– No. Babies aren’t manipulative, perceptive, sneaky, or subversive. They just … are. Meeting their needs gives them a totally reliable base from which to begin to explore and make sense of the world. At this young age, their wants are the same as their needs. We can meet either one without worrying in the slightest about spoiling.
What do I do with him?
– Babies are built to fit into our busy days, not to be the center of them. Do your work. Clean house, run errands, fix your lunch, go places, and include your baby. A trip to the grocery store gives far more stimulation for him than the most elaborate toy. It’s sometimes called “benign neglect” – a mother focusing on her own tasks, meeting her baby’s needs almost absentmindedly, but meeting them all the same.
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WHO: “Infants should be exclusively breastfed for the first six months of life to achieve optimal growth, development and health. Thereafter, to meet their evolving nutritional requirements, infants should receive nutritionally adequate and safe complementary foods while breastfeeding continues for up to two years of age or beyond.”
The American Academy of Pediatrics: “Introduction of complementary feedings before six months of age generally does not increase total caloric intake or rate of growth and only substitutes foods that lack the protective components of human milk.”
§ Nighttime and Naptime Strategies for the Breastfeeding family
Breastfeeding is our biological norm.
We’re recommending that all breastfeeding mothers prepare for bedsharing whether or not they ever intend to do it, since research finds that most breastfeeding mothers do sleep with their babies at some point and preparing for bedsharing is safer than accidentally falling asleep together. And even those researchers who are concerned about bedsharing agree that by four months, it’s a non-issue.
Being Attached and Attuned
– a human relationship, a communication
– Breastfeeding is an intense relationship with great food on the side, not a perfect infant food that may include a relationship
– For a baby, the environment is the mother
– The newborn baby will have only three demands. They are warmth in the arms of its mother, food from her breasts, and security in the knowledge of her presence. Breastfeeding satisfies all three.
– Normal newborn sleep involves short cycles, day and night.
– Baby on your body. Your body is everything to your newborn. He may be able to sleep without you, but he’ll be most stable and relaxed if he’s in physical contact with you.
– The infant calming response to maternal carrying is a coordinated set of central, motor and cardiac regulations.
BABY SLEEP, IN A NUTSHELL
– Babies need to be in their parents’ room for about the first half year for safety and to establish a pattern of security and trust that will reduce their need to cry.
– Newborns can’t sort out day from night, and can go no more than two or three hours between most nursings.
– Young babies are more stressed when they’re not in physical contact with their mothers. Prolonged stress isn’t healthy.
– All children leave their parents’ bed eventually, no matter what you do or don’t do.
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– Lying down and gazing at your peacefully sleeping baby can be luscious. Wakening gently to snorts and stirrings rather than being jolted awake by cries is definitely more restful.
– Melting into motherhood (going back to work)
– If you really can’t afford downtime yourself, a wear-carrier is a fabulous way to “nap the baby”. What a baby wants most is closeness, not conversation, and you can offer that whether you’re lying down or getting things done around the house.
– All nursing mothers gain precious minutes of extra sleep time when they bedshare. Mothers in the workforce surely need it most.
– Breastfeeding and bedsharing give you a superpower many working mothers don’t have – the ability to reconnect deeply every night at the same time that you multi-task feedings and sleep. Breastfeeding and bedsharing can be a total win all the way around.
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YOUR OWN SLEEP NEEDS
– Front-loading
– More time is often spent trying to fix the baby’s sleep ‘problems’ (which are normal waking and short sleep periods)… rather than finding ways to deal with the resulting (and inevitable) sleep deprivation).
– It turns out that some very productive people “front-load” their days, doing more work early in the day and – here’s the key – winding down earlier in the evening.
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GENTLE SLEEP NUDGING METHODS
– Nudging toward more mature sleep is all about letting it happen or helping it happen, but recognising that it’s not always best to make it happen.
– These nudges are completely different from sleep training methods, especially the kinds that make a baby cry it out, which work against a mother and baby’s instinctive, magnetic pull toward each other.
– Babies under 6 months- the un-nudgeables
Infants aren’t ready for any kind of nudging. They need round-the-clock, responsive mothering, Nighttime feedings are essential because babies are growing faster than they ever will again. And they don’t start consolidating sleep (sleeping longer stretches) until somewhere between 6 weeks and 3 months.
