Never fear shadows. They mean there's a light shining nearby

I came across a quote today that i have never seen before. The quote is from a Playboy interview with Stanley Kubrick.

• Playboy: If life is so purposeless, do you feel its worth living?
  
  Kubrick: Yes, for those who manage somehow to cope with our mortality. The very meaninglessness of life forces a man to create his own meaning. Children, of course, begin life with an untarnished sense of wonder, a capacity to experience total joy at something as simple as the greenness of a leaf; but as they grow older, the awareness of death and decay begins to impinge on their consciousness and subtly erode their joie de vivre (a keen enjoyment of living), their idealism - and their assumption of immortality.
  
  As a child matures, he sees death and pain everywhere about him, and begins to lose faith in the ultimate goodness of man. But if he’s reasonably strong - and lucky - he can emerge from this twilight of the soul into a rebirth of life’s élan (enthusiastic and assured vigour and liveliness).
  
  Both because of and in spite of his awareness of the meaninglessness of life, he can forge a fresh sense of purpose and affirmation. He may not recapture the same pure sense of wonder he was born with, but he can shape something far more enduring and sustaining.
  
  The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death - however mutable man may be able to make them - our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfilment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.

This quote simply blew my mind, and made me think about how I deal with my problems and my philosophy on life. I have had some severely hard times throughout my (young) life, yet I can maintain my enthusiasm fairly well. I see other people lost in despair at relatively lesser problems (to me), its always boggled me why I can deal with the things I have encountered but other people can't deal with their shit. I have always said that the thing that keeps me going the most is not knowing what tomorrow has in store for me, whether that be joy, fear, despair, hate, or anger. I find hope in the fact that the day could bring the best of days, and even if it brings the worst, its simply one day with countless others to follow that could be filled with any number of wonders.

*Disclaimer* I do realize that hardship is relative to the person experiencing it and what they have experienced in the past, and I am not in anyway looking down on people for not being able to deal with their problems. I just wish that I could show people the world through my eyes.


FOCUS: What is your philosophy on life? How do you work through the hurdles and pitfalls that the world throws your way.

Alt Focus: Discuss the quote. Kubrick on Life - Genius or Full of shit?

 

In my more optimistic moments, Janis captures it beautifully here:

Lyrics

In my less optimistic moments:
Pain or damage don't end the world. Or despair or fucking beatings. The world ends when you're dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man... and give some back. - Al Swearengen

 

"Shit happens".

It's funny how a short, profane statement can mean so much, and be so truthful. That's right, shit happens. Bad shit happens to good people, and sometimes nothing can be done. Sometimes it isn't necessary to hunt down somebody to blame for what went wrong. Thing's aren't always controllable. It just.....happens.

 

"Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass, but about learning to dance in the rain."

As weird as it sounds, my young life has been a total shit storm of fuck ups. I still maintain enthusiasm by learning to appreciate the little things. By saving a moth in insanely heavy rain, when my nieces and nephews laugh and run up to me to tell me they love me or just chilling on the back porch and having a drink with my mates. I learnt to enjoy the little things and when shit really gets bad, and the depression is leaning on the suicidal and self harm side to things, I just think "This is now. It will end. It wont always be this way". And remember that quote.

 

Things are going to happen...your character will be defined by your reaction to the stimulus. You're going to have hard times, hardships, hard hits, bad relationships, heart breaks...but they won't be the definition of life. How you handle those moments will be the definition of who you are.
Appreciate the good things. They're often fleeting.
Treat people well...if they don't deserve to be treated well, don't waste time and effort treating them badly, dismiss them from your life.
You're not raising your children to cling to you...you're raising them to take on the world and be prepared for falling down.
Taking care of yourself physically will, by and large, help you take care of yourself mentally.
Set boundaries, don't let yourself be treated poorly. You're better than that.

 

Mine is the last line of one of my favorite e.e cummings' poems: "unbeingdead isn't the same as beingalive."

Here's the full poem if anyone's interested:

Spoiler

here are five simple facts no sub
human superstate ever knew
(1)we sans love equals mob
love being youamiare (2)
the holy miraculous difference between

firstrate and second implies nonth
inkable enormousness by con
trast with the tiny stumble from second to

tenth rate (3) as it was in the begin

ning it is now and always will be on
the onehundredpercentoriginal sin
cerity equals perspicuity (4)

Only The Game Fish Swims Upstream and (5)

unbeingdead isn't beingalive

I found a very worn book of his entire collected work in my house and it was one of the ones I flipped to while looking through it. It was one of those weird movie-moments that happen in your life where you feel like it's scripted. I read it at exactly the right time and it really changed everything. The handful of years leading up to finding the book were filled with me coping with everything the wrong way, and having a very fatalistic outlook on life and totally wasting it and on the verge of completely ruining it. I didn't care at all. I was "unbeingdead." And then in the next couple of months, I realized that I had been seeing things the wrong way, and since I knew how fleeting life can be and how unexpectedly it could end, that it was stupid of me to not try and make mine as full and amazing as possible. I didn't want to just go through the motions, but actually Live. So far I've been sticking to that goal and philosophy, and it's much better this way.

 

Two:

The map is not the territory. (Ceci n'est pas une pipe)

Stephen Crane:

 

It's not where you find yourself, it's who you find yourself with.

