epistemologically speaking
Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.
Conventional thinking is all about being contented with what I have. If you don’t get what you like, like what you get. Why the heck?
I don’t want to be contented. I want to do big things. I want to squeeze toothpaste back into the tube. I want to fly at Mach-100. I want to jump from the top of Alps crying out at the top of my voice and record the echo and send it to CERN for acoustic research. Crazy thoughts alright. Trying to do far too much. But as long as I stay within the warps of moral, legal and ethical boundaries, what’s the big deal!
Learning to love whatever you get, is an old fashioned simplistic thinking. The real driver for success is that ever-present vacuum at some corner of the heart constantly impelling the intellect to flood with new postures of cognitive astuteness. It is this vacuum that scales new heights. What do I gain by being contented? It stifles my thought. It makes me lazy. It rusts my mind. It makes me feel sick. It handicaps me. It sucks!
I need that vacuum. Every time I fill it up, I create a new one. I need this coercion to move ahead. I need the drive to think, to pierce through whatever I feel like piercing. And not sit and stare up the seven heavens in a philosophical retrospection displaying a juvenile smile trying to feel good about everything that is already there and making the often abusively misused word ‘contentment’ sound even more philosophical.
Not that I’m unhappy about whatever I’ve got (Oh, I’m happy alright!), but every inch I take thrusts me that much more to take up the next inch. Why would I ever want to stop moving? What’s wrong in baiting for the next inch? If nobody’s hurt, if I’m within the law, if I’m within the casing of morality, if I’m ethical, why should I feel bad about desiring for more? Does desire tantamount to sin? Who says so? Religion? Ascetic? God?
It needs courage. It needs courage to dare. It needs courage to dare to question. It is the present day original sins – Fear, Pride, Lazy – that stand up to the philosophical nonsense of misplaced contentment.
How do you know that you know what you know? Discover the art of questioning. Discover the art of reasoning. Discover the world. Discover yourself. Learning never ends. Don’t bring it to a screeching halt! Let philosophy be a guide, not a surrogate stand-in for common-sense and rationality.
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Conventional thinking is all about being contented with what I have. If you don’t get what you like, like what you get. Why the heck?
I don’t want to be contented. I want to do big things. I want to squeeze toothpaste back into the tube. I want to fly at Mach-100. I want to jump from the top of Alps crying out at the top of my voice and record the echo and send it to CERN for acoustic research. Crazy thoughts alright. Trying to do far too much. But as long as I stay within the warps of moral, legal and ethical boundaries, what’s the big deal!
Learning to love whatever you get, is an old fashioned simplistic thinking. The real driver for success is that ever-present vacuum at some corner of the heart constantly impelling the intellect to flood with new postures of cognitive astuteness. It is this vacuum that scales new heights. What do I gain by being contented? It stifles my thought. It makes me lazy. It rusts my mind. It makes me feel sick. It handicaps me. It sucks!
I need that vacuum. Every time I fill it up, I create a new one. I need this coercion to move ahead. I need the drive to think, to pierce through whatever I feel like piercing. And not sit and stare up the seven heavens in a philosophical retrospection displaying a juvenile smile trying to feel good about everything that is already there and making the often abusively misused word ‘contentment’ sound even more philosophical.
Not that I’m unhappy about whatever I’ve got (Oh, I’m happy alright!), but every inch I take thrusts me that much more to take up the next inch. Why would I ever want to stop moving? What’s wrong in baiting for the next inch? If nobody’s hurt, if I’m within the law, if I’m within the casing of morality, if I’m ethical, why should I feel bad about desiring for more? Does desire tantamount to sin? Who says so? Religion? Ascetic? God?
It needs courage. It needs courage to dare. It needs courage to dare to question. It is the present day original sins – Fear, Pride, Lazy – that stand up to the philosophical nonsense of misplaced contentment.
How do you know that you know what you know? Discover the art of questioning. Discover the art of reasoning. Discover the world. Discover yourself. Learning never ends. Don’t bring it to a screeching halt! Let philosophy be a guide, not a surrogate stand-in for common-sense and rationality.