Reflections on Veganuary

This year, I've completed my first ever Veganuary - a pledge to not consume animal products for the entirety of January. At face value, it does not sound like a particularly breezy challenge: not consuming animal products means cutting out not only meat, fish, but also animal by-products like egg, milk, cheese - and even Asian household staples like oyster sauce and fish sauce.

A question for full disclosure - did I cheat? To an extent, yes. We - together with several friends - were late to the party. We only properly started Veganuary on the 10th of January, having only came up with the idea of doing it the day before. So truth, we only made it through three weeks of vegan diet, instead of the full month. However, at least speaking for myself, I adhered to the diet as strictly as I could, and I was fully vegan over the period (bar an inadvertent mistake where I didn't realise honey was considered non-vegan-friendly - since honeybees had to produce them!).

Whenever people find out that I am participating in a vegan diet, the two most common responses I've received are: (1) 'why would you do this?', or (2) 'I get it, but I can't do it myself'. The first question is sometimes motivated by genuine curiosity, especially amongst those who are not familiar with the philosophical roots of veganism. Sometimes, this question comes from a more judgemental perspective, carrying a similar tone to, 'Are you mad?', or 'What is the point of this self-torture?'. Those who know me well know that I tend to either get irritable or proud (bizarre, I know) when I become the recipient of judgment, especially on subjects relating to lifestyle or taste. In this scenario I would snarkily reply that 'I just feel like doing it'. Admittedly, this isn't a particularly mature response, but it in no way diminishes the satisfaction of saying it.

If at the time I am able to apply the principle of charity and assume that the other person is genuinely curious about my motivations for Veganuary, I might reply with something akin to a verbal bullet point summary. My verbal bullet point summary (written out, now just an ordinary bullet point summary) has three points:

1. Personal challenge - see if I could do it

2. Reduce animal suffering

3. Do my part for climate change

Clearly, a more morally preferable ordering of motivations would be to prioritise (2) and (3) due to their altruistic nature. If you count pride or ego as one of your motivations, it would seem to diminish, or even defeat the entire purpose of the entire Veganuary challenge. Yet it seems to be the case that ego is primal, whereas altruism is more complex, requiring empathy, logical reasoning, and an abundance mindset. Arguably, all of these pre-requisites are skill-based; it takes effort and reflection for one to recognise that they are slipping on them, and that intentional action is required for rectification. In other words, altruism takes work.

It's worth clarifying that this in no way means I have little empathy for the countless animal souls that have suffered under industrial farming practices, or that I am indifferent to the effects of climate change. It is more accurate to describe that I recognise certain primal instincts as powerful motivators for (consequentially speaking) virtuous acts, and that when they are combined with 'truly' virtuous intentions to motivate good moral behaviour, one is much more likely, and more frequently, 'do good'. If I had completely rejected leveraging pride as a motivator for Veganuary, I might more likely have failed it, and harmed the good cause as a result.

Here's a good question to ponder: to what extent is it justified to use sinful motivations (think the seven cardinal sins, for instance) to drive morally good action?

Rough landing

Isn’t it funny

how we both grinned 

at the prospect of imminent death -

as if to say,

fun as this life might have been,

bring it on:

I am ready for the next adventure.

Isn't it perverse

that the real reason behind my grin

is that we could be dying together -

as if I feared

that we may never experience romance,

ever again,

and dying with you

is the best ending I could hope for.

Isn't it absurd

that after all that angst

about death, adventure, and love -

all that we have

is the realisation that this,

like most of life,

is just chaos imagined in our heads

as the plane eases quietly into the tarmac.