– Bedsharing: You already know that bedsharing mothers get the most sleep. Bedsharing babies have a gentle walking and falling back to sleep that translates to greater calmness for them and more sleep for you.
– Skin contact: Most babies sleep longer with physical contact. Chest-to-chest or body-to-body contact works best, but even putting a hand on the baby can help.
– Nursing several times at night is still normal for a baby over 6 months.
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SLEEP GADGETS
Swaddling devices
– Swaddling does tend to produce quieter babies who will accept sleeping on their backs alone for longer periods.
– Because their movements are so restricted, swaddled babies are less able to defend themselves against even the smallest problem.
Mittens
– Mittens mean sensory deprivation. Touch is a powerful sense to babies.
Sleep sacks
– Sleep sacks and sleep bags are a healthier alternative to swaddling or thick blankets
Wear-carriers
– We think a wear-carrier – sling, wrap, tie-on, buckle-on, or strap-on carrier – is an essential for almost every mother and baby.
Hands-free baby holders
– Nap wraps – designed specifically for holding your baby upright against you, chest to chest, hands-free, while you sit back and relax. They keep the baby snug enough to prevent sliding and loose enough to allow them to move their head and hands.
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THE FIRST FEW DAYS
– No burrito babies in bed
Swaddling is not the same as having the baby held snugly against your chest. Swaddling is designed to quiet a baby without adult contact.
– Milk on tap
The more your baby nurses, day and night, the more she keeps the balance of milk and gearing-up fluids in balance. Your milk will come in faster and painful engorgement is far less likely.
My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness – 2 Cor 12:9
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. – Romans 8:1-2
Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance, Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. – James 1: 2-4
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. – Romans 8:28
And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. – 2 Cor 5:15
– Suffering confronts us with the fact that life is not about us but about God. It is not about our glory but his It’s not first about our pleasure but about his. It’s not about our plans for us but about his well for us. It’s not about our control but his. It’s not about our little kingdoms but about his. It’s not about our successes but about the display of his majesty.
– We bring a rich, multifaceted inner world of thoughts, desires and emotions to every experience… you’re not just shaped by your experiences, but you give shape to those experiences as well.
Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. – Proverbs 4:23
Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. – Psalm 73: 25-26
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that outweighs them all. – 2 Cor 4:16-17
– When you are suffering, you have to force yourself to pay attention to your private conversation, that is, the words you say to yourself that no one else hears. We are always talking to ourselves about ourselves, life, God others, meaning and purpose, relationships, trouble, solutions, hope, the past, the future, etc. Because of this constant internal conversation, we influence ourselves more than anyone else does, because we hear what we have to say more than we hear anyone else.
Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings. – 1 Peter 5:9
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. – Matt 11: 28-30
– We never suffer just what we’re suffering, but we also suffer the way that we’re suffering.
– One of the hardships of suffering is profound feelings of weakness and inability… Suffering doesn’t make us weak; it simply exposes the weaknesses that have been there all along. It exposes the delusion of our sovereignty and independent capability. It’s painful to be confronted with who we really are and how needy and dependent we are.
– Discouragement is the experience of every sufferer. It is one of the burdens added to the burden of what’s already being suffered.
Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go. – Josh 1:9
– The identity you assign to yourself also determines your expectations potential and actions
May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word. – 2 Thess 2:16-17
– Alternatively, suffering can form in you new and beautiful things, things that grow only from the soil of difficulty. Suffering has the power not only to renew your hope but also to transform it. Suffering can give you a type of strength unrelated to your gifts, health, power or position. Suffering has the power to help you see where you’ve been completely blind but didn’t know it. Suffering can bless you with a joy that’s independent of life being easy and people liking you. Suffering has the power to turn your timidity into courage and your doubt into surety. Hardship can turn envy into contentment and complaint into praise. It has the power to make you tender and approachable, to replace subtle rebellion with joyful surrender. Suffering has the power to form beautiful things in your heart that reform the way you live your life. It has incredible power to be a tool of transforming grace.
– Suffering exposes weaknesses, not just in physical body or in our relationships but also in our hearts. Difficulty exposes weak joy, weak love, and fickle worship. Suffering reminds us that we are not as righteous as we’ve thought and not as faithful as we’ve confessed to be. Suffering brings you and me to the end of ourselves, It exposes and confronts us. It makes it harder and harder to hold on to the delusion of our righteousness.
