Andrew Wyeth’s masterpiece Christina’s World is one of those paintings which will leave you with a rather odd unsettling vibe and more surprisingly with hope. The painting depicts a young woman, thin of frame with emaciated limbs, lying in a sun-dappled field and reaching longingly towards a gray farmhouse(her house) on a distant hill. This is a true depiction of Christina Olson’s(Andrew Wyeth’s neighbour) life, as she suffered from a rare crippling form of genetic neuropathy. She refused to use wheelchair and preferred to crawl instead.

At first glance the viewer may perceive a sense of calm and serenity, but only after looking closer, we can see the mystery and contrasting features.

We see Christina’s out of proportion left hand is shown gripping the ground, while her right hand is diminutive and shrunken. This seems to portray her pain and struggle as she tries to reach her house. It tries to instill hopelessness and loneliness at the beginning. But when you see her head positioned towards her house(highlighted by short grass around it), like she is longing for something so great and tries to achieve it with struggle and determination. And only by her will to live(looking at you Schopenhauer), she creates a world of hope and strength, for its viewers. Its really interesting to note that everything goes against this optimistic view, like dreary brownish grass and use of neutral colours(tempera style) which tries to meander our perception towards surrendering to the atrocities of life. But its only Christina, in her striking pink dress and hair tossed up by wind, who carries these atrocities on her shoulders and tries to move forward showing us her independent and self-sufficient nature. I was trying to put myself into her shoes and feel what she must have felt at this very moment. Maybe i will never know. But whatever she made me feel without looking at her face is beyond the shadow of a doubt truly wonderful. And i don’t know if i love this feeling, but i will keep it until the end.

-Charles Bukowski

dailynietzsche:

“Whoever has endeavored, as I have, to think pessimism through to its depths and liberate it from Schopenhauer’s philosophy, has thus opened his eyes to the opposite ideal: that of the high-spirited, world-affirming human being who has not only come to terms and learned to get along with whatever was and is, but who wants to have what was and is repeated into all eternity.”

—F. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, §56 (edited excerpt).

A Day in the Life of Arthur Schopenhauer

funnytwittertweets:

“The glass is half full” someone knew

“The glass is half empty” some spew

Their thoughts they’ve confessed

But Excel knows it best:

“The glass is just Janu’ry two.”

When I was younger and I encountered a frustrating pattern in my life that kept repeating, I used to reason, “I guess that life is just trying to get me used to this kind of thing.” That’s how a lot of challenges and disappointments are presented in our early life, by well-meaning adults. “Get used to it. This kind of thing happens a lot in life.” So for many years, any time I encountered the latest iteration of a disappointing pattern, I would think, with some sadness, “I guess I better get used to this; life must be preparing me for a lifetime of so much more of the same. Seems like I’ve been needing a LOT of practice.” 

How depressing.

Over the years, I’ve seen that, in some ways, yes, maybe life was trying to “get me used to” some of those patterns — but not for the sake of the disappointments themselves. Rather, I was being shown so many different versions of the same situations so that I could recognize them when they came around again — because that is empowering. Learning how to put up boundaries for self-care. Learning how to see the love behind a slight, and draw from the wisdom not to take things personally. And sometimes, to see the larger arc of the story and recognize, “This hurts right now, but this is not the shape that these things take forever. I’ve seen this a dozen times before — and it always resolves in love. It always turns into something far more beautiful.”

And that was certainly an uplifting improvement over the nihilistic outlook of my younger years. But still, the idea was the same: that repeated frustrations were designed for me simply to condition myself to them and learn how to accept them. Put bluntly, to figure out how to settle for a shittier lot in life.

It wasn’t until into my 30s that I realized life is notusually trying to just “make me get used to it.” Not trying to condition me to content myself with disappointment. Quite the contrary; life tries to teach us how to ask for what we need. To recognize what’s missing and notjust resign ourselves to the disappointment. Rather, to identify what’s missing, remember that we deserve so much more and don’t haveto get used to it — and speak up.

So we can be happier.

humunanunga:

humanity tries to tell me there’s a loving god and yet I’m kicked while I’m already down.

there is no god smiling down on us. He is laughing. He is laughing at us. He is laughing at me. I wear no clown shoes and yet that doesn’t save me from getting pied in the face.

