The Hassle comes from those folks who are watching through their parents’ eyes, applying their parents’ judgments, beating themselves up with their parents’ sticks.

That usually goes on for a lifetime, and is one of the big, big uses for drug use. Drugs quiet that down for a while, temporarily, enough to get a taste of life without it. And then it comes back.

I used to go backpacking for a week at a time without radio, without dog, just to listen to my head. It was the hassle. I couldn’t counter it until I heard it, loud and clear, and then could change it.

I don’t think it’s close to schizophrenia, as those folks seem to be living the observer role rather than watching themselves.

Who was it that said “The unexamined life is not worth living?” I too believe that wisdom is very much dependent on our ability to withdraw from our own consciousness and to observe, and even critique, our own behavior, as if we were an outsider. True objectivity demands that we be able to view ourselves abstractly, to see ourselves as others see us, to give ourselves a good talking to every now and then.

Too much of this leads to indecision, perhaps even schizophrenia, but a certain amount is essential or we will have no personal equipment available to us as a check on our mental activity.

I’ve spent a lot of time in my own head, trying to figure out just how it works, what makes me tick. I can’t claim to be any smarter than anyone else, but I do have a very good idea just how smart I am. I know what I’m capable of, and I know what my limitations are as well. And I know people who have never done this, and never gone there. They’re not that hard to spot once you know what to look for.

Some pray, but pray only for the wherewithal to endure, not for outcomes.

Good man!!

To be honest, I feel the Zone closes me.

I couldn’t read his mind, of course, but I knew him and loved him for over 40 years, I think I had some insight into him.

He wasn’t an ideological person, he hated the Communists, but it was personal, not political, they were simply the Enemy: los insurgentes. He spent very little time worrying about politics or economics, in fact, I doubt he ever thought about it in ideological terms at all, he certainly never talked about it that way. And he had absolutely no personal religious sentiments, he never went to church or prayed or talked about that either. I can’t say for a fact he was agnostic or atheistic, but I do know it seemed to matter little to him, and he always viewed the faithful and devout as rather silly and befuddled.

I’m sure he took life very seriously, he just didn’t need a reason to do so.

Actually understand my son more now because of this video. I can’t thank you enough for posting this.

I was open to this

My definition of humor is that it is the recognition of the absurdity of existence. Nothing in the world has to make any sense, there is no meaning to anything anywhere. There is pattern, but no order, a reason for everything, but a purpose to nothing. The world is a beautiful place, and a horrible place, but it is neither good nor evil, it is indifferent to us. It rumbles along in its own random fashion, like an avalanche, and like an avalanche, it simply doesn’t care if you are in the way. It doesn’t even know you are there. If you’re looking for meaning, you’re going to have to make your own. The good part is you get to define it any way you like.

I don’t mean to imply that nothing matters, that nothing is important. On the contrary, life is a very serious affair. It demands our full attention. But we get to define (there’s that word again!)what matters, and how. We get to pick what’s important. THAT is freedom, true freedom, the ability to decide what it is about this random, entropic chaos around us that we need to deal with, and how. It matters to us, and to those we love. But that’s the only thing that matters.
The only thing in the world is you, and yours. Everything else is just beautiful, but potentially deadly scenery. And in the end, it’s going to get you anyway, there’s not a damned thing you can do about it. And once you realize that, you have little choice but to laugh. You laugh or you get angry and bitter, or go mad.

I learned this from my stepfather. He was a humble man, of average intelligence and little education, but infinite wisdom and almost incomprehensible courage. He was born in the Cuban countryside, and had spent his life as a peasant, a soldier, a fugitive and an exile. He had been years in combat, fought in a brutal civil war, a no-quarter-asked, none-given guerilla struggle, and spent an endless year with a price on his head and a pistol in his coat, the secret police just one step behind him, forced to place his most beloved friends and family in mortal danger just to keep himself alive. But it had not broken him. He could function alone in a foreign country where he did not know the language and where he was forced to do the most degrading and monotonous work just to feed himself, and, eventually, to learn a new profession in his late middle age. And he still managed to live life cheerfully and bravely, and treat his new family and his stepchildren with a deep and genuine love, and always, an infinite good humor.

His hard life never succeeded in beating the humanity out of him. He always was able to abstract himself from his situation, shrug his shoulders, roll his eyes, and ask himself—what the hell is life going to throw at me NOW? It took me a long time to understand how he managed to cope, he could not explain it to me in abstract terms, but eventually by just witnessing his example, I saw how he did it. Life was a joke, an elaborate and complex joke, and it was on him. He was forced to roll through it all, like the bewildered Cantinflas character of Spanish film comedy (the Mexican Charlie Chaplin). Shit just happened, it happened to him, and he was stuck in the middle of it whether he liked it or not. Hell, you had to laugh. What other alternative was there?