I will never leave you nor forsake you – Josh 1:5
– People are adding to their suffering by assuming power and control that they didn’t have and never will have.
– The Comfort of God’s Sovereignty: Suffering causes us to scan our lives and face the fact that we control very little… But realising we are not in control is also one of suffering’s biggest blessings… It is only when we abandon our independence that we find rest in one greater. Hopelessness is the only doorway to hope. When we forsake our trust in our power, we’re then ready to entrust ourselves to the power of another.
– So the rest of heart that every sufferer longs for never comes from demanding understanding. Rest comes from putting your trust in the One who understands and rules all the things that confuse you.
– Suffering causes you to hope that the day will be over, while you dread the day to come.
– The Comfort of God’s Purpose
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. .. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. – 2 Cor 1: 3-9
– But God has used my weakness, confusion, and fear to soften my heart and make me much more willing and able to enter into the trials of others with an understanding and compassionate heart.
– Your Suffering doesn’t belong to you
Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Saviour. The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to tread on the heights – Habbakuk 3:17-19
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand – when I awake, I am still with you. – Psalm 139:13-18
People are not driven by past causes, but move towards goals that they themselves set
Its only when we take away the lenses of competition and winning and losing that we can begin to correct and change ourselves
What you are lacking is the courage to be happy
There are two objectives for behaviour: to be self-reliant and to live in harmony with society. Then, the objectives for the psychology that supports these behaviours are the consciousness that I have the ability and the consciousness that people are my comrades.
Adler made three categories of the interpersonal relationships that arise out of these processes. The tasks of work, tasks of friendship, tasks of love, and all together as Life tasks. The interpersonal relationships that a single individual has no choice but to confront when attempting to live as a social being – these are the life tasks. They are indeed tasks in the sense that one has no choice but to confront them.
Even if you are avoiding your life tasks and clinging to your life-lies, it isn’t because you are steeped in evil. It is only an issue of courage.
Pyschology of use and courage over psychology of possession
It’s not what one is born with, but what use one makes of that equipment.
Adlerian psychology denies the need to seek recognition from others. There is no need to be recognised by others.
This is the danger of the desire for recognition. In many cases, it is due to the influence of reward-and-punishment education. We are not living to satisfy other people’s expectations.
Real freedom is an attitude akin to pushing up one’s tumbling self from below.
The courage to be happy also includes the courage to be disliked. When you have gained that courage, your interpersonal relationships will all at once change into things of lightness.
Separation of tasks. Changing one’s own speech and conduct as a way of manipulating other people is clearly a mistaken way of thinking.
A way of living in which one is constantly troubled by how one is seen by others is a self-centred lifestyle in which one’s sole concern is with the “I”.
You want to be thought well of by others, and that is why you worry about the way they look at you. That is not concern for others. It is nothing but attachment to self.
Not self-affirmation – Self-acceptance
Accept what is irreplaceable. Accept ‘this me’ just as it is. And have the courage to change what one can change. That is self-acceptance.
Kurt vonnegut – God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom always to tell the difference. (Novel – Slaughterhouse-Five)
Resignation is having a firm grasp on the truth, seeing clearly with fortitude and acceptance.
Contribution to others does not connote self-sacrifice. Adler goes so far as to warn that those who sacrifice their own lives for others are people who have conformed to society too much. Contributing to others is for oneself, there is no need to sacrifice the self.
Self-acceptance, Confidence in others, Contribution to others – Linked as an indispensable whole, in a sort of circular structure
It is because on accepts oneself just as one is that one can have ‘confidence in others’ without the fear of being taken advantage of. And it is because one can place unconditional confidence in others, and feel that people are one’s comrades, that one can engage in ‘contribution to others’. Further, it is because one contributes to others that one can have the deep awareness that ‘I am of use to someone’, and accept oneself just as one is. One can self-accept.
Workaholics are simply trying to avoid their other responsibilities by using work as an excuse. One ought to concern oneself with everything, from household chores and childrearing, to one’s friendships and hobbies and son on; Adler does not recognise ways of living in which certain aspects are usually dominant.
