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Six Ideas from Western Philosophy
‘What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears.’ - Seneca.
This dark remark gets to the heart of Stoicism, which says we get weepy and angry not only because our plans failed, but because we strongly expected them not to. Seneca thought the less we expect, the less we will suffer. Seneca was trying to spare us the kind of hope that inspires bitterness and anger.
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The premodern world was obsessed with asking, "what is the point is of reading?" They had answers too.
The modern world has adopted an Enlightenment mantra that states there should be no limit to how much we read because we read in order to know everything. We don't read to understand God or to follow civic virtue; we read to understand the whole of human existence.
This maximalist legacy of the Enlightenment idea of reading is present within the publishing industry, within the way books are presented to the public at school and in shops, and within our own guilty responses to the pressure to read more.
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Love is often seen as the exciting feeling we get in the presence of someone with great intelligence of beauty that we hope will reciprocate our interest and whom we badly want to touch and one day...
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What is needed for our attention is the love of what is crooked, damaged, and self-disgusted. Here love is the effort required to imagine oneself into the life of another person who has not made it easy to admire or like them.
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Instead of making relationships complicated and overambitious, we can just take care of these three essential but overlooked aspects:
Paradoxically, by limiting our expectations about our relationship, we can concentrate on the three critical ingredients of kindness, understanding and vulnerability, and have a simple yet loving connection.
By simplifying and clarifying, we can release ourselves from our complicated conflicts and pursue a deep and profound bond.