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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bob Lao-Tse who wrote (39509)	6/7/1999 8:12:00 AM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

I am one of those you say "fight and struggle for illusory gain" in the great commute. I am a courteous and safe driver, but I drive fast. Not all the time, but sometimes, when I have to get somewhere and if I stay with the herd I am going to be late. For example, merging from I-66 West onto I-495 just past Merrifield. All the trucks are in the middle and right hand lanes because they all have to get off I-66 at I-495, but some of the cars are in the left lane because they are going straight, and some of the people in the middle land really want to be in the right hand lane but don't feel like waiting. I've learned that if I stay in the left hand lane until the last minute, I can pop into the middle lane when I need to because someone in the middle lane is going to slow down to get into the right hand lane, or else I can pop in front of a truck. This works like a charm about 95% of the time, the other 5% I'm going to have to impede traffic a little (microseconds) to get over. I know some of the people in the middle lane hate me because they have been in the middle lane behind a truck for maybe 15 seconds, while I got to pass them and then pop in front of them. They think I am a line-breaker. I think if everyone drove like them then the middle lane would be more crowded and their trip would actually take longer. Anyway, that's just one of the observations from those who don't wait around for the slow cars, but zip around them and keep on truckin'. Edit: I've got a V-8 and a stick shift, maybe you stay with the pack because you don't?

To: Bob Lao-Tse who wrote (39509)	6/7/1999 9:26:00 AM
From: Sam Ferguson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

BLT we need more preachers with messages like yours instead of what someone said or did in the past. We need to be taught unselfishness and moderations in all things as a way of life. We all are possessed by what is variously described as "The master within" - "gut feeling" - "something tells me" - "I just knew it" etc. Now we are also influenced by what we call subconcious mind and some think they are the same. Subconcious mind is formed by habit or rote and will cause desire for repetition; where inner feelings come from a power within from an unknown source to guide you in decisions that are not based on habit. If we were taught more moderation in habit and put all our decisions to the inner feeling test; the world would be a better place for all with more happy people. Invariably when you fail to follow true instinct you will receive negative results. Damn here I am preaching from your pulpit but I do agree with you.

To: Bob Lao-Tse who wrote (39509)	6/7/1999 12:32:00 PM
From: Jacques Chitte	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Wow, Bob. There is so much here with which I ... resonate. >I believe that the most important things in the world are moderation and consideration. < The word I like is "balance". This is one of my highest principles. Almost any ethos, be it of a Priest or a Trader or an Aesthete or <whatever> - it is prone to absurdity if taken to its logical extremes. My soft doctrine of "balance" seeks to reconcile the edges of principle with the chaos of real life. As you can imagine it is not very clearly formulated. A buddy who knows more of these things than I do calls me an "accedental Taoist". I'm unversed in formal Taoism (you must have the drop on me there unless your choice of name is coincidence) so I can't compare and contrast. >Of course, that faith is dashed to the rocks daily by the reality of what people are, but somehow I don't lose hold of it.< Taken one at a time we can be such trying cases. But a thing that sustains me is that even with all the steps backward - the nuke tests and school shootings and jungle strippings - I feel like the overall direction is still Forward. In the past 50 years we have gone into space and back. We have turned a spotlight on the plight of women and minorities in the rich countries, and are perhaps beginning to grapple in earnest with the plight of the poor, hungry and desperate people in the rest of the world. We have transformed smallpox from a disfigurer of entire nations into a ghost story told to children at bedtime. All this gives me hope that the future is not a bleak place. I am very worried that this has been a creeping mythos feeding on people of my generation - that we have turned from Progress to a global Endgame, that our grandchildren are perhaps better off never born. This to me is evil. The most horrible thing to do to youngsters is to take away hope, a worthy collective goal. When it reduces to individual and group survival - you get Littleton and Paducah and all that. It was pronounced sixty years ago and bears repeating in paraphrase: We have nothing to fear [so much as] fear itself. About driving - Maybe four years ago I came to the quietly startling conclusion that the single highest driving virtue is Inconspicuity. It does not mean avoid driving a Cobra. It means if you have a Cobra or a Tercel - drive it so you don't draw attention. I strive for this but I'm not there yet. I still pass people sometimes. :-( It takes really good driving to be Inconspicuous. You have to read traffic patterns well ahead of time to match your vectors with minimal control input. And you have to make the deliberate decision to forgive stupid or mean actions by your immediate neighbors. I'm working on that, I really am. When the driver next to me has no reason to worry about what I'm gonna do next, I've "succeeded." :-) I've read a post about the need to drive fast. I submit that driving fast and Inconspicuity can be reconciled without loss of the timeliness objective. The "trick" is to make the transitions - lane changes, control inputs etc. - seamless and gradual. Fast drivers don't get my concerned attention. Not if they have a good eye for separation in space and respect for differential velocity in close quarters. Erratic or unforgiving ones (like the occasional dillhole who performs a lane-change around me missing my bumpers by inches because he's Instructing Me to hold my speed and lane, or else) do make me pay real attention - and draw my annoyance for demanding it.