In such times of turbulence

In such times of turbulence

In unwavering faith they preach

freedom is illusory

and dissent’s a moral crime

democracy is a conspiracy

and justice isn’t worth your time

What, then I ask

is the end of learning

If it is out of filial respect

that falsehoods I dare not correct

Why, then I ask

should I bother with thinking

If youth itself is a qualification

on what claims I may dispute

In such times of turbulence

Cruel lies abound and multiply

Absurd as the skies are high

And in vain and indeed in pain

Repel and extinguish

these wretched demons 

I must try

--- 

edited 7 March 2023 from:

In such times of turbulence

Cruel lies abound and up they fly

Absurd as the skies are high

And in vain and indeed in pain

Shoot out the hearts 

of these demons I must try

On the Scarcity of Mental Space

I had a phase in my life where I regularly experienced an anxiety: that my mind was disproportionately occupied by things that are trivial and do not matter (such as housework).* The starting position is that my finite mental effort is being expended on thoughts and problems which, when being thought about, brings about the minimal amount of utility or meaning to my life. These would mostly be general thoughts about certain subjects, such as:

• Utilities and bills
• Shopping, groceries, and meals
• Housemate is not doing his / her fair share of housework
• I cannot find my favourite t-shirt
• I need a haircut
• My computer Desktop is a complete mess
• I have too many unread books
• How much money am I saving each month

Reviewing this list, it seems clear that there is something in common between these trivial thoughts: they tend to either have something to do with the domestic, or are related to the desire to be tidy and organised. This list may somewhat reflect on my personality as being somewhat obsessive with tidiness, but it is entirely possible that one may have an entirely different list of unproductive thoughts e.g. unhappy or envious thoughts triggered by social media, or something like "my annoying neighbour has a much better car than I do". In any case, what I had been experiencing at the time was a genuine frustration that these useless, unproductive thoughts were like mindless termites chomping away at my precious time.

I believed that there is a genuine finding about life behind all this frustration, and I suppose there is no harm putting this in a neat premise-conclusion format: 

P1: My mind can only consciously focus on one thing at a time. Whilst there may be unconscious thought processes (such as the reading of facial expressions) which can run in parallel with your conscious thoughts, it is a reasonable assumption that generally the conscious mental facility is not fit for multi-tasking, say for instance that it feels impossible to multiply 15 x 16 and 17 * 24 in your mind at the same time; you have to do them one after another.  

P2: The amount of conscious time is finite over one's lifetime. This is a relatively simple and uncontroversial premise as long as we are not trying to interpret time as a fourth dimension or  in the context of Relativity. Given roughly 17 waking hours every day, 365 days a year, and an average lifespan of 70 -  the maximum amount of conscious thinking time is roughly 434,350 hour. This doesn't even discount times of the day when the mind is less capable than usual in reasoning or conscious thought (say when a human is aged between 0 and 3, drunk, or on drugs)

C1: The amount of conscious thought is therefore finite over one's lifetime. This is P1 + P2. I refer to the mental capacity for processing this quantifiable amount of conscious thought personally and in my own writings as 'mental space', but I have also discovered that the equivalent term in popular psychology is 'mental bandwidth'. 

P3: Some conscious thoughts are better than others, where 'better' can be taken to mean that is more capable of delivering greater utility to one's life. A more direct way of saying this is perhaps that some conscious thoughts are better than others at making you happy or making your life more meaningful. Regardless of which conscious thoughts you consider as being better, we can agree that not all conscious thoughts are the same. For instance, thoughts about relationships with people who are important to you are (I hope) superior to thoughts about spam emails which are clogging up your inbox. 

C2: C1 + P3 - In order to maximise utility or happiness, we should, as a proportion of our overall conscious mental capacity, maximise the number of 'good' conscious thoughts and minimise the number of unproductive conscious thoughts. 

Having said that, it can be dangerous to go right down the rabbit hole of singling out 'unproductive' thoughts to stop thinking; the idea that one simply alter the proportion of one's thoughts should ring alarm bells. I think the solution to the problem comes in two parts. 

The first part of the solution to remedying my frustration is that I could accept these thoughts and worries as a necessary part of life and view them as one of the necessary things that you have to experience in life, rather than something that I should desperately get rid of or spend too much thinking about. For one, it is virtually impossible to not think about money at all as one goes through life. For a period of time I did actually find this to have quite a soothing impact on my mind, and it made me feel better about how my mental space was being used. 

