories are lost forever.

People my age have spent 24+ years learning how to do more, want more.

How many years would we need to learn to want less and be happy with what we have?

Leads to many self-imposed limits.  We are told, shown, taught, and made to associate certain skillsets with making certain achievements – in other words, we are made to think that there are only a limited number of ways to get to a destination, and also taught what destinations are to be thought of as desirable, or otherwise.

But these self-imposed limits can be lifted as well.  The hard part is acknowledging that there is no right or wrong path – we need to think in terms of black and white, we need criteria to give ourselves the illusion of objectivity.  The truth is any road can take you anywhere – it’s just a matter of how long the journey will be.

Better planning leads to shorter, more efficient journeys – does this mean it was a more successful one?  No – often journeys that have unplanned detours are more eventful – whether they are happy, angry, or sad events is another matter.  It is undeniable though that any event that happens to us at all affects in some way, shape, or form.  Some events have too small of an effect on us, leading us to think that they did not affect us.  If you quantify it – I had 342 things happen to me today, for example.  Add that to the total of 9,823,435,324 events that had already taken place in my life – that number has only one way to go – up.  Things that happened cannot unhappen.

There are no mistakes – there’s things we do, and things we don’t do.  Every action has a consequence, but we must remember that inaction has consequences too – at times greater than if there were action.

The longer we pigeonhole ourselves as a certain type of person – possessing certain skillsets and not others – the more we begin to believe our self-spun tale.  We falsely believe that knowing ourselves requires knowing our limits.  Sounds perfectly sensible and safe – but is that a fact?  When we think we “know” something about someone, is that then inscribed in stone?  No – the only constant about people is change.  In reality, the only fact is that there are no limits – only those that we create for ourselves.  We can use them for us, or they can be used against us – only we get to determine that.

As the sun rises up on our lives, we seek “bigger” and “better” things.  When the sun begins to set on our lives, we seek “smaller” and “simpler” things.

Why the pursuit of complexity?  Why does our education consist of putting us through progressively harder problems?  Why are we taught to think in terms of limits – and then to surpass them?

A parent attempts to control offspring by creating limiting concepts – “do not jump in the water – you might drown”.  But on the same token the parent wishes that the offspring will somehow not drown – will somehow unleash a hidden talent for swimming.

Why create a limit then, if what we want is to be limitless?  Maybe we’ve weighed the pros and cons and decided that the risks of the cons outweigh the benefits of the pros.  But do they really?  By whose definition?

Problems are designed – someone determined that a certain level of difficulty corresponds to where a person should be mentally at that point in life.  But those who do not abide by these limits are encouraged; those who surpass them are rewarded.  So the real lesson is to ignore imposed limits.

A puzzlemaker doesn’t want to make a puzzle too difficult to solve – like a videogame designer does not want to make a game that’s too difficult.  Ultimately the challenge is not to create difficulty, but to create a high enough difficulty that’s still solvable.  Give people the illusion of (their) intelligence.

This indirectly creates a limiting situation – limit the difficulty or risk alienating others.  I’d think that someone who hides treasure wants it to be found, eventually.  Be pretty sad to know that you were too good at hiding treasure – it was never found.

So what do we do?  Do we pander to the masses or play it to the limit and risk alienation?

Lots of thoughts running around.  Need to get back to basics.

Opportunity cost – per minute, hour, day.  Is what I’m doing worth the time I’m taking to do it?

Emotional cost – per minute, hour, day.  Is what I’m feeling worth the energy it costs?

“The worst thing you can do for those you love is the things they could and should do themselves.”
- Abraham Lincoln