To: Bob Lao-Tse who wrote (39509)	6/7/1999 1:03:00 PM
From: nihil	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Please read Marcus Aurelius, Meditations available on the web i the Electronic Library <books.com>. He proves that a man can be happy, although an emperor. Or read Epictetus, Discourses available in two volumes from Loeb Library (at Border's in that little book case) or Amazon.com). He proves that man can be happy even though a slave. I guarantee the best money and time you can spend, or I'll buy them back from you for what you paid. Sorry about the time.

To: Bob Lao-Tse who wrote (39509)	6/12/1999 6:19:00 AM
From: Bob Lao-Tse	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

The universe is so huge and intimidating -- and I'm so tiny. Two exercises: Stand outside and think and look and open yourself up. Look to the horizons and try to get an actual feel for how big the Earth is. Feel the slow curve of it -- the vastness of it. Add in the pictures that you know of it, mix this up with your feel for distances and extrapolate out until you feel how big this planet is. Then find the speck that is you. Look at a stranger. Realize as you look at this stranger that s/he has a life that is every bit as detailed and complex as your own. Think and project until you can completely grasp that this person is, like you, a complete and discrete personality with a life and a consciousness that is entirely her/his own, and that s/he lives this existence 24 hours a day, seven days a week for an entire lifetime. Then look at someone else and do it again. And again. And again. Then think of how many people there are in this world and realize -- do everything that you can to grasp -- that they all have complete and detailed lives that they are all living right now. Life is such an astounding thing. There is so much of life that is incomprehensible, and we must all, in our own ways, come to terms with that. We are so complex and so improbable, yet we are also tiny and insignificant. Some ascribe our existence to a superior entity of some sort that brought us and all that is around us into being. Some ascribe it to chance and science -- that somehow the universe came to be and that the stuff of the universe combined into the stuff of life and started the chain that led to us. Some do not choose an answer, whether because they don't know or they just don't care -- whether actively or passively -- they don't decide. But ultimately this shouldn't matter. We are. We exist, all of us, right now. The questions of why and how really don't matter that much. No matter why or how, we are. We have found ourselves in this thing called life on this place called the Earth surrounded by billions of other lives. The only thing that should matter is how we live. We need a new way to define people. We need to stop defining each other based on how each of us chooses to deal with the mysteries of life, and start defining each other by how we each live. Those of us who understand and appreciate the importance of being good and kind and caring people need to reach out to each other, regardless of everything else, simply because the only thing that we all share is that we are all here right now. We have all been thrown into this life, and we are all important in our own eyes. Clearly the most important thing in life is to recognize that spark that is within us each and all and protect and nurture it in ourselves and at least not harm it in others. Any who would harm us are our enemies, regardless of how they choose to deal with the mysteries. I am not the enemy of either theists or atheists, I am the enemy of those who would live poor and hurtful lives. No matter what they may believe. And I am friend to any who would try to live with kindness and respect and honesty. No matter what they may believe. And yes, this is an enormous steaming pile of self-congratulatory idealism. But it's what I feel and that's what this thread is supposed to be about anyway. -BLT