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April
April 30 Figurative comparisons are like sandcastles. They're small, rough versions of the concept you want to convey. You give your reader something they know, something they can see and allude to something similar but different, something that's still unfamiliar to your reader.
The ego is the part of you that is deluded. The clear-light mind is the part of you that eludes you.
April 29 Only make goals about inputs and habits, which are within your control, never goals about outcomes, which are out of your control.
A Michelin-star bowl of rhythmic, rhetorical, phonetic soup from Hozier's "Nina Cried Power":
It's not the wakin', it's the risin' / It is the groundin' of a foot uncompromisin' / It's not forgoin' of the lie, It's not the openin' of eyes / It's not the wakin', it's the risin'
You and I are neither the albatross nor the manta ray. We will never be able to fly or to breathe underwater, but we can learn to glide and to dive. We can find harmony among the sea and sky and live among those two worlds, which are now three. You and I have the opportunity to become the Creature of the Air and Sea.
One gives you a stick; Two gives you stilts. And Three is a tripod.
At the sentence-level, think in clauses. At the paragraph-level, think I'm sentences. At the essay-level, think in paragraphs.
Words are hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Clauses are H2O molecules. Sentences are little clusters of water-atoms. Paragraphs are droplets. Essays are consumable portions, usually served in a half-full glass.
April 28 Complex idea? Use a simple sentence structure. Direct, active language does not mean simple language. Actually, it is only with direct and active language that you can clearly communicate nuance. If you have a simple idea, flip the subject and predicate, add dependent clauses; get funky. But otherwise, be direct, so that you can be clearly understood.
April 27 On the Market for Meta-Writing
Most writers make their money by teaching writing. This used to be a mystery to me, but now it's clear why that is. The value in writing is in the writing, not in publication or recognition. The value is in the practice itself, which enriches your experience of the world and depends your understanding of yourself and others. The value in writing — more than anything, for any serious writer — is being able to do it well. That's why people pay to learn writing more than they pay writers for their writing.
There's a corollary here too, which is that words and books only have immense value when they are accessible. If books weren't affordable, they wouldn't be valuable, because their value is revealed as they are read. And a book's value can't quit be quantified, because it will vary dramatically by reader.
It makes sense why great writers teach writing. The people who really want to be great writers are already reading as much as they please and won't be spending any more money on books (giving more money to writers for their writing), but they will spend a lot more money to create something worthy of being read by others.
This is the model for many crafts — painting, carpentry, masonry — or any sport. People pay to learn these skills for their own sake, because they know how much value it will add to their lives (yes, at the level of the individual). What portion of little-league ball-players go on to play in the MLB? Probably the same as the portion of writers who become full-time authors.
The contents of my ideal everyday:
- Writing
- Reading
- Moving
- Meditating
- Conversing.
Two questions to gauge how close you are to a friend:
- Do you know how many siblings they have?
- Do you know their siblings(') name(s)?
April 26 You've been diagnosed with a terminal condition; you will surely die, and you don't know how much longer you have to live. That condition is not an illness or disease — nor is it a curse. At birth, you were diagnosed with life, which inevitably ends in death.
In every moment, you are living and dying, so choose to see this moment for what it is: a gift.
Make your own myth. We all live according to grand narratives, whether we know it or not. The step beyond knowing it is creating a myth yourself and then living it out, like a lifelong lucid dream.
The ego is truth-averse; it seeks only comfort.
April 25 I'm only willing to do evermore work for myself. As for the work I do for others, I'm only willing to do as much work as I am compensated for.
April 24 Dreams are private experiences, but they are not unique. Dreams are universal.
April 23 Karma is amoral — like the laws of physics. Rather than "you will get what you deserve," it means "you will reap only what you have sown."
Karma is the spiritual name for an immutable law of nature: cause and effect. The main thing that's colloquially misunderstood is this: karma refers both to the cause and effect, describing the inextricable bond between them. The meaning of "good karma" or "bad karma" is more like "good habits" or "bad habits" than it is like "reward" or "punishment." If you want good outcomes (effects), you need to change your habits (causes).
Karmic traces are the residue of your thoughts, speech, and actions. If you want good outcomes, reverse the effects of bad karma by dedicating yourself to good thoughts, speech, and actions in the present — and into the future. If there's something you want to reap, you must first sow its seed.
