Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we dont need.
Tyler Durden, Fight Club

Irony

The problem with society is that fools and fanatics are too sure of themselves while the wise are plagued by self doubt.- Bertrand Russel

It's actually bleedin complicated

These transformations cannot be gained without cost. They required my learning to live the rest of my days in the ambiguity of knowing that of all that I am, I am also the opposite. I cannot rid myself of my demons, without risking that all my angels will flee along with them”

Sheldon Koff

Be yourself

We camouflage our true being before others to protect against criticism or rejection. This protection comes at a steep price. When we are not truly known by the other people in our lives, we are misunderstood. When we are misunderstood, especially by family and friends, we join the 'lonely crowd.' Worse, when we succeed in hiding our being from others, we lose touch with our real selves. This loss of self contributes to illness in its myriad forms.
   
Sidney Jourard

Could it be more complicated?

The course of our life is determined by an array of selves that live within each of us. These selves call out to us constantly - in our dreams and fantasies, in our moods and maladies and in a multitude of unpredictable and inexplicable reactions to the world around us”

Hal Stone & Sidra Winkelman

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing
inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

Naomi Shihab Nye

Leo Buscaglia on a Zen Buddhism philosophy

Life is now. Yesterday is past and gone, and only real in its effect on the moment. The future is not real, and may never be more than a dream. Only this moment now is real. Yet, so many people live under the shadow of successes or mistakes past, or the possibilities and hopes of the future. They don't realize that when they deal with the unreal worlds, they are missing the moments, the accumulation of which make a life. Life becomes a series of moments, either lived or lost. Since moments pass, as time, there is soon nothing left and life is over, leaving some poor unfortunate souls having never lived at all.

Chinese proverb

Those who say it can’t be done should not interrupt the person doing it

Epictetus was a pretty wise guy

The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.

There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.

Whenever you are angry, be assured that it is not only a present evil, but that you have increased a habit.

When you are offended at any man's fault, turn to yourself and study your own failings. Then you will forget your anger.

The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.

It takes more than just a good looking body. You've got to have the heart and soul to go with it

Blimey; the cost of condoms

Just worked out that condoms cost 65 pence each. How can sex possibly be enjoyable
with that in the back of your mind?.

Add to that the delayed ejaculation on my meds (2 years apparently) and there seems little point

Re-interpreting success, failure, optimism, pessimism

Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable

The glass is neither half empty nor half full. It is still just half a glass, and maybe half a glass is enough.

Icarus wasn't failing as he fell to his death; just coming to the end of his triumph (Jack Gilbert). For a while there, he really flew.

What doesn't kill you doesn't make you stronger. You just live with it.

There is no closure. You just live with it

Randoms

If you want to make God* laugh, tell him your plans.
(*there are many different flavours)

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better (Samuel Beckett)

So it goes (Vonnegnt)

Life is snakes & ladders, yet we try to play it as chess

Worse than being stuck with someone else's bad idea, is being stuck with
someone else's idea of a good time.

We see people & things not as they are, but as we are

Yeats

Education is the lighting of a fire, not the filling of a pail

Simple

We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies - it is the first law of nature

Don't trust your dentist

Went to the dentist to get a new mouthguard fitted, to counter the night-time teeth grinding. As soon as the guard was fitted, a bell rang, she put on boxing gloves and punched me in the face. I'll be ready for her next time.

Can't give it away

One of the most difficult things to give away is kindness - it is usually returned

Not much of a reputation

I used to think i was really good at sex, until i discovered that all my ex-girlfriends had
had really bad athsma

Don't chase your thoughts

Don’t chase your thoughts. Like a dog chasing a plastic bone, we chase each thought as if pursuing something that will have a vital effect on our lives.
If we look more closely, the objects that the mind chases have as little nourishment as a plastic bone.

Prostituting your cat

Sleeping with prostitutes is like making your cat dance with you on its hind legs.
You know it's wrong, but you enjoy it more if you convince yourself that they're enjoying it as well

Scott Capurro

Smoking

'Cigarettes are very much like weasels. Perfectly harmless until you put one in your mouth and set fire to it.'

Boothby Graffoe.

Bring me sunshine

Those that bring sunshine to the lives of others,
cannot keep it from themselves

If you're not cultivating kindness, what are you cultivating ?

Now

The time is now for everything

Socrates says

Be slow to fall into friendship; but when in, continue firm and constant.

True wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Sometimes you put walls up not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to break them down.

If you don't get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don't want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can't hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.

Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.

My friend...care for your psyche...know thyself, for once we know ourselves, we may learn how to care for ourselves

Einstein says

Everyone sits in the prison of his own ideas

Arabic proverb

On the day of victory, no fatigue is felt

Bit of a mixture

After 12 years of therapy, my psychiatrist said something that brought
tears to my eyes - he said, "No hablo Ingles"

A lot of people never use their initiative because nobody ever tells them to.

Smoking will cure weight problems - eventually.

To cover the possibility of unexpected visitors, I can often be found eating my
dinner out of a drawer

A moose is an animal with horns on the front of his head, and a hunting lodge
wall on the back of it.

Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese

Perversion is whatever gives the Judge an erection.

What could possibly go wrong ?