Does one accept oneself on the level of acts, or on the level of being? This is truly a question that relates to the courage to be happy.
For a human being, the greatest unhappiness is not being able to like onself. Adler came up with an extremely simple answer to address this reality. Namely, that the feeling of ‘I am beneficial to the community’ or ‘I am of use to someone’ is the only thing that can give one a true awareness that one has worth.
If one really has a feeling of contribution, one will no longer have any need for recognition from others. Because one will already have the real awareness that ‘I am of use to someone’, without needing to go out of one’s way to be acknowledged by others.
Life in general has no meaning, whatever meaning life has must be assigned to it by the individual.
Someone has to start. Other people might not be cooperative, but that is not connected to you. My advice is this: You should start. With no regard to whether others are cooperative or not
The truth – that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. […] The salvation of man is through love and in love.
Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance. […] Nothing could touch the strength of my love, my thoughts, and the image of my beloved.
The intensification of inner helped the prisoner find a refuge from the emptiness, desolation and spiritual poverty of his existence, by letting him escape into the past. […] As the inner life of the prisoner tended to become more intense, he also experienced the beauty of art and nature as never before. Under their influence he sometimes even forgot his own frightful circumstances.
In a last violent protest against the hopelessness of imminent death, I sensed my spirit piercing through the enveloping gloom. I felt it transcend that hopeless, meaningless world, and from somewhere I heard a victorious “Yes” in answer to my question of the existence of an ultimate purpose.
A man’s suffering is similar to the behavior of gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the “size” of human suffering is absolutely relative.
But what about human liberty? Is there no spiritual freedom in regard to behaviour and reaction to any given surroundings? Is that theory true which would have us believe that man is no more than a product of many conditional and environmental factors – be they of a biological, psychological or sociological nature? […] Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.
And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, you inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become bolded into the form of the typical inmate.
Dostoevski said once, “there is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.” […] It is this spiritual freedom (the way they bore their suffering) – which can be taken away – that makes life meaningful and purposeful.
There is also purpose in that life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man’s attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces. If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.
Nietzsche’s words, “He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how”.
It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life – daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfil the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual. These tasks, and therefore the meaning of life, differ from man to man, and from moment to moment. Thus it is impossible to define the meaning of life in a general way. No man and no destiny can be compared with any other man or any other destiny.
There was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.
Nietzsche – Was mich nicht umbringt, macht nicht starker. – That which does not kill me, makes me stronger.
I also mentioned the past; all its joys, and how its light shone even in the present darkness. Again I quoted a poet – “Was Du erlebst, Kanne keen Macht Der Welt Dir Rauben” (What you have experienced, no power on earth can take from you.) Not only our experiences, but all we have done, whatever great thoughts we may have had, and all we have suffered, all this is not lost, though it is past; we have brought it into being. Having been is also a kind of being, and perhaps the surest kind.
A man who for years had thought he had reached the absolute limit of all possible suffering now found that suffering has no limits, and that he could suffer still more, and still more intensely.
But for every one of the liberated prisoners, the day comes when, looking back on his camp experiences, he can no longer understand how he endured it all. As the day of his liberation eventually came, when everything seemed to him like a beautiful dream, so also the day comes when all his camp experiences seem to him nothing but a nightmare. The crowning experience of all, for the homecoming man, is the wonderful feeling that, after all he has suffered, there is nothing he need fear anymore – except his God.
Mental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish. We should not, then, be hesitant about challenging man with a potential meaning for him to fulfill. What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.
The meaning of life
One should not search for an abstract meaning of life. Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfilment. As each situation in life represents a challenge to man and presents a problem for him to solve, the question of the meaning of life may actually be reversed. Each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.
The essence of existence
“Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!”
I wish to stress that the true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than within man or his own pysche, as though it were a closed system. Being human always points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than oneself – be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself – by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love – the more human he is and the more he actualises himself.
We can discover this meaning in life in 3 different ways
1) by creating a work or doing a deed
2) by experiencing something or encountering someone
3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering
The meaning of love – live is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality.
The meaning of suffering
Man’s main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life. That is why man is even ready to suffer, on the condition,to be sure, that his suffering has a meaning.
In no way is suffering necessary to find meaning. I only insist that meaning is possible even in spite of suffering – provided, certainly, that the suffering is unavoidable. To suffer unnecessarily is masochistic rather than heroic.
The burden of unavoidable unhappiness is increased by unhappiness about being unhappy. The incurable sufferer is given very little opportunity to be proud of his suffering and to consider it ennobling rather than degrading so that he is not only unhappy, but ashamed of being unhappy.
The Super-meaning
What is demanded of man is not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaningless of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms.
The collective neurosis
A human being is a finite thing, and his freedom is restricted. It is not freedom from conditions, but it is freedom to take a stand toward the conditions.
Things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining.
The case for a tragic optimism
Tragic triad – pain, guilt and death
But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to be happy. A human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy, last but not least, through actualising the potential meaning inherent and dormant in a given situation.
People have enough to live by but nothing to live for; they have the means but no meaning.
The opportunities to act properly, the potentialities to fulfill a meaning, are affected by the irreversibility of our lives. In the past, nothing is irretrievably lost, but rather, on the contrary, everything is irrevocably stored and treasured.
Instead of possibilities in the future, the old have realities in the past – the potentialities they have actualised, the meanings they have fulfilled, the values they have realised – and nothing and nobody can ever remove these assets from the past.
For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.
What then is man?
He is a being that always decides what it is. This thinking, this consciousness – it constitutes the dignity of man.
Have learnt and been reminded of important matters, meanings of life by this book. And hope to remember the convictions from the below excerpt:
“I have tried to live my life such that in the hour of my death I would feel joy rather than fear.” Pilecki
The Feeling Brain drives our Consciousness Car because ultimately, we are moved to action only be emotion.
Every problem of self-control is not a problem of information or discipline or reason, but, rather, of emotion. Self-control is an emotional problem; laziness is an emotional problem; procrastination is an emotional problem; underachievement is an emotional problem; impulsiveness is an emotional problem.
Speaking to both brains, integrating our brains into a cooperative, coordinated, unified whole. Because if self-control is an illusion of the Thinking Brain’s overflow self-regard, then it’s self-acceptance that will see us- accepting our emotions and working with them rather than against them.
True freedom doesn’t really exist because we all must sacrifice some autonomy for stability.
Nietzsche called the elite the “masters” of society, as they have almost complete control over wealth, production, and political power. He called the working masses the “slaves” of society, because he saw little difference between a labourer working his whole life for a small sum and slavery itself. Master morality is the moral belief that people get what they deserve. It’s the moral belief that “might makes right”, that if you earned something through hard work or ingenuity, you deserve it. No one can take that from you, nor should they. You are the best, and because you’ve demonstrated superiority, you should be rewarded for it. Conversely, Nietzsche argued, the “slaves” of society would generate a moral code of their own. Whereas the masters believed they were righteous and virtuous because of their strength, the slaves of society came to believe that they were righteous and virtuous because of their weakness. Slave morality believes that people who have suffered the most, those who are the most disadvantaged and exploited, deserve the best treatment because of that suffering. Slave morality believes that it’s the poorest and most unfortunate who deserve the most sympathy and the most respect.
These conflicts must exist because they maintain the meaning and purpose for people within the group. Therefore, it is the conflict that maintains the hope. So, we’ve got it backward: everything being fucked doesn’t require hope, hope requires everything being fucked. […] Hope requires that something be broken. Hope requires that we renounce a part of ourselves and/or a part of the world. It requires us to be anti-something.
Nietzsche – Formula for greatness
Nietzsche instead believe that we must look beyond hope. We must look beyond values. We must evolve into something “beyond good and evil”. […] “My formula for greatness in a human being,” he wrote, “is amor fati; that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it – all idealism is mendacity in the face of what is necessary – but love it.”
Amor fati, for Nietzsche, meant the unconditional acceptance of all life and experience: the highs and the lows, the meaning and the meaninglessness. It meant loving one’s pain, embracing one’s suffering. It meant closing the separation between one’s desires and reality not by striving for more desires, but by simply desiring reality. […] Hope for what already is – because hope is ultimately empty. […] Don’t hope for more happiness. Don’t hope for less suffering. Don’t hope to improve your character. Don’t hope to eliminate your flaws. Hope for this. Hope for the infinite opportunity and oppression present in every second. Hope for the suffering that comes with freedom. For the pain that comes from happiness. For the wisdom that comes from ignorance. For the power that comes from surrender. And then act despite it. […] To not hope for better. To be better. In this moment and the next.
(Nietzsche) I love those who do not know how to live, for they are the ones who cross over.
Immanuel Kant – Formula of Humanity
Kant argued that the most fundamental moral duty is the preservation and growth of consciousness, both in ourselves and in others. He called this principle of always putting consciousness first “the Formula of Humanity”. It explains our basic moral intuitions. It explains the classic concept of virtue.
The formula of Humanity states, “Act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means.”
To transcend the transactional realm of hope, one must act unconditionally. You must love someone without expecting anything in return; otherwise it’s not truly love. You must respect someone without expecting anything in return; otherwise you don’t truly respect him.
He decided that the only logical way to improve the world is through improving ourselves – by growing up and becoming more virtuous – by making the simple decision, in each moment, to treat ourselves and others as ends, and never merely as means. […] There are only the choices that you make in each and every moment.
When we pursue a life full of pleasure and simple satisfaction, we are treating ourselves as a means to our pleasurable ends. Therefore, self-improvement is not the cultivation of greater happiness but, rather, a cultivation of greater self-respect.
The maturity of our culture is deteriorating. Throughout the rich and developed world, we are not living through a crisis of wealth or material, but a crisis of character, a crisis of virtue, a crisis of means and ends. The fundamental schism in the twenty-first century is no longer right versus left, but […] of maturity versus immaturity, of means versus ends.
Pain Blue dot effect, the paradox of progress
The more comfortable and ethical a society became, the more that small indiscretions would become magnified in our minds. […] We’d just get equally upset about the more minor stuff.
Protecting people from problems or adversity doesn’t make them happier or more secure, it makes them more easily insecure. […] Material progress and security do not necessarily relax us or make it easier to hope for the future. On the contrary, it appears that perhaps by removing healthy adversity and challenge, people struggle even more. They become more selfish and more childish. They fail to develop and mature out of adolescence. They remain further removed from any virtue.
Pain is the universal constant of the human condition. […]Trying to eliminate pain only increases your sensitivity to suffering, rather than alleviating your suffering.
This is because pain is the experience of life itself. Positive emotions are the temporary removal of pain; negative emotions the temporary augmentation of it. To numb one’s pain is to numb all feeling, all emotion. It is to quietly remove oneself from living.
The pursuit of happiness is a toxic value that has long defined our culture. It is self-defeating and misleading. Living well does not mean avoiding suffering; it means suffering for the right reason.
Antifragility
The human mind can be fragile or anti fragile depending on how you use it. When struck by chaos and disorder, our minds set to work making sense of it all, deducing principles and constructing mental models, predicting future events and evaluating the past. This is called “learning” and it makes us better, it allows us to gain from failure and disorder. But when we avoid pain, when we avoid stress and chaos and tragedy and disorder, we become fragile. Our tolerance for day-to-day setbacks diminishes, and our life must shrink accordingly for us to engage only in the little bit of the world we can handle at one time.
Meditation is, at its core, a practice of antifragility: training your mind to observe and sustain the never-ending ebb and flow of pain and not to let the “self” get sucked away by its riptide. […] Most people avoid meditation […] because they know what meditation really is: it’s confronting your pain, it’s observing the interiors of your mind and heart, in all their horror and glory. […] The length of sustained contemplation is a strange experience: a mix of agonising boredom dotted with the horrifying realisation that any control you thought you had over your grown mind was merely a useful illusion.
While pain is inevitable, suffering is always a choice. That there is always a separation between what we experience and how we interpret that experience.
Th adult has an incredible high threshold for pain because the adult understands that life, in order to be meaningful, requires pain, that nothing can or necessarily should be controlled or bargained for, that you can simply do the best you can do, regardless of the consequences.
Pain is the currency of our values. Without the pain of loss, it becomes impossible to determine the value of anything at all. Pain is at the heart of all emotion. […] The more anti fragile we become, the more graceful our emotional responses are, the more control we exercise over ourselves, and the more principles our values. Antifragility is therefore synonymous with growth and maturity. Life is one never-ending stream of pain, and to grow is not to find a way to avoid that stream, but, rather, to dive into it and successfully navigate its depths.
The pursuit of happiness is, then an avoidance of growth, an avoidance of maturity, an avoidance of virtue.
Freedom Variety is not freedom. Variety is just different permutations of the same meaninglessness shit.
When we deny ourselves the ability to feel pain for a purpose, we deny ourselves the ability to feel any purpose in our life at all.
The only true form of freedom, […] is through self-limitation. It is not the privilege of choosing everything you want in your life, but rather, choosing what you will give up in your life.
The most meaningful freedom in your life comes from your commitments, the things in life for which you have chosen to sacrifice. […] Greater commitment allows for greater depth. A lack of commitment requires superficiality.
Hope Don’t hope for better. Just be better. Be something better. Be more compassionate, more resilient, more humble, more disciplined.
This book will not teach you how to gain or achieve, but rather how to lose and let go. It will teach you to take inventory of your life and scrub out all but the most important items. It will teach you to close your eyes and trust that you can fall backwards and still be okay. It will teach you to give fewer f*cks. It will teach you to not try.
True happiness occurs only when you find the problems you enjoy having and enjoy solving. Sometimes those problems are simple […] Other times those problems are abstract and complicated. Whatever your problems are, the concept is the same; solve problems; be happy. Unfortunately, for many people, life doesn’t feel that simple. That’s because they fuck things up in at least one of 2 ways:
Denial: Some people deny that their problems exist in the first place
Victim Mentality: Some choose to believe that there is nothing they can do to solve their problems, even when they in fact could.
The Self-awareness onion
The second layer of the self-awareness onion is an ability to ask why we feel certain emotions. These why questions are difficult and often take months or even years to answer consistently and accurately. Some questions are important because they illuminate what we consider success or failure. Why do you feel angry? Is it because you failed to achieve some goal? Why do you feel lethargic and uninspired? Is it because you don’t think you’re good enough?
But there’s another, even deeper level of the self-awareness onion. And that one is full of fucking tears. The third level is our personal values; Why do I consider this to be success/failure? How am I choosing to measure myself? By what standard am I judging myself and everyone around me?
Honest self-questioning is difficult. It requires asking yourself simple questions that are uncomfortable to answer. In fact, in my experience, the more uncomfortable the answer, the more likely it is to be true. Take a moment and think of something that’s really bugging you. Now ask yourself why it bugs you. Chances are the answer will involve a failure of some sort. Then take that failure and ask why it seems “true” to you. What if that failure wasn’t really a failure? What if you’ve. been looking at it the wrong way?
When we force ourselves to stay positive at all times, we deny the existence of our life’s problems. And when we deny our problems, we rob ourselves of the chance to solve them and generate happiness. Problems add a sense of meaning and importance to our life. Thus to duck our problems is to lead a meaningless (even if supposedly pleasant) experience.
We are responsible for experiences that aren’t our fault all the time. This is part of life.
There is no correct dogma or perfect ideology. There is only what your experiences has shown you to be right for you – and even then, that experience is probably somewhat wrong too. And because you and I and everybody else all have differing needs and personal histories and life circumstances, we will all inevitably come to differing “correct” answers about what our lives mean and how they should be lived.
This is why people are often so afraid of success- for the exact same reason they’re afraid of failure; it threatens who believe themselves to be. You avoid telling your friend that you don’t want to see him anymore because ending the friendship would conflict with your identify as a nice, forgiving person. There are good, important opportunities that we consistently pass up because they threaten to change how we view and feel about ourselves. They threaten the values that we’ve chosen and have learned to live up to.
You are already great because in the face of endless confusion and certain death, you continue to choose what to give a fuck about and what not to. This mere fact, this simple optioning for your own values in life, already makes you beautiful, already makes you successful, and already makes you loved. Even if you don’t realise it. Even if you’re sleeping in a gutter and starving.
You too are going to die, and that’s because you too were fortunate enough to have lived.
We’re all going to die, all of us. What a circus! That alone should make us love each other, but it doesn’t We are terrorised and flattened by life’s trivialities; we are eaten up by nothing.