Whenever possible, do it in "one take." That doesn't mean you ship the first take. It means that you redo the whole take, rather than just splicing in a new part. This could be a paragraph in an essay, a scene in a story, or a recorded monologue. The closer you can get to doing it in one take, the more authentic it will feel to the audience. You still need to edit it, to polish it, but by re-doing it take by take, you preserve the spirit.
The ultimate examples of this would be a stand-up comedy special or a Broadway play.
Someday, I want to be so well versed in language that I can detect a writer's native tongue by the subtle differences in how they write in English, as a second language.
Round-About Language
You don't want your writing to read like you're doing laps in a cul-de-sac; you want it to feel like cruising down a two-lane freeway, or a quiet country lane.
April 22 When one of my greatest mentors, Joel Diffendaffer (my HS choir teacher), suddenly died, I was distraught and upset. One of the first things I said was (something like) "there are certain people who should be guaranteed a full life because of how good of a person they are."
I was thinking in dichotomies: good and evil, deserving and undeserving, fair and unfair, long and short, full and empty.
The reality is a duality: the fullness of life doesn't depend on how long you live but on what you do with your time. It's not about life or death but about living.
Life is the whole cake. Living is the icing.
Remember: People don't know what they mean to you. You have to tell them.
Research Wabi-Sabi: "a worldview centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection."
April 20 Here's how I hope to look at all stories — from mentors, movies, friends, strangers, and celebrities: use stories to learn how to avoid great ordeals, how to change yourself before the world forces the all-is-lost moment upon you, and you enter the Dark Night of the Soul. Stories remind us that life is change, and they help us learn to make change less painful. Characters learn deep lessons by going through terribly painful ordeals. From these characters, you can learn the lessons without the ordeals.
[[Transformation Without Trauma]]
The Prestige: Short-Story Structure
For short stories — especially allegories, parables, or myths which are more about ideas and insights than characters and plots — it's helpful to simplify the story structure to three specific parts (down in scope from the eight- or twelve- part frameworks like Harmon's tory circle or Campbell's Hero's journey).
These are entirely poached from Chris Nolan's The Prestige, a film that expertly demonstrates the overlap between good narrative structure and an effective magic trick:
Part 1: The Pledge — Demonstrate the ordinary nature of the ordinary thing, and promise that you will make it disappear.
Part 2: The Turn — Plunge the audience — and character(s) — into uncertainty by making the ordinary thing disappear.
Part 3: The Prestige — Deliver what the audience feels is inevitable, but do it in a way that they couldn't possibly predict; bring the ordinary thing back with the flair of a great showman, making it feel extraordinary.
The most culturally significant short story (parable, myth) to use this structure is Christ's passion in the Gospels. The pledge: He is the begotten son of God. The Turn: He was crucified and died on the cross. The Prestige: On the third day, He resurrected.
My favorite framework for fictional stories is Dan Harmon's story circle. And from what I've learned about the archetypes of stories, these are the five essential beats for a character's arc:
- Establishing the character's flaws and desires, in the context of their ordinary world
- Inciting action and the call to adventure (often via a mentor)
- Journey through the unfamiliar world, facing trials, growth, and a major ordeal
- Success/revelation and self-transformation
- Return to the ordinary world, a changed person (think of Odysseus returning to Penelope)
It'd be interesting to explore story structure that isn't character-focused. There are definitely a meta-structures to narratives that are more subtle than the hero's journey. The simplest example of this is non-linear storytelling or spliced A and B plots, where there are two characters going on their own journeys through the story circle. Their combined journeys and the chronology of the narrative create the structure of the story, which transcends the protagonist's death–rebirth cycle.
There's story structure from the perspective of the protagonist (or the perspective character), and there's story structure from the perspective of the audience.
Correcting Our Cultural Misunderstandings of Stoicism and Skepticism
Skepticism and stoicism have gone the same way in our culture, reduced to colloquial definitions of "stoic" and "skeptical." We take them to be these simple attitudes of stubborn, selfish people who are apathetic and disengaged ("stoic"), or doubtful and untrusting ("skeptical"). But these are both rich philosophical traditions that have more merit today simply because they are misunderstood and overlooked (and not practiced).