I took one sip of coffee (the last sip) (in the cup) and it splashed all fucking over me

humanity tries to tell me there’s a loving god and yet I’m kicked while I’m already down.

there is no god smiling down on us. He is laughing. He is laughing at us. He is laughing at me. I wear no clown shoes and yet that doesn’t save me from getting pied in the face.

For better or worse, im reading Thomas Ligotti’s “Conspiracy Against the Human Race”, the purpose of which so far has to legitimately try to argue the validity for the proposition that not only is consciousness an accident, but that the reproduction of our species should cease..

The writing is pithe and jocular. The ideas are those of a lunatic’s but the writing is superb, forming a pretty nice contrast. Acknowledging the absurdity of pessimism, the book nonetheless does not fail to affect a spiritual disquiet and general mind-fuckery. I’m wounded as I read it. My political grounding is not shattered, but I do see a few tiny cracks emerge, perhaps even persuaded to an alarming degree at the logic of the author.

I accept it all with humor, because this malaise feels empowering in a sort of sick way. Is this a fire that melts steel only to make a sword? Any cracks I might observe from reading the book were weak ground.

I’ll consider pessimism’s arguments out of a sense of duty. We should have a clear understanding of what the human experience entails. I don’t think it leads you to a black hole. I think it informs you, through sardonic prose, that we’re already in one.

That said, I think a weakness of pessimism is that it’s logic necessitates an emotional response to its propositions. “life is drab” so what? “we should all let it die” why? “consciousness is a mistake and we’re only here to suffer a meaningless existence”  ok, so what? All of these propositions at some point require a kind of giving-up that can only be rooted in an emotional take over of the brain. One has to give-up to continue their logical path. In this way, it reminds me of people on their first day of work, or their first work out, who complain about the pain. We’re left saying to them, “yeah, get the fuck over it dude. Get cut or gtfo”

It really is a well written book. I recommend it.

girlcaligula:

hate how this guy in this book im reading criticizes camus’ lack of pessimism and insists on how actually the character of meursault is closer to us than the myth of sisyphus because the physicality of life is a greater comfort than the act of rebellion like

1) why are you calling out camus’ lack of pessimism when he says that on his philosophy shines a “neverfading sun” and that he doesn’t think his philosophy can described as pessimist in the first place. like why are you criticizing a point HE DOES NOT MAKE

2) the meaning of the myth of sisyphus doesn’t have end in self-awareness and smug satisfaction for your own rebellion otherwise that’s not rebellion in itself. if you think about a rebellion born out of pride that has still a positive impact on the world around you though perhaps intrinsically meaningless as meaningless is life itself then. then how can you compare the two when one of them is a creative, continuous effort and the other is just passivity lmao

Young The Giant’s new album came out the other day. I had to make a long drive back to my college town the other day to retrieve the keys to my new place, and I thought, “What perfect timing that their new album gets released the same day I’ll be in the car for 5 hours… and can listen to it on repeat for that entire length of time…” 

Okay, slightly kidding on that last part. I did however listen to it a few times, and found certain parts of certain songs that really resonated with me.

Tonight while driving home from my sister’s birthday celebration, the sky was painted in the most remarkable way. In a way that makes you silent; unable to find words to describe how it looks, or what it makes you feel.

All I could think about was the chorus from “Repeat”:

Show me love, fill my cup
The world’s not empty
It’s how you want it to be
Push and pull, the glass is full
Float on an ocean
We’re caught up in the motion
So we move
We just move, we’re just moving

Sometimes I think sunsets and sunrises are a secret sign and special reminder to all of us that despite the bad in the world, or the harshness of a day or time in one’s life, there is always a chance to start over; there’s always a new day, never like the last, and always it’s own canvas to construct.

We all get so busy and wrapped in our lives; we’re always moving, and often maybe lose sight of the fact that we are capable of changing anything we don’t like, don’t need, or feel is no longer building us up. You have to stop sitting in doubt, and consuming the negativity, or else you won’t achieve or fulfill your needs and desires.

The world isn’t empty; there is still so much to learn, to gain, and to grow from. Our cups are always half-full, and are always capable of being filled up even more.