So last night, at the bowling alley (I just love saying that) I somehow got into talking to Evgenya about the importance of following through on your hunches, desires, impulses, pent-up longings and so forth. She agreed, but her philosophy has a slightly different angle. She says that for one reason or another, which may not readily be apparent, all your decisions are right. I think I got that right. She’ll let me know.
Anyway, she’s saying that the path you choose is always going to turn out to be the right one. She emailed me today a perfect example. She orders pizza and scarfs four slices of greasy mess against her better judgement and spends the next day reeeely under the weather, but it all turned out alright because Dub-A went over and took care of her (he’s a good lad that way), and they had a really good conversation.
Sure, maybe that’s not life-altering, but then again maybe it is. If you’re going to believe in fate or at least in your own judgement then that works out just fine.
But what I was getting at is that as much as possible you should avoid taking the paths you might regret later. Or, to be more specific, you shouldn’t take one path if you might later regret not taking the other one.
A tame example: you’re planning on going to the beach one day but when you wake up in the morning it looks a little drab out there and you decide not to risk it. You stay home and clean out the storeroom. Sure enough, it turns out to be a gorgeous day and you spent it sweating in a dustbath. OR (and this is the tricky part) it starts to rain and you’re happy you stayed inside warm and dry, but what you’ll never know is that your very dearest friend from back in the day and that you haven’t seen in ten years went to the beach and walked in the rain thinking about you. If only you’d gone to the beach!
So, what I’m saying is that you shouldn’t shy away from a little risk, or be afraid of a little discomfort. Life is never going to be perfect, but I’d so much rather a kaleidoscope of colour to a mottled gray. Wouldn’t you?
So who’s in for skydiving for my b-day this year?
I don’t think we’re contradicting one another. To take your tame example, you still can’t regret either decision. For instance: Option 1 is to stay home and it rains. you don’t think twice. it’s a good decision. if you find out later, that your long-lost friend was thinking of you that day, then great, you’ve somehow found a different route to your friend or else how would you have found out that he/she was thinking about you? Option 2 is you stay home and it’s sunny. Well, there were obviously things that needed to get done at home and you avoided an extra dose of UV radiation. great. Option 3: you go out and it rains, you run into your friend, friendship rekindled and you finally get back the pink floyd album he borrowed 10 years ago. great. Option 4, you go out, it’s sunny. that’s just great in and of itself.
See, each decision could never have been regretted. My friend, that’s all I’m trying to say.
g’night and see ya in couple of weeks.
e.
COMMENT:
I don’t think we’re contradicting one another. To take your tame example, you still can’t regret either decision. For instance: Option 1 is to stay home and it rains. you don’t think twice. it’s a good decision. if you find out later, that your long-lost friend was thinking of you that day, then great, you’ve somehow found a different route to your friend or else how would you have found out that he/she was thinking about you? Option 2 is you stay home and it’s sunny. Well, there were obviously things that needed to get done at home and you avoided an extra dose of UV radiation. great. Option 3: you go out and it rains, you run into your friend, friendship rekindled and you finally get back the pink floyd album he borrowed 10 years ago. great. Option 4, you go out, it’s sunny. that’s just great in and of itself.
See, each decision could never have been regretted. My friend, that’s all I’m trying to say.
g’night and see ya in couple of weeks.
e.
Perhaps it’s all about deciding that no matter what happens, that’s what should have happened, and it turned out right.
You control your mind and your reaction to what happens. That sort of thing. So if all the way along you decide that everything is As It Should Be, then life is easier.
Hrm. Lame. That reminds me of the simplistic religion-as-opiate arguments. :/ And yet I still believe it.