At the heart of stoicism is the concept of the dichotomy of control (or the locus of control), where with all particular events of life, you acknowledge whether you have control over the outcome or not. The stoic sees this clearly and only gives time and energy to what is within his control. They are not detached or apathetic; rather, the stoic limits his expressions of passion to those things over which he has agency in life. He is detached from all outcomes (because no one can control outcomes, only attitude and effort/action) and from issues and worries and potential events that he cannot control — including the fact of death (memento mori).
Skepticism is a complex, intellectual attitude that makes you impervious to blind faith and bolsters your psyche against self-delusion. The skeptic doesn't believe what he doesn't feel is true, and he practices the mindful clarity required to see truths when they are revealed to you. It is a subtle practice, like trying to apply the scientific method to the unanswerable questions of Nature, God, and Death — accepting or rejecting, on feeling, answers that you can't verify. The skeptic develops an immunity to the trap of dogma by welcoming discomfort as a preferable alternative to ignorance.
Aimless wander always bares fruit.
I'm making six figures in a remote job, yet the only place I have that's dark and quiet enough to meditate is my 4'x4' closet. Maybe I ought to be elsewhere.
April 19 Editing is a craft that most writers don't consciously practice or study. It means that they're overlooking the skill required for at least half of the writing process. Writers who are skilled self-editors have an edge on quality, especially concision.
Dialectic of Seven-Fold Predication (From JainWorld
These are the seven necessary and sufficient perspectives from which we can perceive truth.
"I shall next refer to the actual text in Sanskrit of the dialectic of sevenfold predication (saptabhanginaya) :
(1) syndasti = may be, it is.
(2) syatnasti = may be, it is not.
(3) syadasti nasti ca = may be, it is, it is not.
(4) syadavaktavyah = may be, it is indeterminate.
(5) syadasti ca avaktavya sca = may be, it is and also indeterminate.
(6) syatnasti ca avaktavyasca = may be, it is not and also indeterminate.
(7) syadasti nasti ca avaktav-yasca = may be, it is and it is not and also indeterminate."
Here's an all-time use of an adverb from the Tattvārthasūtra, the central text of Jain philosophy:
"The ultimate truth is not one-sided; it is manifold. The wise describe it variously."
Here's a concise example for one main difference (in usage) between the hyphen and the en dash.
"I'm tired of the 9–5 grind." The en dash here denotes a range, literally the duration of time from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. If you read it aloud, you're saying "the nine to five grind," which are the exact same words as the next example, though their meanings are different.
"I'm tired of the 9-to-5 grind." Here, hyphens string together these words into a compound adjective, modifying "grind."
The differences in meaning here are subtle, and I'd argue that only the hyphenated one is correct. In the en-dash example, you really have to objects for the verb-phrase "tired of": "9–5" and "grind." That's because both are nouns. Are you tired of working from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm? Or, are you tired of the feeling that it's a grind? With the hyphen, you can resolve this ambiguity. "Grind" becomes the only noun in the sentence, which makes it undoubtedly the object of "tired of," since "9-to-5" is an adjective modifying "grind." "I am tired of the grind." What kind of grind? "I'm tired of the 9-to-5 grind."
April 18 In a way, the albatross and the mantra ray co-created our world, co-created you and me.
S4:E9 "Beyond the Wilds" is so far one of the best episodes of Legend of Korra. It has a special resonance because it's so dreamlike, and it hits on an important psychological/philosophical truth: you must accept what has happened to be released from it; denying and ignoring it only strengthens it's grip on you and reifies it as part of your future.
April 17 If you're proofreading, always read the piece aloud. If you're at the structural-edit stage, never read it aloud. And for line-edits, read aloud the bits that don't quite seem right. It will give you insight. It will let you feel the words and how they fall, one after another.
Anecdote to link to a lesson and use in an essay someday:
During the summer before college, I was working as a velvet at the Hotel Phillips in Downtown KC. By that time, I'd been committed to play tennis at Stevens for almost a year. I was proud to have found a place that felt like such a great fit, and I celebrated by belting Sinatra's "New York, New York" I'm every airport rental car as I whipped it around the block and up the levels of the parking garage. I'd belt it on my walk back to my post, benefiting from the acoustics of the concrete wafer layers: "Start spreading the news / I'm leaving today / I'm gonna be a part of it / New York, New York."
I sang that song non-stop for the whole summer, doing my best to improve with every rep. And during my first semester as a Stevens Duck, I used "New York, New York" as my audition song for Quackappella, one of the two a cappella groups on campus (the other being the "Floctives"). I got every note, with vibrato and no voice cracks on the sustained "These little town blues" line (you know, the key-change, cut-time bridge). It felt phenomenal, and I got the part as a tenor in my first-ever a cappella group.
