randyh
Level 4 Valued Member
To each his own. I have always liked this advice, attributed to Charles Buchowski (but I learned of it initially via Kinky Friedman)
"Find what you love and let it kill you. Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness. Let it kill you and let it devour your remains. For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it's much better to be killed by a lover."
No matter what route you choose to take in life there is always a toll to pay...doing what the society you were born into tells you to do to be happy, successful and valid has a price, reacting against that set of norms and following your own path has a price too (including rejection and ridicule by the more conventional folks). Either way, there’s no guarantee of happiness beyond one’s own personal decision to simply choose to be happy…everything else is allowing one’s self to be an emotional victim of circumstance.
I heard author Joyce Carol Oates interviewed many years ago and she observed that we all tell stories about our lives after the fact. We talk about what happened in the past. But, she went on to say if we are going to tell a story anyway, why not make it a really interesting one? Perhaps the more powerful way to approach life is to write out the story that you want to have happen and live into that story, make it happen. (Or another way to think about it is write the obituary you would like to have and create that going forward.)
"Find what you love and let it kill you. Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness. Let it kill you and let it devour your remains. For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it's much better to be killed by a lover."
No matter what route you choose to take in life there is always a toll to pay...doing what the society you were born into tells you to do to be happy, successful and valid has a price, reacting against that set of norms and following your own path has a price too (including rejection and ridicule by the more conventional folks). Either way, there’s no guarantee of happiness beyond one’s own personal decision to simply choose to be happy…everything else is allowing one’s self to be an emotional victim of circumstance.
I heard author Joyce Carol Oates interviewed many years ago and she observed that we all tell stories about our lives after the fact. We talk about what happened in the past. But, she went on to say if we are going to tell a story anyway, why not make it a really interesting one? Perhaps the more powerful way to approach life is to write out the story that you want to have happen and live into that story, make it happen. (Or another way to think about it is write the obituary you would like to have and create that going forward.)
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