The second part of the solution, which is also what I believe to be a promising and practical part of the solution, is inspired by the book goodbye, things - on minimalist living by the Fumio Sasaki. One of the central theses of Sasaki's book is that by reducing the number of possessions that one owns to only the possessions which are most important, a significant amount of mental effort will be saved on these trivial worries, particularly ones related to tidying. If you do not own a lot of travel souvenirs, you would not have spend time tidying them and organising them; if you do not own electronic devices with duplicated functionality (e.g. cameras, smartphone, and a calculator), you would not need to worry about the additional cables and chargers which little by little take up your mental space. This is a really good and easy read which I managed to finish over a weekend, and I thoroughly recommend this if you have similar feelings that your life is littered full of trivialities and inherently meaningless things. I think there is something truly valuable behind the book's recommendations and how one might live a good life whilst being surrounded by the culture of mindless consumerism. Going back to my solution, I think that one promising route to get out of the avalanche of 'thought clutter' is to reduce the physical objects which induce these thoughts, i.e. disposing or giving away things which do not matter. With regards to this part of the solution it is still a work-in-progress on my part: I have started throwing away all the obviously useless things and bulk deleting emails/files, but already it feels great now that I have made the first step. It won't be a short journey, but I believe finally I have found a promising and practical solution to the problem of the scarcity of mental space. 

*Even now this occasionally happens, which is one of the reasons that prompted me to write this post.

Rediscovering Reading

It had been like an accumulation of tiny changes within me - little unnoticeable pieces of change that took place in me every day.

One day, it suddenly hit me with the realisation that I have lost a capacity I very much treasure: the capacity to read properly.

I realise I no longer read books from front to back. I start one book after another, read a few pages, and leave it lying about - both physically and electronically. Where I live, where I study, littered with unfinished books.

I found that when I read, I had a natural urge to avoid digest every sentence - my eyes impulsively search for the keywords in paragraphs that suggest the section to be most interesting, and start there. When the writing starts to get tedious, my eyes start wandering again around the page. I get impatient when it feels that the author is beating around the bush, and when I sense that he or she isn't arriving to the conclusion in the shortest and most direct way possible.

Maybe it is the Internet, if I have to find a scapegoat for my bad habits; I have grown accustomed to absorbing information in a style where the reader actively searches for the information he or she wants to read, rather than taking it all in passively. If a book isn't giving you what you need, just search for another one online.

On second thoughts, perhaps activeness-passiveness isn't really the issue. Perhaps it is more the deterioration of patience and concentration; the patience needed to wait till the chapter finishes, and the concentration not to escape to another screen as you are reading a book. Since my adolescence and increasingly so by the time I reached adulthood, day by day I had become more used to living amongst distractions - smartphones, e-readers, laptops, tablets, screens, screens and more screens everywhere; an endless stream of messages, emails, and notifications.

Thus when I managed to execute the idea of picking up a paperback book and disciplining myself to read every single line without skimming and jumping into another screen, there was almost a sense of serendipity. It was surprisingly soothing, in a way that reading in such a way gradually channels away all the stress from the modern life. I highly recommend it.

On Hausarbeit

How much time do we spend on doing housework over a lifetime? (A very mundane subject, I'm aware - but the general concept of work / labour is something that I have become very interested in lately)

Instead of going down the good ol' philosophers' route of asking "What is housework", I start by asking a similar but relevant question - what counts as housework?

We can draw a distinction between the more tedious type of housework (e.g. doing the dishes, taking out the laundry, wiping down surfaces, vacuuming) and the less tedious type (e.g. cooking, tidying and arranging stuff, doing the weekly grocery run). A general rule-of-thumb is that we're far more likely to enjoy the latter but loathe the former type of work.

For the sake of comprehensiveness, one may even wish include what one might call 'digital housework': organising/clearing personal emails, deleting useless files on your Desktop, backing up phone data, or calculating your monthly expenditure. But for the sake of simplicity, let's leave these complications aside for now; let's assume we're only concerned with the more tedious type.

Assuming we spend an average of 7 hours a week in total - one hour every day - then that is equivalent to 365 hours a year.

Assuming a lifespan of 90 years, and taking 20 years off for the beginning and end years where (for those born lucky) we may expect others to do the housework for us, we will be spending 25,550 hours throughout our whole life - equivalent to 1064 days or 34.9 months - on tasks like this. Using the same base of 90 as our lifespan, housework on its own would take up 3% of it. Yes - 3 per cent - that's a lot, since it is an activity many of us would like to rid ourselves of.