April 16 Is life-long monogamy natural? Show me a species that mates for life, and I'll show you 25 that don't. Of course, it's evolutionarily beneficial to have both parents involved in child-rearing, and the nuclear family is the atomic unit of community, which every human needs. Monogamy is also a beautiful thing. What I'm really asking is this: Is there a biological desire that humans have for life-long monogamy, or is it a cultural one? The biological desire may only be about having and caring for children and not about a life-long bond with a partner — just a strong bond with a co-parent, to ensure the propagation of your genes and the sustenance of the species.
Do things in life that make you more comfortable with the fact of death.
Is the Glass Empty or Formless?
Imagine you are a glass of water. The psyche (the default, gross level of awareness), identifies with the cup: "I am solid. I have this shape. I have a place in the world." The substrate (the intermediate level of awareness) identifies with the contents of the cup, the water: "I am not just the form that contains me; I have a vast inner world that is private to me and useful to the world." Finally, there is the deep, most subtle level of the clear-light mind, and there are two goals here for the ideal level of awareness. There is one of emptiness and one of formlessness.
The Buddhist teachings would say that the cup and its contents are illusory. In fact, you are empty. The glass is not full, and the form of the glass could be any other at some different time. The reason you will remain water in a glass, life after life the cycle of samsara, is because you perceive the glass and its contents to be solid, lasting, and independent. In fact, that is not you. You are the source of the water in the glass, the clouds and the rivers and the glaciers. The glass will be poured out tomorrow, but water is everywhere forever. You are empty, because you are the vapor in the air, not water in a glass.
My preferred teaching would be formlessness. Rather than denying the reality of your earthly form, learn to live in the paradox of it: "I am the water within the glass. If I were in any other container, I would still be me, the water." You recognize the container as illusory, that you are in fact fluid and formless, without structure. You can morph yourself. You aren't bound by the world as you tend to think. Everything is more malleable than it appears, because you yourself are formless water; it is your essence and character to flow, not to pool and stagnate with in a single container.
The illusion is not the self but the form of the self, any container of the self. The self is not empty but formless. At your imperceptible core is an ineffable essence. It's ineffable, but you still have an essence, an essential part of you that is unique and distinct, an instance of "human" in the world.
If you become empty, you convince yourself that you are not of this world. If you become formless, you start flowing through the world with agency and intent — lucidity.
Unless you're proofreading, read the full paragraph before suggesting edits. If your edits are at all structural (beyond the sentence-level), read at least one paragraph at a time, so that you understand all the elements before your make your edit. Crucially, you do not have to read the entire piece before making edits; you can edit as you go, just go paragraph by paragraph.
April 13 The editor is like a mediator — simultaneously vying for the best interests of the writer and the reader.
April 12 I essentially want to be a practicing counselor without a degree or an LMHC. That's because I want to serve people through a different medium than talk-therapy: writing. So many things can be therapy. And some of the best self-transformations happen when are doing something you care about, before you know you wanted to change yourself (e.g., paying for writing coaching because you want to master the craft).
In stillness, all is abundant. There is more than what's beneath your feet and more paths available than the one you're trying to follow.
Emptiness is not the right solution to the problem of the ego. Instead of becoming empty, the void beyond the world, become formless and flow like water through through the world.
Clarity means understanding how you feel, what you ought to do, and what you truly want. Congruence means having the will to follow through.
The albatross is completely free; it soars to whatever heights, wherever it pleases, and for however long it likes. The albatross is light. The manta ray is heavy; from our perspective, she sinks. She lives under this opaque blanket, but she too is free. It's just a freedom that we can't see. It's an inner freedom. While the albatross traverses the world, the manta ray travels deeper, diving inward.
[[Live in The Third]]
Almost no decisions are "Should I do this or that?" Two choices, all binary decisions, are illusory. Most decisions are truly "How should I do it?" But to get to that point, you have to go through a process of honest self-reflection? What is it that you know you should do? What is it that you deeply want to do? Once you do all that thinking, the true decision reveals itself — not "This or that?" but "How should I do it?"
Should you ask out the girl? Of course! The question is how to do it. Should you cheat on the test? Of course not! The question is how much you're willing to study.
