Cara Mia

“When my parents weren’t watching the news, they were either waiting to watch the news or recovering from watching the news. The news confirmed their feeling that things were terrible everywhere, and there was nothing anyone could do about it apart from keep abreast of developments. I’ve avoided the news ever since.”

“In all the numerous individual experiences we have, life tells us about its value. It invites us to commit ourselves to it. What appears here in the depth of our sensing is an inkling of the value which is life itself. Much like the depth of ‘being’ which leads us to the ground of being, we now come to the 'fundamental value’ of existence. When we experience the value of life, we experience something that transcends us. We realize that experiencing something of value does not rely solely on us and is not created by us but comes towards us, is received by us. We discover it, astonished perhaps, amazed, painfully touched, or silenced, grateful.”

“Most of us are afraid of outright confrontation; we want to appear reasonably polite and sociable. But often it is impossible to get what we want without asserting ourselves in some way. People can be stubborn and resistant to our influence, no matter how congenial we are. And sometimes we need a release from all of the inner tension that comes from having to be so deferential and correct. And so all of us inevitably engage in behavior in which we assert ourselves indirectly, striving for control or influence as subtle as possible. Perhaps we take extra time to respond to people’s communications, to signal a slight bit of disdain for them; or we seem to praise people but insert subtle digs that get under their skin and instill doubts. Sometimes we make a comment that could be taken as quite neutral, but our tone of voice and the expression on our face indicate we are upset, stirring up some guilt. We can call this form of aggression passive, in that we give the appearance that we are merely being ourselves, not actively manipulating or trying to influence people. Nevertheless, a message is sent that creates the effect we desire. We are never quite as passive as we seem in this. In the back of our minds, we are aware that we are taking an extra long time to get back to someone or putting a dig in a comment, but at the same time we can also pretend to ourselves and to others that we are innocent. (We humans are capable of holding such conflicting thoughts at the same time.) In general, we must consider this everyday version of passive aggression to be merely an irritating part of social life, something we are all guilty of. We should be as tolerant as possible of this low-grade passive aggression that thrives in polite society. Some people, however, are chronic passive aggressors. Like the more active aggressors, they generally have a high degree of energy and need for control but at the same time a fear of outright confrontation.”

ROLLING STONE […] whether that’s deciding where to live, who to hang out with, when to not take a picture — the idea of privacy feels so strange to try to explain but it’s really just trying to find bits of normalcy, that’s what that song “peace” is talking about… like, would it be enough if I could never fully achieve the normalcy that we both crave?

“Some part of life — perhaps the most important part — must be left to the spontaneous action of individual impulse, for where all is system there will be mental and spiritual death.”

“Every word has consequences. Every silence, too.”