Every beautiful intellectual yoga pose that you think or debate yourself into also doubles as a perfect setup for someone to kick you in the nuts. After a while it becomes less about even bothering with testicular protection, and more about learning to sound smart even while speaking in a very squeaky voice.
Just though of that today.
Also:
Slamming your head repeatedly against a brick wall will turn you into a philosophical genius. And if that doesn’t sound profound to you, you haven’t slammed your head against a brick wall enough.
When asked “are you okay?” after a remarkably bad day, I muttered “Still on the right side of the ground.” I might have stolen that one from my dad, because it sounds like something he’d say.
Also, I condensed the entirety of every moral code that matters into only two rules. The rules are “don’t be a jerk,” and “don’t whine.” Nothing else matters.
The first one, of course, has been adopted as the number one rule on this message board. If the second one finds its way into the terms of use, though, I fear that the average posts per day in this place would drop like a lead weight with a rock chaser.
Back when I was working, I used to tell people who complained about being bored, “Enjoy the boredom. All the exciting things that happen in prison are really bad.”
“Nobody is ready to be a parent. Having children will make you ready.”
“The key to raising children is understanding that they can smell fear.”
“You have to get a license, take a class, and go through a waiting period to get a gun. If we did the same thing for parents, the world would be twice as good with half as many children.”
“If a female child acts like a boy, the worldwide response is “she’ll grow out of it.” If a boy acts like a girl, the response is that he’ll be fundamentally changed or harmed in some way.”
“The only difference between a child genius, a feral child, and a future serial killer is the quality of the parenting. No feral children grew up to be serial killers.”
“It takes a village to raise a child, it also takes a village to condemn Beavis and Butthead when the child goes bad.”
You know, I guess that I have heard this kind of saying a lot throughout my life. But it never really registered at all. I guess it sounded like some kind of macho posturing thing to me. Then, just the other day, a light bulb went off over my head, leading me to start this (not very successful, number-of-replies-wise) thread.
It just makes sense, really.
I shall hug it, and squeeze it, and name it George.
Definitely not supposed to be macho or other posturing, it’s really just about doing things which you would otherwise put off because you’re anxious about them. It could be walking into a new job, trying a new hobby or recipe or speaking to a stranger.
I suppose that a reason why it never made sense to me before is that I couldn’t visualize the logistics of “embracing fear”. How you would do that in practical terms. It didn’t occur to me to just think about it literally.
Me rambling about the god Phobos in that thread sounds a bit like a joke. But having a personification of fear is actually helpful. Now, I can talk to Phobos. I can have a conversation with him. Tell him to knock it off if he behaves unreasonably. And if he’s giving me a particularly hard time, and I haven’t been treating him with enough reverence lately, I can see his point of view. The relationship is still shaky as hell, don’t get me wrong. We’re not at the hugging stage yet (and I don’t think either of us are big huggers anyway). But at least we’re talking to each other now.
It works for other things, too. When I find myself glancing too long at a passing pair of boobs, I can turn to Aphrodite and ask her to give me a break.
(The really strange part? I think this maybe, kind of, sort of could be something like what practicing Greek and Roman religion might have felt like. At least maybe I’m getting a slight sniff of it. Those ancient were smart. And more practical than us when it came to religious stuff. It’s almost nothing like our idea of religion at all. Although I may be talking out of my ass about that.)
I should add: Fear isn’t that bad a guy, in some respects. There is such a thing as a healthy amount of fear. Otherwise you’ll start throwing yourself off bridges and walking into traffic.
I guess you could say that I’ve started couples therapy with fear. And I feel good about it. Maybe we can work something out.
Not sure what it means to ‘own it’, so that might be what I mean?
Hey, whatever works! It (Embrace the fear) isn’t a literal message, so I suppose how you acknowledge and accept the fear is up to you. Once you’ve done it enough times, it becomes a habit and much easier to do.
In my last weeks as a Christian I formulated the following slogans which I thought probably encapsulated what was new (I thought at the time), exciting and good in the attitude of the earliest Christians: