A love life (or lack thereof)

 

Happy Valentine's

The map is not the territory

 

I've been thinking: while fascination for the sublime, the abstract and the romantic (in the widest sense of the word) makes for a rich and exhilarating inner life, an insane superpower to cultivate would be to experience the thing itself, so to speak, and not feel like it pales miserably in comparison to all the heady stuff.

For a start, it must be nice to be picking up groceries and for the mind to not immediately go to, 'okay so what is all this about anyway?'

Prevention is better than cure

 

Whom to petition?

The human condition

 

In 'Sapiens', Yuval Noah Harari writes that unlike Gilgamesh, who goes on a quest for immortality and in the end realizes it's not for man to live forever, science is currently "busy investigating the physiological, hormonal and genetic systems responsible for disease and old age. They are developing new medicines, revolutionary treatments and artificial organs that will lengthen our lives and might one day vanquish the Grim Reaper himself.

[...]

Even if killing death seems a distant goal, we have already achieved things that were inconceivable a few centuries ago.

[...]

In the two centuries since the battle of Waterloo (1815) (when limbs were sawn off even in case of minor limb injuries, fearing gangrene), things have changed beyond recognition. Pills, injections and sophisticated operations save us from a spate of illnesses and injuries that once dealt an inescapable death sentence."

I find this very fascinating: looking at death not as an inevitable end but rather as another condition that might turn out to be preventable after all. And it's amusing to me how this pursuit of immortality as a desirable thing stands in contrast with how Ashwathhama (in the Mahabharata) was cursed (not blessed) to be immortal 😆

Other implications aside, on a personal level, if you could, would you want to live forever? (I'm currently in camp Hell no, unless I get to have a permanently still, serene mind)

How polite is too polite?

Had so much fun 'assembling' this image, dagger and all. Canva is wonderful!

There's this couplet (doha) by Kabir Das that I love very much and think about often:

बुरा जो देखन मैं चला, बुरा न मिलिया कोय |

जो दिल खोजा आपना, मुझसे बुरा न कोय ||

I set out looking for evil to chide,

Found it when I looked inside.

Winayaka

 Rehashed an old one

Lofty, loftier, loftiest

 

Had a whole lot of fun experimenting with this one.

'Before sunset' is among the loveliesssssst things I've ever watched and making this reminded me of this exchange from the movie:

Jesse: Have you ever spent time with monks or nuns? 

[...]

I was shocked - I expected them to be all glowering and stern but they weren't - they were quick to laugh and really easy to be around, very attuned to everything. They're not trying to hustle anybody, they're not trying to accomplish anything, they are trying to live and die in peace and be close with God or whatever part of them they feel is eternal - it's so refreshing to be around. You realize that the bulk of people that you meet are trying to get somewhere better, make a little more jack, get a little more respect, have more people admire them...it's exhausting.

Celine: Yeah, no kidding.

Jesse: And it's exhausting to be one of those people yourself. I'm at a monastery, greedy to be a little more spiritual, "I want to be a better person". You can't escape.