Perhaps to some of us, the idea that housework is both time-consuming and a displeasure is neither a surprise nor something worthy of concern. One might say that this idea isn't worthy of concern since - very well yes, 3 per cent, but what can we do about it? It is almost impossible to avoid housework, one might argue, as avoiding housework would result in either or the conjunction of the following situations:

• it is immoral (leaving the work for someone else to do it instead)
• it is expensive (paying someone else to do the work)
• deterioration of living standard, with likely subsequent impacts on your psychological and physical health  

It is not unknown in history that technological innovations and streamlined work methods can significantly reduce housework volume, most notably the invention of the washing machine and well-known principles such as 'soak your dishes before rinsing'. The washing machine, the dishwasher and vacuum cleaners etc., have in particular contributed to the liberation of women from their traditional domestic roles and introduced the concept of leisure time to the masses (hitherto only familiar to the well-off and the nobility).

From our perspective as individuals, however, these innovations come neither easy nor often; even if you are a particularly bright engineer, the time and effort you are investing to produce a mechanism for reducing housework itself incurs an opportunity cost. One might also suggest that we have reached such a stage in domestic technological innovation that we are already faced with diminishing returns to scale in the time-savings that we can get with household gadgets.

Taking on the two assumptions that housework is ineliminable and essentially painful, I have a non-ground-breaking two-part solution to the ancient problem of there is too much housework and I hate doing it:

1. Understand the other aspects of housework, such that any work is not seen purely as a means to an end, but an end in itself. For instance, cleaning could be understood as an activity which on its own strengthens discipline and one's identity as a self-reliant un-materialistic individual. Buddhist monks and ascetics are generally inclined to view tedious work in such light.
   
2. Embrace the idea that housework is an ideal multi-task activity for the mind and body. As the body works, the mind reflects, imagines, dreams and philosophises. If one struggles with spontaneously coming up with mental material, listen to podcasts and music and allow your mind to travel and wander, as your body carries out the routine.

One can only hope that this makes the 3 per cent of our lives slightly less meaningless in our pursuit of meaning in what we tragically deny as our meaningless lives.

...

...but what of those who do housework as work?
 

 

2015

The last day of December, the last day of the year.

Usually this is a time when I realise how unmindful and unreflective I had been in the last 300 days or so, and there is no exception to this year.

I can't very well remember how and when the year I started, and if I do recall particular events, I can't say for sure whether they happened in 2014 or 2015. There is no doubt that I could've easily investigated my calendar or email records to find out what events (/achievements) actually took place in 2015, but somehow it feels appropriate to attempt an "impressionist" review of my 2015 - pulling out themes for the year through recalling emotions and experiences that left the deepest marks on my memory and my subconscious. (I'm aware this may sound unnecessarily mystical, but honestly I don't know of any better way of expressing this)

Yes.

2015 was amoral; or more intelligibly - my outlook in 2015 was not to judge actions and decisions (myself and others) based on reasoning with respect to duties or principles, but whether I felt they were appropriate or inappropriate in the given circumstances.

The question of whether an action was ethical wasn't as important as whether that action was 'fitting' at the time, place, and state-of-affairs. What had been done and said felt like they had been done and said as a matter of necessity and fit, and less so a matter of rational decision. I suspect another way of putting this is to say that I had been impulsive, but then I am not so sure if the word fully captures my increased empathy to others who see things in the same light.

I think 2015 has saw me transform into someone much more receptive to Nietzschean ideas, even more so than before.

2015 was also a lot about being more prudent with emotions. More wary I am this year than ever that unbridled emotions are powerful and can be devastating. Once you fall, it takes time and effort to pull yourself back together. Hence - hence, perhaps the psychological "bridles" self-imposed in my experiencing any art forms (I say "experiencing" - read "painting" / "playing / listening to music") were both justified and for the best.

First World Problem I

Recently, I've found myself thinking:

I've always loved ideas and concepts, ideal things... things which are beyond the every day physical experience, things which are 'out there' but at the same anyone with a mind can access. I love spending time thinking, reading, contemplating, and writing about these ideas, puzzles, theories. And yet, the everyday work-life seems to be pulling me in the other direction, drawing me towards the mundane, towards the routine, the boring: bills, household chores, groceries, calendars, commuting, to-read lists, to-do lists, etc. It's bloody endless. 

