Enjoying the view from Limbo
The Lotus Effect Living in a pond,Survival depends on one’s —Water repellence. The trick to living as a lotus leaf is to be on (or when possible slightly above) the water’s surface, and yet to remain forever dry. Even when it rains, or when the pond level rises and threatens to engulf the plant, the leaf remains resistant to harm; and of course...
They do not know you. They cannot understand. But neither do they ignore you as you wish they would. “Why don’t you live as we do?” they ask, half-perplexedly, half-critically. You have two choices here: Drop your head, lower your voice, and reply meekly, “I don’t know”; or look them in the eye and say, “I don’t want to live your way.” “Aren’t...
Applause.— In applause there is always a kind of noise–even when we applaud ourselves. — Nietzsche, The Gay Science (Kaufmann translation), §201. Had Nietzsche been a little older when he wrote those words, he might have said “especially when we applaud ourselves.” Applause is always partly noise,...
Kathy Zhu, a University of Michigan student who was recently crowned Miss World America, has been stripped of her title because she supports Donald Trump, she commented online about the rates of black-on-black gun violence, and — perhaps most serious of all given her home state — she refused to put on a hijab at a Muslim information booth’s “try on a hijab”...
They will not understand you. Can you live with being misunderstood? They will find you disappointing, frustrating, and an unnecessary burden. Can you live with being a disappointment? They will hate much of what you do, typically the very things you regard as most definitive of you. Can you accept being hated, and hated not for your accidents, but for your essence? Do...
“What if everyone joined the crowd except me? What if everyone were smiling, growling, hissing, chanting, cheering, and singing, but I were not included? What if, having grown tired or frightened of being left out — or rather, of the strain of standing apart — I should discover that they would no longer accept me at all? That I had missed my chance...
Follow: