Individuality is really a kind of unacknowledged emotional isolation for which by reflex we cultivate more self-definition as a cure, but only ever generate further discomfort and alienation. In this way, personal subjectivity and individuated psychological experience come to unwittingly depend for emotional security upon precisely the referential distance and difference (of aspirational uniqueness) that […]
Tag: emotion
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Lonely Sunday Breakfast Thoughts
More moments of poignant melancholy loneliness over Sunday morning breakfast; alone with a nice hot coffee, my withered notebook and some reflective words and thoughts. Of course, we’re never really alone. There is always that internal narrative of monologue and observation that accompanies us as a silent partner and confidante, as friend and – often […]
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Losing Traction
Facing reality has always been my most unpalatable responsibility and were it not a necessary burden to attempt to bear to merely survive and play all these hollow games of meaningless repetition that this world incurs, I would have stopped trying many years ago. But survive we must and if in so doing this means […]
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Depression
Depression is such a fickle thing. Some days everything seems fine, you build yourself up and seem so full of joy and purpose and then one look, one word or callous gesture just brings it all crashing back down. The seduction of emotional isolation, alienation and catastrophic disengagement with the world is at these times […]
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Friendship is a Kind of Love
Don’t let the unexpected arrival of a lifelong friendship blind you to its simplicity: no expectations, only compassion. If they expect anything from you which is in any way, shape or form beyond those things that will nurture your safety, well-being and happiness – then they are not your friends. Friendship is a kind of […]
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“Resignation” by Nicki Giovanni
“Resignation” is a truly beautiful poem by Nicki Giovanni. I once saw someone perform a part of this poem with such tenderness, natural intelligence and compassionate insight that I can (and must) say with complete sincerity – even though I do not fully understand what these words mean beyond the haunting feelings and sweet melancholy […]
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Bookstore
On yesterday’s visit to garner some domestic logistics I found myself drawn, as is quite natural for me, to a local bookstore. Rapidly yet calmly and with apposite politeness I navigated my way to the psychology and philosophy section, just next to popular science and astronomy. I tend to treat the pages of these books […]
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Trust
It’s a general observation of human nature that those among us who most deeply need to trust or depend on others are often also those least able to do so. A further complication and irony of this is that it is commonly those whose trust has been broken who both incessantly seek and foundationally fear […]
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Rejection Reflection
Rejection is an empty room. Is the hollow hell of fear we feel the clear and present absence as much and in or of ourselves as that of any Other? We each and all in turn eventually reject that Other self and in dusty, mirrored isolation turn once more towards our own essential emptiness and […]
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Emotion
There is a unique and binding property of emotional life that is quite poorly captured by neuroscientific reductionism to organic chemistry, to pure blind mechanism. While it might be true that we can correlate emotional experience with chemical and electrical facts, it is also true that beyond quite limited chemical or behavioural influence, these facts […]
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What does love feel like?
Dissimulated emotional authenticity… “Dissimulation” is a curious term for Nietzsche to use; something is lost in translation? It is all about concealment, obfuscation, to pretend not to have what one has and to pretend to have what one most certainly does not. Perhaps he was suggesting that there is an irreducible element of theatre in […]
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Human Beings Being Human: Anger
It is a simple truth. Fear drives most of our irrational decisions and our inability to admit it is in fact the greatest fallacy of all. Violence, war, hatred, discrimination, cruelty – it is all at base and in essence just fear under another name. People fear the truth of their own essential vulnerability more […]