A mute told a deaf man how a blind man saw a cripple walk on water

Drugs

Reality is for people who can't face drugs

Don't be fooled

I used to think that the human brain was the most fasincating part of the body,
until I realised what was telling me that

Steven Wright says

I installed a skylight in my apartment, and the people who live above
me are furious

 I went to a restaurant that serves "breakfast at any time." So I ordered French Toast during the Renaissance.

 I was walking down the street wearing glasses when the prescription ran out.

Shin: a device for finding furniture in the dark. 

Boycott shampoo! Demand the REAL poo! 

When I turned two I was really anxious, because I’d doubled my age in a year. I thought, “If this keeps up, by the time I’m six I’ll be ninety.”

Best of the Edinburgh Festival

Went on a once in a lifetime holiday. Never again

Barry the Bariatric

Bumped into Barry, wearing a sweatshirt with 'Guess' across the front

I dunno. "Thyroid problem"?

Mourning post

I was walking in a cemetery this morning and saw a bloke hiding behind a gravestone.
I said "morning."
He replied, "No, just having a shit."

Out to dinner

The Mrs nipped to the toilet just as I was about to order dinner.
The waiter asked "what will the lady be having sir?"
I replied "a shit probably"

Image of Jesus always appears on a slice of toast

Why automatically assume, when a shape resembling a bearded face appears in a jumble of chaos, that it is the face of Jesus? Why always a sock, or a piece of toast? Why never a shit stain in a toilet?
Why doesn't the Church have a quiet word with them, and tell them it is not a sign from God ?

Dialalama

Just had a wooly, long-necked animal delivered.
Was trying to get through to my spiritual leader, but turns out I called Dialalama by mistake

Milton Jones

....then they took away my cheese

Finished the vile process of Venlafaxine withdrawal, and started the Phenalzine.

Cheese and a few other nice things banned, but that's ok.

"And then they took away my cheese" seems not to sit very high on a scale of injustice.

"First they came for the Socialists

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew"
Then they came for my cheese
And there was no-one left to speak out for the Wensleydale

Breaking news: Conformity more dangerous than chloroform

The cost of conformity is that everyone likes you except yourself


Rita Mae Brown

Relative insanity

Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage 

Ray Bradbury

No truer word

No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself

  

The mother of excess is not joy but joylessness

  

Nietzsche

You never did

None of us has reached where we are solely by pulling ourselves up from our own bootstraps. We got there because somebody bent down and helped us

Thurgood Marshall

Confucius says

Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time  

Confucius

The Guest House

The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
 A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.


Jalaluddin Rumi

Stop grasping

The essence of it is to let yourself see how much clinging

to how you want your life to be is nothing more than a process

of self-torture. Drop it, and allow yourself to fall openly and

unguardedly in love with your life as it is and everything in it.

Anon

Let's meet in a field

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.

Rumi

Saved by many

Trust your wound to another
Let a teacher wave away the flies
and put a plaster on the wound

Don't turn your head. Keep looking
at the bandaged place. That's where
the Light enters you.
And don't believe for a moment
that you're healing yourself

Rumi
"Childhood Friends"

Keep looking at the bandaged place

We have not even to risk the journey alone, for the heroes of all
times have gone before us. The labyrinth is thoroughly known.
We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we
had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a God *.
And where we sought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves.
Where we had thought to travel outward, we will have come to the
center of our existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we
will be with all the world.

Joseph Campbell
The Hero with a Thousand Faces

*Whatever your particular flavour happens to be

Origin of Freudian slips

Freud sits down to dinner with his mother.
What he meant to say was "could you please pass the salt"
What he actually said was "you ruined my life you bitch".

Pavlov's dog

Figured my favourite dessert is Pavolva;
until I realised that was just an automatic response

Without love

Without love,
most of life remains concealed

Not a caravan of despair

Come, come whoever you are !
Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving.
It doesn't matter.

Ours is not a caravan
of despair

Come,
come even if you have
broken your vows
a thousand times
Come,
come yet again,
come !

Inscribed at the tome of Jelaluddin Rumi

The Ink Dark Moon

Although the wind
blows terribly here,
the moonlight also leaks
between the roof planks
of this ruined house

Izumi Shikibu

And there was a new voice

 ....and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognised as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing that you could do -
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Mary Oliver - The Journey

Convergence

We are all substantially flawed, wounded, angry, hurt, here on Earth.
But this human condition, so painful to us, and in some way shameful - because we feel
we are weak when the reality of ourselves is exposed - is made much more bearable
when it is shared, face-to-face, in words that have expressive human eyes behind them

Alice Walker
Anything We Love Can Be Saved

Show up, pay attention

Show up
Pay attention
Tell the truth, without judgment or blame.
Don't be attached to outcome.

Angeles Arrien
The Four-Fold Way

Mantra for always

May I be well
May I be free from suffering
May I be peaceful

Hovis Presley

She gave me a smile
from the top of the pile
which made me forget
why I'd called for a while.
But I have to admit
if push comes to shove,
round here, shop keepers
call everyone love

Vasectomy

Booked in for a vasectomy. Don't know if it will make a Vas Deferens.

Admired by a dog

Don't accept your dog's admiration as conclusive proof that you are wonderful