Tag: thoughts

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.

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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.

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My SSD is full

August 30, 2020

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.

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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.

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Most of the time you don’t really think about that. Most of the time you are busy just living through the day, worrying about some small things. Which pair of sweatpants to wear while working today? Maybe no pants at all? But occasionally a sense of clarity flashes upon you, making you remember that which you forgot, or rather didn’t want to think about. That, which you kept pushing to the back of your mind, as dealing with it is annoying. That, the knowledge that sooner or later you will die. Global pandemics make you remember it more often than usual, I guess.

You will die. And what have you accomplished? Some might be satisfied with their adventures so far, but I sure ain’t. I’m not even sure what I would like to achieve. What should I be doing? Where should I be getting? What is the meaning of life?

As probably most, I’ve spent time thinking about it. For a bunch of time, my conclusion was that the meaning of life is to be as happy as possible, for as much of your time as possible. To have plenty of joy and fun and minimal amounts of troublesome stuff. Seek out the good, avoid the bad. I’ve been living like this for a long time now. Working minimal hours, barely enough to buy food and pay rent. Spending the rest of my time playing video games and watching funny stuff on the Internet. But I gotta admit, this lifestyle ain’t doing it. It makes me feel empty. It’s easy to live by only following your instant gratification urges, but that won’t make me feel like I’ve achieved much in the end.

I recently reached a new groundbreaking conclusion that the meaning of life is not to do fun things at all. Instead, it is to do meaningful things. And the meaningful things might not at all be fun. Those things would matter in the end. And I could die without regrets. Unfortunately, I still have to figure out what those meaningful things to do would be. I have some ideas, but they are out of reach, because I’m too stupid and weak. Not even that stupid and weak, more like average. But the things that seem meaningful are pretty hard.

So the questions still remain. What should I be doing? Where should I be getting? What is the meaning of life?

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