Every now and then, I'd try to focus and to read, to think - properly, like I'd used to. But one must admit, it does take a good amount of willpower and discipline to 'find the time', or to somehow incorporate these simple activities into one's working life. You're only five minutes into a book, and then you realise there's something meaningless and boring you have to do... this calls for this, surely: 

 

Frustrating it is, yet I am sure there is another way of living life where you can live an intellectual, mindful life whilst balanced against the great pull from the mundane tides of life. I am almost certain that many had, and have faced the same struggle as they go on to write all these great books and accomplish all these great things. How did/do people cope? Is it money? Sheer willpower? Or some magic time-management golden rule?

...

But isn't it almost immoral, to complain about a 'first-world problem' when others are facing life-critical 'mundane' problems, like poverty or disease? What possible rejoinder can I possibly come up with, to this?

An exercise on self-identity

If I were ask you to write down an exhaustive list of beliefs (and principles, if any) that you have relied on for making all the important decisions in your life...

...what would that list look like?

The very activity of composing this list will reveal inconsistencies of beliefs as well as acts of hypocrisy, I'm sure, for I doubt few can train themselves to be so mindful of their own thoughts and behaviour such that they can lead a perfectly consistent one. You might find yourself for instance to be avidly opposed to others consuming dog-meat, yet at the same time find it agreeable to your conscience for them to consume other forms of meat. It's inconsistent, but it's an easy one to miss.  

...Anyway, it shouldn't matter if you realise you have held or hold contradictory beliefs. In my opinion, it's probably a sort of trait typical of the human race that we're unlikely to ever get rid of, regardless of the x amount of money spent on education.

But back to the list - wouldn't this list be a good picture, a good representation of who you are?

What would be the first few items on my list?

1. Always keep an open mind to ideas and be wary of ideology... 
2. Let reason guide your important decisions, but do not neglect the importance of what your emotions tell you...
3. It is better to be sad, conscious and wise than to be ignorant, happy and living a 'programmed' life...

I very quickly realise that these beliefs and principles are - to some extent - what I aspire to adhere to, than ones which I actually use to guide my decisions in life.

And then I think, had this list been completed, how accurate would it be as a representation of me?

Maybe that's another way of asking, how well do I know myself?

Note to self: when I do find the time at some point, I'll definitely finish off that list and post it on here. 

Repost: On Melancholy

"Melancholy is a species of sadness that arises when we are open to the fact that life is inherently difficult and that suffering and disappointment are core parts of universal experience. It’s not a disorder that needs to be cured. Modern society tends to emphasise buoyancy and cheerfulness. But we have to admit that reality is for the most part about grief and loss. The good life is not one immune to sadness, but one in which suffering contributes to our development."

http://www.thebookoflife.org/in-praise-of-melancholy/


A really enlightening read.

This site almost makes me feel that if I had to write anything as a form of  'philosophical consolation', I would be adding zero value to the Internet.

Is our society in moral decline?

We're in moral decline: this is an idea that I've frequently come across in what other people have said, but never gave any serious attention to. 

This is the idea that our society is displaying a trend, where it is becoming more and more open to values and ideas that we've in the past deemed immoral and inappropriate: 

• Being open about one's homosexuality,
• Legalisation of marijuana,
• Increased acceptance to inter-racial relationships and relationships with huge age disparities,
• The public discussion of sex and related topics considered less of a taboo,
• Break down of social hierarchy between rich and poor, old and young

... and perhaps many more others. (None of these phenomena are absolutely global, but are definitely evident in some societies) 

As far as I'm concerned, these 'trends' do not exactly overwhelm me either positively or negatively. I have a feeling that I have, more than many others who are concerned about this moral decline, a better understanding of what morality really is (in a sort of meta-ethics context). (See here and here)

Morality is akin to emotions and bodily feelings: my opinion is that as best practice, we shouldn't let our feelings of morality affect our judgement any more than we shouldn't let our feelings of hunger or lust affect our actions. 

Moral decline or not - for me, that doesn't seem to be a huge issue to fuss over. What's probably worth spending more time on is to analysing the material and (socio-)psychological consequences of these 'moral' trends, and acting to make the best of what could and probably will happen.  

