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comment by organicAnt
organicAnt  ·  4075 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What Do You Want, Hubski?

    I guess part of my question is, is this holding pattern 'okay'? Or is it statis?

Depends on how you feel about it. It's not something other people can define for you. If you're at peace with it then it is ok.

Bertrand Russell's essay, In Praise of Idleness is a good read and may help.

There's also a quote I found quite enlightening at the time regarding the expectations we have about life.

    The mass media [...] is drumming into you that in order to be a good citizen you have to have a great car, your own house, a family, a career, designer clothes, etc. After seeing this picture of the perfect “member of society” for decades on TV and in print your subconscious has absorbed the information and now you are convinced that you really need all these things (the same of course goes for attitudes and fashions). To get all this you have to really work hard. But you cannot work fast enough. You want these things now. So you buy on credit and with installment plans and slowly but surely you are caught in the net that has been laid out for you so perfectly, and obligations and debts will tie you up for decades.

    Add to this the family and the kids, the money for holidays, car repairs, etc. you are finally trapped in the vicious circle “created by yourself”, with your oh so many problems, so you find neither time nor inclination to check whether what you happen to be doing is what you actually want to do.

    And then some time you discover that you are not at all happy with what you created in the outer world and that today you would go about it differently but that now it is too late. [...] In addition you might feel inadequate to deal with all the problems and you look for refuge in drugs and alcohol. Once you have reached that point, the race of this life is all but over anyway. Yet some still make it. [...] it's never too late.

~ page 333-4, Secret Societies and Their Power in the 20th Century, 1995 by Jan van Helsing





_refugee_  ·  4074 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Thanks for this!