Tag: thoughts

I’ve read a bunch of books with religious undertones recently. They are nice, though most of them, regardless of continent of origin, write about the same stuff – how being kind and humble is the way to be. I mean, I agree with that. And hate myself for not being kind enough. But there are sooo many other kinds of books out there. Gotta read stuff from different genres to experience as many different things in your lifetime as possible.

Like, recently a friend mentioned that he started listening to the fourth audiobook of Wheel of Time. I read a couple of those books, and, well, they are like that thing. You know. That. Like, I found these results of a survey today, of which girl is the most popular in some mangas according to readers. And on the fifth place there was some girl I hadn’t heard of. I checked out the manga, and well, the girl was being bullied. In school. She was basically being tortured, in the first chapter she was bound to a chair in class for a long time and eventually pissed herself, and then the bully made her clean up the piss from the floor with her tongue. And then, at the end of the chapter, it turned out the bully was actually the one being bullied, the girl actually tortured him outside of school to make him bully her in class. And like, that girl was the fifth most popular girl character. I guess people have different tastes.

Anyway, I think my life has enough pain and misery that I don’t need to add any to it by reading painful books. That’s my opinion of the Wheel of Time series – when you read it, you really start to feel the agony the characters feel because it’s written so well. So I don’t think I’m gonna continue reading that one as my friend did. Instead, I think I’ll spice things up a bit by picking up another self-help book for a change.

There’s so much suffering in the world, most of which is brought upon us by other people. There are so many evildoers. Evil, or just indifferent, irresponsible people. People who cause others harm, through their greed, hate, selfishness. But just as I feel sorry for all the victims, I also feel sorry for the ones to blame. The people who make others suffer are not doing it because they have a choice. It is simply the result of the way they are. I know it from my own experience. Whenever I’ve made someone feel bad, it wasn’t as though I could have acted any differently. I acted as well as I could. It just turned out the way it did. In my case the misdeeds are minuscule on scale, for some their deeds have global consequences.

I feel sorry for everyone who causes others harm, for everyone who cannot be kind. I think being kind is the ideal way to be, as taught even by ancient religions. But most of us can’t help but just be the people we are and that is pitiable. I believe people act the way they do not because they decided to, but because of everything that had brought them to that point. A person’s genes, memories, their psyche eliminate all options except the one they will follow. And that one option just sometimes sucks balls for everyone involved.

The biggest, most impactful thing people can do in their lives, that anyone is capable of, is to be kind. It creates a lasting change. Easy to say, hard to achieve you say? Or perhaps, you care about your close ones but not about strangers? Well, listen to me a bit here.

Let’s imagine the total amount of happiness in the world is measurable with a number. Each time someone’s mood improves, the number nudges up. When some problem occurs somewhere, the World Positivity Score™ gets lower. The total amount of happiness in the world has probably increased over the past centuries, but it also has a lot of room for more improvement.

You might know about the law of conservation of energy – which states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed – only converted from one form to another. What I’m gonna say here, is that there actually is a way to create something from nothing.

If someone acts positive and polite even if there is no reason to, it will brighten the mood of everyone around them, who in turn will spread it to next people. It will turn into a ripple of good that reaches far. It cost the initial polite person nothing to be polite, yet his actions added happiness to the world.

That is how anyone can make a difference. Be nice. Find opportunities to create positive emotions in others. Your act of kindness will increase the total pool of good feelings in the world, which will continue to exist long after you are gone, moving from person to person.

Even you have a personality that creates more distress than joy around you, you can still apply this principle in your life. If you make a conscious effort, you can at least create a bit less negativity, even if it’s just once a year. Or throw a little spice of good vibes on top of your toxicity when you feel like you can.

My SSD is full, but that’s a story for another time. What I actually want to discuss this time is the hard disk in my head. My memory. It’s terrible. Like, most of the days I don’t remember what I had for breakfast. It’s even harder to remember stuff that happened days, weeks or years ago. But, for some reason, there are a few parts of my brain that store and recall information really well. One of these is my memory for long numbers. Another one is the memory for Magic: the Gathering cards. And the biggest baddest storage space of them all is the part of my brain dedicated to storing embarrassing memories.

I think from time to time that I should make a conscious effort to store pleasant memories too, so that I have something to bring up to counteract all the bad ones. There’s the negativity bias and all. It’s all human nature. It’s not just me. Most people have these random flashbacks to past pitiful events, especially when going to sleep or when your brain is otherwise not occupied with anything else. So you gotta work hard to pay attention to the good stuff, because by default you take particular notice of the bad stuff. Like, a small nice thing that happened might go unnoticed. But a small annoying thing can really ruin your mood. What will matter in the end though, are all those small pleasant things that happened during your lifetime. So let’s all work harder to store these precious moments as long-time memories.

I guess I’m pretty used to the lockdown by now. Or rather, it never was a problem. I’m one of those fortunate (or not?) people who haven’t had many changes to their lifestyle since the coronavirus closed all the establishments. There are two differences between then and now. I work from home now, and the pub quiz I used to go to is also over the Internet. I earn the money in my living room; I have fun with friends in the living room. I only leave the house to buy food.

It’s awesome. Honestly, I would keep it like this. The only problem is that I’m constantly worried that I’ll die an untimely death due to the disease, so I guess I wouldn’t mind if I got vaccinated against the stuff and THEN continued living the same way.