A lull - a rut

It has been a fairly long time since I've written anything in this blog, and it has gotten to the point that I've almost convinced myself that I have abandoned this blog for good. But subconsciously I somehow knew that I would come back once in a while, and publish something - even if that 'something' no longer has any comparable amount of 'philosophical content' as the previous posts in this blog. 

Working a full time job has really brought me to shift my attention on things that - at least on the outset - have no relation to philosophy: finances, keeping up with industry developments, reading the news, household chores, (trying to) exercise, etc. I'm still spending a good amount of time reading and thinking: but whilst before the object of the reading and thinking are primarily ideas, they are more-so now, things. Not necessarily things in the sense of material objects, but things which are practical and 'mundane'. Things which play a bigger role in allowing me to stay alive as a human being, essentially.  

It wasn't so much that these things did not take up any of my attention before - it was more that these things have always been on the side-lines, at the back of mind. It probably shouldn't have been.  

This is the phase that I'm currently on - where these things have found their way to the front of my mind, and have received way more attention than I would have permitted myself before; before - when I was still formally a philosophy student, and more concerned with 'problems' such as how concepts are relate with each other. 

The Blog Writer's Existential Problem

What is the purpose of writing, if no one else is to read what is written?

Perhaps writing is therapeutic. But why write it in a blog?

Perhaps the writer hopes that someone else would read it. But why the half-measure? Why not market the blog?

Perhaps marketing the blog is self-defeating - it takes away the therapeutic effect of writing. Marketing blogs is an activity that is stressful... and mundane.

Then why write it in a blog?

Suspending Philosophical Thought

Is it possible to live an unexamined life that is worth living? 

And once you have 'examined' it, does that mean you do not have to examine it ever again?

Of course this does sound like the beginning of the sort of cliché nit-picking exercise that philosophers do. Philosophy - an activity that just seems completely unproductive, aimless; and in other words, a waste of time. 

In these last several months, I have not done anything of 'philosophical relevance'. This simply means that I haven't been reading anything written by philosophers, and neither have I been writing anything on stuff like logic, existence, morality, whatsoever. 

My mind wasn't idle though: my day-time job still involves a reasonably taxing amount of mental work, and I am learning new things - new ways of doing things - new things that are in the world - every day. So it couldn't be said that I've stopped thinking - I have only stopped thinking philosophically. If that makes sense. 

I most certainly am not relieved that I am no longer doing philosophy. It is not a positive feeling. I enjoyed philosophy. So I am definitely sure that I miss it, but aside from feelings I do not have any good rational justification for spending a significant amount of my time on philosophy. Unless, of course, if all the reasons of our actions are ultimately reducible to feelings...

Philosophy may be useful as a dinner-table topic, but it's not even something that everyone enjoys. Philosophy doesn't pay for the material goods that my body needs for its day-to-day functioning, and ipso facto it doesn't - materially or financially - support itself as an activity that is worth doing.   

Isn't it an indication of something profound that so much time have been spent (wasted) on figuring out whether philosophy is worth doing?   

Year in Review 2014

Admittedly, this "Year in Review" is a whole month too late. Men are often distracted from what they ought to be doing by changes in circumstance -- not to really blame this on human nature, but in this case I do feel that I have spent less time on this blog than I ought to have. Ever since I began working, I've been less able to afford time to think about fundamental questions (about "being"/existence, and the nature of various concepts) and to acquire knowledge about the world. Generally, there is also less time to read and to fish about the internet to find articles and writing that stimulates me. 

In my mind, the value of these activities have never diminished, and it is purely a matter of hard circumstances which has altered my habits. As odd as it is to say this, observing this disheartens me, and triggers a sort of frustration within me to do better -- a wake-up call -- to find a new balance between financial freedom and other things I value in life. 

This may be one of the most common existential problems inflicting people in the modern world. 

What I haven't done enough in 2014, I want to do more in 2015. I want to go places, meet people, learn about languages and cultures, read books, think new thoughts, and write (a lot). I want to have stimulating, deep conversations with people. I want to spend time on my guitar, and explore what I can do with it. I want to spend more time being creative, and less time repeating meaningless routines. While I should probably also think about financial growth and career progression, these two things somewhat come lower in rank in my list of frustrations. To use a teenage rebellious phrase not used in a long time -- whatever. 

