Unless you think giving money to homeless people actually solves problems beyond the immediate, tipping our “front line” service workers is not some great panacea either.
If you actually think workers are underpaid (hint: they aren’t), tipping only allows employers to further depress wages.
Being guided by the “well, it’s the least I can do” spirit isn’t the worst thing ever, but it does often prevent honest conversation about hard problems.
It’s clear enough that grand, life-changing goals are quite hard to meet. Your resolve begins solidly, but in no time at all, desires intervene and adherence crumbles.
AA attempts to combat this decay with a “one day at a time” ethos. This can work … until the ruse is grasped: you peer ahead and remember days become weeks become months become years and that “one day at a time” is just an alternate expression of a chilling reality where you are asked to change behavior forever.
Forever is never easily reconciled. This is true for both things we like (i.e., love) and don’t (i.e., deprivation). Lent avoids this biggest-of-big asks. You only have to change for 40 days. That’s it. Then, normalcy can resume. Whenever you start to waver, you know relief is around the corner, and that knowledge changes the internal calculation dramatically. Suddenly, you can hold out à la your toughest heroes.
Then day 41 hits and you did it! Ain’t nobody faulting you for some good old-fashioned splurging. For a certain type of person, though, the 40 days have reduced such desires. Why not run it back? Did I even desperately miss that which I thought I couldn’t live without?
So that certain person repeats the process just ’cause. The renditions begin blurring together with one noticeable difference: the compulsion to return to the pre-Lent state diminishes inversely with the number of “Lents” completed. Do this enough and further doesn’t seem forever.
What sounds intelligent in a conversation or a meeting, or, particularly, in the media, is suspicious.
Heroes are heroes because they are heroic in behavior, not because they won or lost.
A mistake is not something to be determined after the fact, but in the light of the information until that point.
At a given time in the market, the most successful traders are likely to be those that are best fit to the latest cycle. This does not happen too often with dentists or pianists – because these professions are more immune to randomness.
Loyalty to ideas is not a good thing for traders, scientists – or anyone.
For instance, you study every day and learn something in proportion to your studies. If you do not feel that you are going anywhere, your emotions will cause you to become demoralized. But reality rarely gives us the privilege of a satisfying linear positive progression: You may study for a year and learn nothing, then, unless you are disheartened by the empty results and give up, something will come to you in a flash.
But any man who walks in the way of power and property is bound to meet hate. So when speakers stood up when the occasion demanded and said “Our beloved Mayor,” it was one of those statements that everybody says but not actually believes like “God is everywhere.”
he’s uh man at changes everything, but nothin’ don’t change him.
They bowed down to him rather, because he was all of these things, and then again he was all of these things because the town bowed down.
She found that she had a host of thoughts she had never expressed to him, and numerous emotions she had never let Jody know about. Things packed up and put away in parts of her heart where he could never find them. She was saving up feelings for some man she had never seen.
It drives me crazy that people expect Donald Trump to change, that they still are aghast when he is who he has always been.
But do I do this in my own life? Do I expect people to change and evolve beyond their long-proven natures? If so, I should stop. Like, now.
All frustration comes from other people not behaving the way you want them to.
Phone “addiction” is filled with far too much unrewarding wandering: rather than doing “nothing,” you might as well do “something,” so you scroll and click to pass time.
TV “addiction” is far more dangerous because there is such an abundance of content that’s richly rewarding, that’s truly more pleasurable than so much of “real life.” How does anyone ever sleep with so much good stuff to watch?
Though I guess “abundance” is quite subjective. If you spend enough time in either “addiction,” you reach the same point of unrewarding wandering. Worse still, there may well be a terrible price for extended trips into the passivity that’s endemic into screen consumption: you lose your own creativity.
What follows is thinking hand-crafted for an adult1 who was broken up with. This person is, naturally, seeking some form of validation. Thus, this person will manufacture both reasonable and unreasonable explanations that permit a reach out to the ex. Not capitulating can feel impossible, but breaking silence can safely be regarded as a mistake in all circumstances and should be avoided.
Reaching out is never truly about what you’ll say; it is about what you want to hear. This is the universe of possible things that can be heard – none of which are worth hearing:
“I made a mistake. I want to get back together.”
“You fucked up.”
“You were great, but just not right for me.”
“I’m sorry for x, y, and z.”
“I have nothing to say. I haven’t thought about you at all.”
“Let’s be friends.”
There’s some girl in pants costing no less than $125.95 standing at the x, posing for a few selfies pre-run. Once she sees me humming, the faux smile fades, the camera slides into a nifty side pocket, and she begins running in earnest. For she thinks she knows what’s coming. She thinks I’m going B-A-B, a popular route, no doubt, and she, like any person raised in this brutal dog-eat-dog world, wants to win. Still, while getting passed with her considerable head start would be unpleasant, it’s salvageable under some invented story about my genetically advantaged lung capacity. If that unfortunate outcome did indeed occur, she’d still probably receive credit from her friends for trying so hard on a Saturday when they themselves were busy indulging in “mindless” activities. What this poor victim didn’t know, however, was that I was going B-A-C-B, and losing the race to B given my impossible handicap would not be at all o.k.
Worse still, because she decided to never turn around, whereby she could have quickly understood I wasn’t going B-A-B and appreciated the humiliation risk in play, she assumed the lack of huffing and/or footsteps behind her meant the race, with 100 meters to go, was hers. Her mind thus drifted to which witty line or two to place underneath those pre-run selfies she now simply could not wait to post. The BE IN THE MOMENT gospel misses the beauty of daydreams like this. The moment was filled with one final climb, and she’d rather just skip ahead, in her mind, to what was to follow. No sensible person could blame her. Unfortunately, she happened to be dealing with a true menace, a menace who cares not about sensibilities or loyal IG followers.
The last anyone saw her, she was headed to xxxxxxxxx. I sure do hope they aren’t out of ventilators.
All ya gotta do is deprive yourself.
Wanna have the best lunch in what feels like centuries? Don’t eat for a week. Or, more plausibly, eat bare essentials for a week, and then eat “normal” foods again.
This is low-hanging joy available to anyone with a modicum of discipline.
on changes in people’s appearance – the reflex is too natural.
This reflex overrides any sense that the comment is often entirely devoid of substance and has been uttered by dozens of others too.
“Wow. A new beard.” What is the point of this?