And the primary. lesson was this; there is nothing to be afraid of. Ever. And reminding myself of my own death repeatedly over the years – whether it be through meditation, through reading philosophy, or through doing crazy shit like standing on a cliff in South Africa – is the only that that has helped me hold this realisation front and center in my mind. The acceptance of my death, this understanding of my own fragility, has made everything easier – untangling my addictions, identifying and confronting my own entitlement, accepting responsibility for my own problems – suffering through my fears and uncertainties, accepting my failures and embracing rejections – it has all been made lighter by the thought of my own death. The more I peer into the darkness, the brighter life gets, the quieter the world becomes, and the less unconscious resistance I feel to, well, anything.
Pretty interesting to read Singapore English. Enroute on plane.
The theme of strained, broken relationships stood out for me. Not all breakdowns can be explained, can be sympathised or empathised with. Things happen, and once they start, the wheels cant stop rolling.
Identifying our local psyche, or “culture”, helps us to reflect on it, and importantly, question if it should be like this or it should be changed. For example, are we striving to improve out of passion and principle, or because we want to be ahead of our neighbour? If the latter then why? Overcrowding for limited resources?
I hope I can be a good person in all situations. To do things as right as possible, by God and myself.
Words that brought back so many precious memories. Of mountains and skies that comforted, strengthened and inspired. Feelings of being Home, Alive, Real.
“The hospitality of our hosts revealed an extraordinary amount of kindness. Although they lived and ate simply, they treated their guests like kings, plying us with dhal bhat, aloo and sag, even slaughtering a chicken in our honour, an event reserved or special occasions.”
“Children in Aahale had no toys, and even the stubs of pencils were carefully used rather than discarded. Back at his home, Suboth proudly displayed his collection of coloured paper. Coloured and glossy printed material was so rare in the village that any scrap of glossy paper, whether it was a discarded medicine bottle label or an old advertisement, was hoarded and neatly folded.”
“The school was Mr Netra’s baby. He had built it from the ground up, with students he had personally groomed. Yet, to my concerned enquiries about the school, he replied: “Dr Kumaran, the school has received enough from you. Other people need your help more.””
“Here in the wild mountains, away from the manmade artifice of city life, you begin to appreciate the small things that you take for granted in efficient Singapore. It is in our human nature to forget to be grateful, until we are taken out of our comfort zone. That’s what mountains do for us.”
“The summiting of Mt Everest does not define me… […] What defines me is how I respond to the routine occurrence of sarcasm and condescending language; how I respond to the good and bad human behaviour. What defines me is how I deal with my own failure, how I deal with the journey that leads to an outcome.””
“The teahouses, buzzing with activity, were where everyone spent the night along the trail. There were often extensions to the homes of the Sherpas living in the Khumbu valley. The private quarters of the Sherpa family would sit to one side of the tea house, with the public lodging on the other side typically featuring dormitory-style rooms, toilets and a dining room for trekkers. Nowadays, it is more common to see teahouses expressly built as lodgings, with the local families living offsite. For the Khumbu trekker, teahouses were a haven of rest along the trail, where many a vivid conversation with teammates and other trekkers took place, and where we recharged for the night before facing another day of strenuous hiking.”
Kala Patthar, my personal highest point.
“Growing up, I naively believed in the supremacy of cause-and-effect. I believed I was in control of my circumstances- if I worked hard, I would succeed, if I didn’t I failed. […] overlaying that fact if another fact: There are forces completely beyond human control.[…] Our lives are not in our hands. Ego gives way to awe. Knowing this has helped me to hold things a little lighter. I will do everything within my means to achieve what is important to me. But if I don’t, I won’t let it eat me up. The mountains taught me that. The very unpredictability of the mountains is its beauty. Perhaps in the end that’s why mountaineers climb.”
“Your comfort zone is a beautiful place, but nothing grows there.”
“On the contrary, they were two of my proudest climbs.[…] To go as far as my teams did, and in the case of Makalu, with only a handful of members, made these peaks high points in my climbing career. […] It made me aware of being sensitive to the challenges of others. We may not understand the extent of the difficulties they go through, but our perception does not invalidate their reality. On the opposite end, success can also be an illusion. […] his passion for the mountains had come at a cost. His wife had left him and his only child did not talk to him except when he needed money, […] He related all this with deep regret. Beneath his public persona of success were unseen failures. In the end our success and our failures are defined by ourselves, not by others.”
“”It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves” Stepping on a summit did not make me a conqueror. I never conquered a mountain; I only conquered my fears and insecurities.”
sincerity90. 