 

FOCUS: What is your philosophy on life? How do you work through the hurdles and pitfalls that the world throws your way.

My general philosophy that things could always be worse. I've spent a lot of time with people with traumatic brain and/or spinal cord injuries. Being around young people who have a lot less than I (in terms of a "normal" life and capabilities) makes me a more accepting and empathetic person than I used to be. The ones I met have awesome attitudes, never wallowing in self-pity. That's really inspiring to me. I'm going to school to work with them because I want to help. Plus, the more time I spend around them, the more I learn about people and life in general. I still vent about bullshit that doesn't matter to my cat and internet strangers, but I try to keep the attitude of "Shit could always be MUCH worse".

How do I work through the hurdles and pitfalls? I work through them by reminding myself that failure is not the end of the world. Life will go on. Babies fail hundreds of times while learning to walk. Every time they fail their brains neurologically work through what was successful and what wasn't. Eventually they figure it out and walk. So, I try to remind myself that even if I fail I'm subconsciously learning something that's helping me succeed in the long term.

 

Fundamentally, I don't believe in a divine creator figure, or any kind of universal overseer who gives a shit. But I do believe in Karma. Or at least I believe in math, and I think Generativity Theory provides a very nice explanation for Karma.

So I act on the basis that the only meaning life has is experience. And the best kind of experience is happiness. I feel happy when good things happen to me, and generativity theory provides a sound model for believing that good things will happen to me if I do good things.

I'm sure that random chance can still fuck me, no matter how many times I do good things, there's still a chance that I'll get incredibly unlucky and be hit by a meteor. But I consider the implications of my actions in light of generativity theory, and shit works out pretty well lately.

I've had bad shit happen to me that was just bad luck. But for the most part, the bad things in my life are all either the result of my actions, or things that I made more likely through bad decisions. I'm insanely lucky on a bunch of levels - but almost all of my really good luck - I can trace back to things that I made more likely through my actions.

I think I'm headed for roughly the same place as Kubrick. Although I've never been frightened by the idea that the universe was utterly indifferent. I always felt freed by that fact. But I think in a universe without purpose - all we can do is work towards happiness and take purpose in experiencing happiness.

 

"Walk around the club-Fuck Everybody."

So So deep.

 

"I am only me, and I have only now"

I'm not going to lie, this is a quote from a hymn, but I believe it has merit outside of religion. What I take it to mean is that you can't worry about what other people think of you, you have to accept yourself as you are. Also, while I think "live every day like it's your last" is kind of impossible (because no one would do laundry or taxes on their last day)it's important to live in the moment. That past is already over and you can only do so much to effect the future, so have now.

 

FOCUS: What is your philosophy on life? How do you work through the hurdles and pitfalls that the world throws your way.

My signature quote succinctly sums up my philosophy, but the entire video it comes from encapsulates it better. Basically, I believe this is all a ride, but I mean that much more literally than most people would likely assume. When things get bad (and compared to many people, things have never been truly 'bad' for me), I remember the thought "this is all a dream" or "It's already over", and it helps. I also try to have the same thought when things are really awesome, in order to appreciate them more, but I find it's tougher to do.

I read a fair bit about biology and physics, for someone with no real connection to either, and from what I understand, it's looking like a very real possibility that none of this is, well, real. According to the last Morgan Freeman-narrated science show I watched, we all exist AND don't exist in every one of the infinitely possibile realities (including the ones in which we were never born), which means every choice we make (from moving across country for a girl to scratching an itch while you read this) is not only a choice for that particular action/result, but for which reality we want to join. This is greatly inspiring to me.

I sure as fuck don't believe in some deity having some particular interest in me, not only because it's supremely arrogant, but because I think we are a physical manifestation of pure consciousness/possibility ("...the imagination of ourselves" as Mr. Hicks put it), and the way we communicate with that consciousness is through earned knowledge, not revealed knowledge. Since I have the obcenely good fortune of living now and having access to so much of this earned knowledge, I feel responsible to learn as much of it as I can, and spread it to others.

To prevent furher rambling: my philosophy on life is scientific, which means the longer I live, the more wonderous, mind blowing shit I can take in and spread to others. Therefore, it's in my best interests to live as long and as good as I can. I would even say that science, the pursuit of knowledge and truth, is the way a god, if it existed, would communitcate with us. Scientific knowledge and wonderment is, to me, FAR more spiritual than any religion I've ever come across.

Alt Focus: Discuss the quote. Kubrick on Life - Genius or Full of shit?

I love it, and I have no idea why someone would choose the 'my life's meaning comes from a being I can't be sure exists' outlook over the 'I get to make my own meaningS and share them with anyone I choose' outlook Kubrick is basically talking about.

Apologies if too religious-bashy.

 

Memento Mori. One day you're going to die, so make sure you've enjoyed yourself as much as possible first.

 

"For I have loved the stars too fondly to be afraid of the night."


I'm unsure as to where the quote comes from. But for me it means that there's way too much beauty and fun in the world to be afraid of the unknown. It may be cheesy, but that's how I live my life.

 

"I do not regret the things I've done, but those I did not do."

Really goes with my "I'll try anything once" attitude. When I'm 70 and my grandkid asks me if I ever did something, I want the answer to always be "yep!".


Also, it gets me FUCKED UP playing Never Have I Ever.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/50022/family-guy-the-i-never-game