To travel. 

Here's a list of posts like the one I did last year, except this year there are fewer posts -- and in vain I hope the quality compensates for the decrease in quantity.  

1. A Picture of A Modern Man (January)

2. Doing Philosophy is Like Wiping Glasses (February)

3. How Real is Traditional Chinese Medicine? (February)

4. 點解要用粵文? (March)
5. On philosophy of [an empirical science] (March)
6. Storm(s) (August)
7. Practicalities and the Moment (August)

Practicalities and the Moment

The question of how much time and effort we ought to give over to feasible, (social) norm-aligning commitments which look rewarding in the long term, versus ones which are passionate and highly gratifying (feverish, even) in the short-term but looks hardly maintainable in the foreseeable future, manifests itself as a recurring motif in many human lives. While initially the former may seem obvious to be the wiser choice, reality rarely presents its questions and dilemmas in such a simple form. Although we have a natural inclination to look forward into the future, and hence that it would seem natural to seek long-term stability and security, we may sometimes be confronted by the fact that life is indeed very short, and that there is always scarcely enough time to spend on what one is madly passionate about. If our lives are essentially constituted of our memories of moments (of happiness, or banal survival) in our lives with a continuous stream of moments extending into the present, then ought we not make sure that each of these moments are meaningful, unforgettable, and well-lived? After all, the past and the present does come in much greater certainty than the future. Seize the day, and the moments that you have seized will be unchangeable and yours forever, assuming that your memory and sanity remains intact.  

Das versteht ihr alle nicht, ha ha! 

Yet if all of this was so elegantly simple, then no original dilemma would have existed in the first place; if the choice between practicality and seizing the moment was so easy, then as a recurring motif in life, this would be a motif no more significant than the mechanical routine of breathing, eating and sleeping. Humans have an innate psychological will which drives them to achieve stability, to settle, and to construct something permanent (be it a relationship, ideas, or physical things). To do this, one must indeed look farther into the future, and avoid being distracted by the short-lived glitter that tempts you from the side. 'Temptation' is merely a derogatory label, and whether something is a temptation is already decided by your own opinion of the whole matter. Whether ignoring the 'glitter' is the right choice, of course, depends on what is the source of the will that drives you to action. In other words, what you truly value (or strongly care about) will ultimately determine what perspective you adopt, or what reasons you would (be inclined to) offer to justify your actions. 

If what glitters on the side can so easily be dismissed as a mere delusion, or something of no particular value, then perhaps it does psychologically reflect that -- for you -- it is not a moment worth seizing. 

Storm(s)

Sometimes, certain events and relationships in life can really catch you off guard, and threaten to dismantle the entire set of beliefs and values that you once depended on for survival. Such events and relationships affect us emotionally, and attack us where we are most vulnerable: no human made of flesh and blood who is male or female, intelligent or brute, wealthy or poor, idealist or pragmatic, is impenetrable at his or her heart. The heart represents the set of things that we value or care about the most. We do not need to be conscious of what we value to actually care about things: deprive a man of something that you suspect he loves and offer him no prospect of getting it back, and if he does indeed value it, you will subsequently see that you have also deprived him of his vitality, his appetite, his sleep, his control over his facial expressions, and his meaning to live. By attacking his heart, you plunge the man into a state of emotional excess, and if that doesn't generate extreme sadness, then you may yield extreme hatred, or anger. If you are tempted to think that such extreme emotions only exist on an abstract, conceptual level, reconsider; emotions generate real physiological effects, and in the case of extreme emotions, the physiological effects produced by those emotions can be absolutely crippling.

And when these events and relationships hit us, or when we know that such things are about to turn our lives upside-down, there are few things that one can do. Like knowing that a violent storm is coming straight at you and you have no place to shelter yourself, the only thing to do is to brave the storm; or face the music, so to speak. Under these circumstances, there are only two roads that one can take: stand strong in the face of rain and wind - at least a last attempt, struggle at survival -  or perish quietly and insignificantly.