What are False Feelings?
What are feelings? The very question seems ridiculous to ask doesn’t it? Feelings are of course joy, elation, happiness, sadness and all the other things we might feel. They are an emotional experience we have at a given point in time. But where do feelings come from? Feelings are triggered by stimuli in our environment. When I tell ladies I see in public that they shouldn’t be wearing short shorts because it reveals their large bulbous thighs, I often get a sense that they are upset, angry, enraged, and embarrassed - often all at once. Curious thing isn’t it - an opinion I express,
Should we refer to ourselves in the Third Person?
Joe is sitting at one of his favourite coffee shops writing a blog post. He is writing a blog post exploring whether we should refer to ourselves in the third person. Joe is a promising young writer with great ideas, and this might be another one of them. Versus
Is It Better Not To See?
It is my joy today to tell you about the best movie you’ve never heard of. If you’re of my generation, there’s almost no chance you’ve heard of the 1989 classic See No Evil, Hear No Evil starring acting legend Gene Wilder and comedy legend Richard Pryor. In this timeless classic, Wilder is deaf, whilst Pryor is blind. They are both in the wrong place at the wrong time when a murder takes place and are wrongly accused. They suffer from a lack of awareness of what is going on given their disabilities, and this makes them vulnerable: Pryor’s character hears the
What Does It Mean To Be Human?
What does it mean to be human? That was the question my young cousin asked me. It was for a school assignment of his - what an assignment. And what a question. First I reframed the question, but then I answered it below. To what extent do you agree with what I’ve written, and what is your answer? I think the proper question is, what does it mean TO ME to be human? My answer to that: TO ME it means to exist and realise our best possible form of ourselves. To truly express and accept who we are in the context of
Become A Faceless Man.
Who are you? What are you? Where do you come from, and where are you going? If you’re a Game of Thrones fan you’ll understand what Valhar morghulis means. For the rest, you’re about to be enlightened. Let me tell you about a girl. A girl named Arya Stark from Winterfell. In the hit HBO Series Game of Thrones, based of course off George R. R. Martin’s book series A Song of Ice and Fire, Arya seeks vengeance against all the people who have wronged her and her family. In her journeys she comes across Jaqen H'ghar, one of the Faceless Men, who has
Your Thoughts Do Not Come From You; There Is No ‘You’
If you are losing the fight to be an individual, it is probably because you are fighting against the truth. We are a collective, not an individual. We are the sum of many parts, but we are under an illusion. An illusion that we are just the voice we hear. But the voice you hear is just Astro the Dog. You don’t identify as a dog… so what do you identify as? A note on Pizza. There are few sweeter joys in life than leftover pizza in the morning. It was some years ago, and I’d ordered an extra pizza from my family’s favorite local takeaway, just
Completely Rethinking The Comfort Ladder: I Was Wrong #1
Imagine you were the wealthiest person in a poor community. You are well-known and everyone looks up to you. But you have a problem. Because of the gap between you and everyone else, you feel guilty. You can afford to do whatever you want whenever you want, but the same is not true for everyone else. You want to maintain your position, as after all, your whole life has been focused on getting to this point. So what do you do to remove the guilt? That’s when you have an idea! You have more money than you need. You don’t care as much about
The Bucket and the 80% Rule
Who says you have to do one thing with your life? You know my opinion, I say it all the time… ask yourself what you want to do with your life, but never expect to find a single answer! Secondly, always have a complicated answer to the question “What do you do?”. This is a stupid question, a ‘box-thinking’ question, and if you have a simple answer, it means you fit simply into what people can understand. Be hard to understand, but not at the expense of your own clarity. We talked in a recent article about being a ‘Renaissance Person’, about being a
Why Cavemen Didn’t Want Sports Cars…
When I was just four years old, I wanted a Woody toy. He was my favourite character from the Disney film Toy Story. Though if I’d been born in 1980, or 1880, I wouldn’t have wanted a ‘Woody’. We know a lot about early civilisation from cave paintings and archaeological research. Without ever having read a book on this subject, I can safely say that despite the many records on cave walls, there are no paintings of Ferraris or Lamborghinis by cavemen. I think it’s because cavemen did not appreciate fast cars. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLfkdIdPKpI When I was a bit older, maybe ten this time, I saw
What if you’re playing the game wrong?
Mary said she’d be happy when she had the perfect man. Joseph said he’d be happy when he could afford to live uptown, instead of noisy, smelly downtown. Angela said she’d be happy when she’d published her first book. Bruno said he’d be happy when he’d realised what his dream job was, what he wanted to do with his life. Everyone has a ‘when’. When I was young, my cousins and I used to play hide-and-seek. One of us would cover our eyes and begin counting downwards from 10. 3… 2… 1… “Ready or not, here I come!” And then the seeker would go on a manhunt