We're naturally uncomfortable being submerged underwater or suspended in the air. But the reality is that there is no other option, no solid ground to stand on. Stability is an illusion. If you become The Creature of the Air and Sea, you can dive without the fear of drowning and glide without the fear of falling.
The darkest moment is not always before the dawn. It's in the dead of night. Is it not?
April 11 Maybe Eve is my God. After all, she is the mother of man. Would I rather worship the being who created our inhuman ancestors and wanted to trap them in Eden, or the woman who seized the knowledge of the gods on behalf of our species? Eve is like the Christian Prometheus.
The Sun and sky are masculine (Yang); the Moon and ocean are feminine (Yin). The Sun and sky provide energy and protection. We can see the Sun in the sky, yet it is inaccessible. The masculine engenders our aspirations. The Moon and ocean are sources of comfort and mystery. We want know the Moon and ocean, because they are here for us to explore. The feminine engenders our questions.
Masculine/Feminine is the primordial dichotomy. Or at least, that's how we see it. That's how we understand it, but it's not true. Masculine–Feminine is the primordial duality, meaning everything has both within it, and both are defined by the other. Everything that is masculine is also feminine, and everything that is feminine is also masculine. Nothing is only either feminine or masculine, and nothing is equally feminine and masculine. Everything is some imperceptible gradient between.
Meme (noun): A culture-wide mind-virus
April 9 The highest-leverage improvements for writers happen at the level of the paragraph. If can improve the structure of a paragraph and improve how you string paragraphs together (how you transition between ideas), you suddenly make strides in all the most important dimensions of writing: cohesion, clarity, and concision.
The Third is a new brand of non-duality. Rather than two things resolving into one (the self and other resolving into emptiness in Buddhism, for example), both things combine to create a discrete, individual thing (the self-aware self co-created by, inspired by, in communion with the other).
We need to change our culture around conversation. Too many conversations are just a series of monologues, yet you can only unlock the magic of conversation in dialogue.
One of the innumerable benefits of mindfulness is that you realize the positive thoughts and feelings you have about others. You notice the thoughts as they pass, and you can reference them to give very specific, memorable compliments. Pair that with a keen empathy and awareness of what other people value and what they're insecure about, and the combo can make for a compliment that single-handedly levels up their self-esteem.
April 8 I just played the first few levels of Samsara by Poki Games, which I found while searching for images of the wheel of samsara — an ironic instance of complete mindlessness and distraction.
In her album, The God's We Can Touch, AURORA echoes my sentiments about Original Sin, and our misguided self-perceptions as humans.
And in this random interview I just found, she puts it so well, and so concisely:
Yes. I think it’s very rooted in us, that what makes us human is evil, and we have to distance ourselves from the human in us and approach this perfect God, who we can never become as perfect as. Because we are not meant to be perfect. And I find our obsession with perfection very disturbing. Because it’s not real! Nothing is perfect. And we shouldn’t believe that we have to be, either. And blame ourselves for not being perfect. Perfect is just a meaningless word that doesn’t make sense to me. To beg for forgiveness, just for being born — it’s very absurd. It’s clear that we need something. We need faith, we need some answers to these impossible questions. To create meaning in our struggles, so that it’s not for nothing. But I think we could find meaning without tearing ourselves down and tearing each other down. It would be nice at least.
Man's pathology is self-delusion, and the only treatment is introspection.
April 7 Every moment is a bardo; we are always between. The introspective path does not have as its aim to escape the gap. The path, instead, is to acknowledge and accept the gap, to learn to live within it — to feel ever sturdier without ever having solid ground on which to stand. Don't try to escape to one side of the chasm or the other; both emptiness and attachment are illusions of stability. Remain suspended above the infinite chasm on a swaying bridge, that "dizzying crest." Spend your energy reinforcing the bridge, so that you can become comfortable in the gap. Focus your attention on the fog, so that you can burn it off and see deeper into the chasm, and across the entire breadth of the bridge.
To be The Creature of the Air and Sea, you don't need to fly or breathe underwater. That would resign you to one world or the other; instead, move between them both. You need only the abilities to glide and dive to exist in harmony, within the duality.
You were born as a creature of the earth. Don't deny your nature, but strive to become The Creature of the Air and Sea, and you will wield the world within.
With introspection, you can transform yourself without the common catalysts of trauma and crisis.
April 6 The albatross preys on the creatures of the sea, and the manta ray leaps into the air, humbling him with her grace and beauty.
We make the mistake of looking for the "one true," when we should be looking not for the one or two but The Third that is most true to you.
Dualism is decried by the Buddhists in favor of monism and emptiness. Monism is decried by the psychologists who see the self in relation to the unconscious. But better than either dualism or monism is living in The Third, where you recognize the duality and fuse two extremes without ignoring or denying either. You can acknowledge the dualism and resolve it into a harmony among the two extremes. Don't choose just one; it would take you further from reality.
Truth before bros, bros before hoes
April 4 "Hunch-hucking": My made-up verb for a solipsistic writer
If you reimagine Yin/Yang as division between the realms of the air and sea, the creatures of the air and sea are what bring the two worlds into harmony. Yang is the albatross and Yin the manta ray. Both are huge creatures — kings and queens of their respective domains; the albatross has the most endurance of any bird and a massive wingspan, and the manta dives deep into the ocean and moves more efficiently than any other marine mammal.
The albatross dives into the sea to feed on fish, and the manta ray breaches the surface, leaping into the air to play. Despite their worlds being infinitely vast, they intersect. They are interdependent, creating the duality, the harmony.
The Creature of the Air preys on the Creature of the Sea. And the Creature of the Sea humbles him with her grace and beauty.
Other details:
- Mantas are gatherers, albatrosses hunters
- The etymology of manta is from the Spanish for blanket and cloak, which is in line with the feminine trait of mystery — the dark side of the moon
See ChatGPT convo
April 3 No thing is ever easy. But life is easier in the long run if you do what feels hard at first. If it feels easy in the moment, it's usually wrong — a choice lubed up by the temptation of chaos, to undermine the order for which you are striving.
Some of life's greatest pleasures have the prerequisite of rigid principles and a strict personal morality. If you are not steadfastly honest, you will not have the pleasure of being completely trusted by those you love. If you waver on your commitments, you will not have the pleasure of pride and self-assurance that come from keeping your word, even against an immediate desire to do otherwise. If you do not intently pay respect and attention to others, you won't ave the pleasure of people longing to be in your presence. There are some pleasures you can harvest from the world. The deeper pleasures demand that you first become worthy, and sensitive enough to feel them.
Platonic love for the opposite sex is entirely possible, and if you aren't capable of it, it's something to work on. It means valuing someone for more than the physical pleasure they could bring you. It means recognizing the immaterial, energetic things that attract you to them.
"Platonic" is a synonym for "ideal," which comes from Plato's concept of the world of forms. "Platonic love" is the ideal form of love, which transcends sexuality. You can feel different types of love for the same person — sexual, emotional, spiritual, intellectual, familial, fraternal. And you can feel sexual love for someone without wanting to act on it. (E.g., you are in a happy relationship and don't want to act on your sexual desires toward other women, even though you would if you were single.) You know what the key is? If you don't flirt or fornicate, then you have a platonic relationship (in the sense that it is non-physical, sans sexuality).
See the Etymonline entry for "Platonic," and this quote therein:
The bond which unites the human to the divine is Love. And Love is the longing of the Soul for Beauty ; the inextinguishable desire which like feels for like, which the divinity within us feels for the divinity revealed to us in Beauty. This is the celebrated Platonic Love, which, from having originally meant a communion of two souls, and that in a rigidly dialectical sense, has been degraded to the expression of maudlin sentiment between the sexes. Platonic love meant ideal sympathy; it now means the love of a sentimental young gentleman for a woman he cannot or will not marry. [George Henry Lewes, "The History of Philosophy," 1867]
I don't want my relationship to women to be confined to my sexuality. I want it to be spiritual and deep. Sure, I want my spirituality and sexuality to interface, but I want control over both so that I can feel them separately and think clearly.
April 1 Freedom and commitment compose one of the main dualities of life. Everyone needs to know which is better suited to their nature, and everyone needs both in their life, necessarily. Are you an Icarus- or an Oedipus-type? Do you long for freedom from obligations, or do you embrace obligation as a source of meaning?
When you have "freedom from" something, you are uncommitted, but as soon as you decide to do anything, that is a thing you are committing to. Also, commitment requires freedom. No involuntary obligation is a commitment. If you were not somehow, or at some, free, you could not commit to anything.
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