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Help Yourself


I haven't made a blog post for a while.  I'm not interested in recording my thoughts and feelings.  These are flashes.  When I have insight, it's not worth imparting.  I observe for my own edification, and my observations only work for me, as far as I know.  My therapist tells me that I have good insights and that I should compile a book of them.  I don't know whether my insights are good for others or not.  Because I don't know what other people's insights are, I have nothing to which to compare my own to evaluate any assessment of them.

Most of the observations I make about people are blind grabs made in desperation as I flail for purchase in a world that doesn't want to stop me from falling out of it.  I'm not grasping for handholds that I might instruct others to use.  I'm trying to make sense of the world for myself.  I presume that my specific confusions are limited to me.  But is there something I could say about people or life that might help someone?  Which, if any, of my ideas are special?

I am a situation.  "Me" refers to an ongoing series of events of perception.  There's no situation exactly like me.  My insight applies to my experiences alone, and those are few.  I avoid experiences.  I've tried to engage with the world, and I'm not a fan.  I don't want to engage with it anymore.  My best advice is to remain small and quiet.  Do little, expect nothing.  See what happens and react only as and to the extent that you must.  This is how I live my life.  I don't know how you want to live yours.  If you want to collect experiences, if you abhor restraint, then my advice isn't for you.  My insight into how one might best conduct an anhedonic life would, I imagine, be of no use to a determined hedonist.

I do have insights.  I don't care about them.  I don't need them to amount to anything.  One of my insights is that it doesn't matter what one chooses.  Life can't be wasted.  It is burned up as it passes whether one engages with it or not.  Be mindful of the sunk cost fallacy; no matter how well you spend your life, your life is spent.  Good things and bad things are the same.  Whether one is satisfied or not has no bearing on what unfolds beyond one's measurements of satisfaction.  Mine is the way of no way.  My self help book would have one page and two words: "Help yourself."

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