A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
"Who I am is where I stand.
Where I stand is where I fall."
-Steven Moffat, Doctor Who
I have a lot of darkness in my head due to my upbringing. I'll never get it out. That doesn't stop me from being a good man, because who you are and what you'll be remembered as isn't your internal struggle, its what you chose to stand for in practice.
"You know, sweetheart, if there's one thing I've learned, it's this: nobody knows what's gonna happen at the end of the line, so you might as well enjoy the trip." Manny Calavera
You don't need to do everything every day. Some days, surviving is enough.
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.
It's all so tiresome - Lao Yang in the 2011 documentary Empire of Dust
It's not a party if it happens every night
"republicans are pussies" - me. thanks
Life's tough for everyone
-Grandpa
Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee? But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.
~ Camus
"be someones angel"
quote from this little video that really stuck with me, as silly as it might sound
I suppose it's less about the quote origin and more about what we make it to mean :)
The pleasure of being understood is underrated
Oof. I felt that.
Not so much a quote as a poem, but it's brief so here's the whole thing:
They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another's throats.
Man hands on misery to man, It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don't have any kids yourself.
As for what it means to me, I think it speaks for itself. It's bleak and devastating, yet beautiful. I love the elegance and simplicity of the writing. It's the only poem I have memorized because it's so aesthetically pleasing and emotionally resonant. It has stuck with me since I first heard it over 10 years ago.
It's beautiful and I can understand why it sticks.. Thanks for letting us know!!
Perhaps today is a good day to die. Prepare for ramming speed!
Hitchens on the death of Jerry Falwell: "If they gave his corpse an enema, they could bury him in a matchbox."
"Someone once said that love is the best medicine. He was wrong, though; its crack." Source Unknown
"When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all." -A clump of talking stars in Futurama I look at it like being a good custodian or someone who takes pride in the smallest details of their work, regardless of whether or not you receive recognition for them. Most people don't notice the effort being put in when things are running smoothly. The work of the people behind the scenes is directly responsible for successes in the spotlight.
That's a loose quote from the Tao te ching.
Interesting. Something new to look up!
Oh and there's also this one ftom H2G2 :
Slartibartfast: Perhaps I'm old and tired, but I think that the chances of finding out what's actually going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say, "Hang the sense of it," and keep yourself busy. I'd much rather be happy than right any day. Arthur Dent: And are you? Slartibartfast: Ah, no. [laughs, snorts] Slartibartfast: Well, that's where it all falls down, of course
Douglas Adams was a gift to humanity.
"See first, think later, then test. But always see first" is a good one.
"Like they should have stopped Hitler at Munich, they should never let him get away with that, they was just asking for bad trouble." Peter Clemenza, The Godfather
Recently, I learned about a historical quote, from French PM Daladier on his way back from Munich where he knew he gave everything to Hitler.
He got out his plane, expecting to be lynched or thrown oranges at, and people, when he realized people were praising him as a herald of "peace", let out this magnificent "Ah.. what a bunch of idiots".
"True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country." ~ Kurt Vonnegut
"Feelings are like children, you can't let them drive, but you can't put them in the trunk."
But I feel that one has a ¨spiritual parent¨:
"Educate a child so you don't have to reprimand an adult."
and a ¨spiritual sibling¨:
"If your only tool is a Hammer then every problem looks like a Nail."
"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt" - Often wrongly attributed to Mark Twain or Abraham Lincoln but the earliest record is Maurice Switzer
Mine is similar, but said by Plato. ”Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something”
"History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake" - Stephen Daedalus in Ulysses by James Joyce.
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
George Orwell, 1984
“No matter where you go, there you are.”
Made absolutely no sense to me when I was younger. Now, I get that it means changing one’s location or situation in an effort to avoid something doesn’t work. You’re still you, you’re there, and the problem still exists. Obviously some situations can be improved by leaving them, so the statement isn’t completely correct, but there’s plenty of truth to it.
“You can never go home again” also used to bug me, because of course you can physically return to the places you grew up. But if you’ve been away a good while the place you grew up in might have changed, the people will have changed, and you will also have changed. Home will be where you have made a new life. Your old home will be like trying to put on a shoe you haven’t worn in a few years. Yeah, it fits, but it doesn’t feel right. It’s not comfortable like it used to feel. Home isn’t there anymore. I kinda envy some people that I know who never left my hometown. They have the same friends, been hanging out for years, still get together for family stuff…but at the same time I’ve experienced a shitload more than they have. My original home doesn’t exist for me anymore.
"You can never go home again... but you can shop there."
My wife struggles with that second one a lot and I wish I knew how to help her.
Ramble
She's built up this golden fantasy of her childhood and where she's from, and she blames so much of what I file away as "normal life bs" on where we live now. Every time we visit her hometown I see the same problems there that she blames on where we live.
She has a hard time seeing the benefits of where we live now because she grew up in a tight knit extended family that closed the gaps so to speak. But that extended family has drifted apart. People have grown up. The old matriarchs and patriarchs have passed. That same tight knit family doesn't exist anymore in the way it used to.
She basically had a high quality, premade social group and support structure just handed to her growing up. She moved states and life events kept getting in the way of her building a new one. But she blames that on location rather than what is now a lack of effort. Issues she overlooked long ago (and still) with family are things she can't let go of when faced with them in potential friends.
And ultimately, the loss of these things just brings her sadness and depression. She's not in a state where she's interested in trying to make it work beyond saying she wants to verbally. Pretty textbook depression but there's complications right now in the way of her seeking help.
Apologies for the ramble/off my chest shit.
Comparison is the thief of joy. I think a lot of people could do with that one.
Something my grandpa said, sometime around 2006-2007 I think.
"The next world war, will be between the rich and and the poor, and the rich will win before the poor knows there's a war."
The woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those who sang best
Don't let the fear of the time it will take to accomplish something stand in the way of your doing it. The time will pass anyway; we might just as well put that passing time to the best possible use.
Earl Nightingale
Someone shared the phrase "The time will pass anyway" with me back when I was working on getting healthier. It was a constant reminder that there was no "best" day to start my journey and that anytime I was set back, I could pick things back up right away.
"we are born alone, we live alone, and we die alone. it is only through love and relationships that we create the illusion that we are not alone"
If the point of this one is to emphasize how no one lives your life except for you, that’s great and all but holy shit there are less depressing ways of getting that across.
Humanity is a social animal. If you live your life under the guidance that loneliness is omnipresent and companionship is merely an illusion I strongly urge you to rethink the way you go about your days. Find people to talk to in person and do things with them.
I think capitalism and the ruling class has desperately tried to convince everyone that they are alone because if the working class sees themself as one body the ruling class is fucked
"Hurt people hurt people"
Ever since I heard this, I became relatively more compassionate towards people, even if they piss me off.
But who hurt elon?
Yes. It's a doozy but true.
"If they knew better, they'd do better."