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It Was That Impossible Thing: Happiness That Does Not Wilt To Reveal The Thin Shoots Of Some New Desire Rising From Within It.
-George Saunders
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It Was That Impossible

George Saunders
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It Was That Impossible Thing: Happiness That Does Not Wilt To Reveal The Thin Shoots Of Some New Desire Rising From Within It.

Understanding the Quote: "it was that impossible thing: happiness that does not wilt to reveal..."

This quote by George Saunders reflects deeply on the theme of impossible things. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Impossible Things, Desire, Doe, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how George Saunders interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About George Saunders

George Saunders is celebrated for insightful thoughts on impossible things and desire. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Impossible Things
Desire
Doe
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Revision
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Names
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Developing Our Sympathetic Compassion Is Not Only Possible But The Only Reason For Us To Be Here On Earth.
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Earth
Reason
It's So Ironic That You Often Hear These Right-wing People Talking About The Constitution.
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People
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Littles
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Life Is Short
Long
Do Not Really Like Rich People, As They Make Us Poor People Feel Dopey And Inadequate. Not That We Are Poor. I Would Say We Are Middle. We Are Very, Very Lucky. I Know That. But Still, It Is Not Right That Rich People Make Us Middle People Feel Dopey And Inadequate.
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Writing
Feelings
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Couple
I Have A Lot Of Theories About The Beneficial Effects Of Fiction, But I'm Always Trying To Get Away From Them A Little Bit.
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Fiction
Littles
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Ceilings
Culture
Being In Church So Often, Spending Those Hours Sitting In Front Of A Highly Symbolic Array Of Objects, Hearing Those Beautiful Texts - It Teaches A Kid That There Are Important Truths Beyond The Literal Ones, And That We Have Ways To Access Those Truths That Are, Let's Say, Super-rational.
Beautiful
Kids
Important
I Don't Know About Transformation. But Scientifically You Can Say: Well, It Doesn't Seem To Hurt Anybody. Personally I've Been Cheered By Books At Really Critical Moments. That Much I Believe.
Hurt
Believe
Book
If A Writer Understands His Work As Something That Originates With Him But Then, With Any Luck, Gets Away From Him, Then What He Needs Is Someone Who Can Grasp The Potential Of The Piece And Lead Him To That Higher Ground.
Higher Ground
Luck
Needs
I Think Each Writer Has To Seek Her Most Energetic Prose Style. She Has To Find A Way To Write So That Nobody Can Deny It.
Writing
Thinking
Style
As The Writer Of This Book [lincoln In The Bardo], What I Loved Was The Feeling Of Having So Many Surprises Come At The End That I Hadn't Really Planned Or Planted.
Book
Feelings
Surprise
What's Really Baffling To Me Is The Way That The Technology Has Risen Up To Help Us Become More Materialistic.
Technology
Way
Helping
I Hear That In My Head All The Time Now: 'why Don't You Go And See?'.
In The Moment Of Reading, The Writer Comes Up To The Surface And The Reader Comes Up To The Surface And They Kiss, Like Two Fish. That Actually Does Happen.
Reading
Kissing
Two
I Guess What I'm Trying To Say Is That Whatever Weirdness Was Going To Be In There, I Felt, Had To Be Earned. And It Had To Be Required By The Emotional Needs Of The Book.
Book
Emotional
Trying
If You Want To Explore A Political Idea In The Highest Possible Way, You Embody It In The Personal, Because That's Something That No One Can Deny.
Ideas
Political
Want
I Am Always Considering The Reader. Although This Is Admittedly Kind Of Odd: Which Reader? On What Day? In What Mood? For Me, That "reader" Is Actually Just Me, If I Had Never Read The Story Before.
Stories
Kind
Odd
The One Thing Fiction And Non-fiction Writing Have In Common For Me Is That Sense Of Trying To Get The Sentences To Be Minimal But At The Same Time Be A Little Overfull - To Encourage Them To Do A Kind Of Poetic Work.
Writing
Trying
Fiction
Down In The City Are The Nice Houses And The So-so Houses And The Lovers Making Out In Dark Yards And The Babies Crying For Their Moms, And I Wonder If, Other Than Jesus, Has This Ever Happened Before. Maybe It Happens All The Time. Maybe There's Angry Dead All Over, Hiding In Rooms, Covered With Blankets, Bossing Around Their Scared, Embarrassed Relatives. Because How Would We Know?
Mom
Baby
Jesus
Character Is That Sum Total Of Moments We Can't Explain.
Character
Moments
When I Wrote That [donald] Trump Piece, I Had This Uncomfortable Experience Of Sensing A Lot Of Things That Were Nascent, That I Couldn't Quite Articulate. And One Of Them Was This Move Toward Anti-intellectualism. An Anti-love Move, Even.
Moving
Pieces
Anti Love
I'm Finding, As I Get Older, That I'm Not Much Of A Believer In Redemption. I Mean, I Believe In Redemption In Real Life - Redemption Does Happen, And It's Cool When It Does - But I Find Myself Getting Leery Of My Desire For It In Stories (especially My Own).
Real
Believe
Mean
My Theory For Nonfiction Is That Nobody Can Be Free Of Some Kind Of Conceptions About Whatever Story They're Writing. But If You Can Find A Way To Build Those Into The Story, Then The Story Becomes A Process Of Deconstructing And Heightening And Sometimes Changing Those Notions And That Makes Dramatic Tension. The Initial Statement Of Your Position, And Then Letting Reality Act On You To Change It, Is Pretty Good Storytelling.
Writing
Reality
Stories
I Came Away Believing And Really Deeply Troubled By Is The Extent To Which You Can Have Two Well-intentioned People Talking In A Friendly Spirit And You Get To A Point Where The Two Mutual Mythologies Just Don't Intersect. So Kind Of The Next Piece I'd Like To Write Or Think About Is How Did This Left-right Divide Get So Weird And Codified.
Believe
Writing
Thinking
To Me, The Process Of Writing Is Just Reading What I've Written And - Like Running Your Hand Over One Of Those Mod Glass Stovetops To Find Where The Heat Is - Looking For Where The Energy Is In The Prose, Then Going In The Direction Of That. It's An Exercise In Being Open To Whatever Is There.
Running
Reading
Writing
There Are Books That I Read Years Ago That Enlivened Things In Me That Haven't Died Yet.
Book
Years
Havens
This - Where We Are Now - Is Where A Culture Gets To, When It Has Chosen, For Many Years, Banality Over Intelligence, The Literal Over The Immaterial Or Complex, Materialism Over Spirituality. This Is The Result Of Many Years Of Disrespecting The Intellectual Project - Of A Collective Acceptance Of The Idea That Thinking And Reasoning And Reading Deeply In Difficult Text And Being Respectful Of History Are Somehow "wimpy" Or Secondary.
Reading
Acceptance
Thinking
The Story Sometimes Writes You Into A Corner.
Writing
Stories
Sometimes
When You Do Something That's Going To Speak To People, It's Going To Be Because You're Really Allowing All Of Yourself To The Table In An Accepting Way.
People
Tables
Way
If I Go To The Coffee Shop And Have A Nice Interaction With The Barista, I Don't Know What That Does For World Peace, But We Have To Assume That In The Great Basket Of Goodness Maybe That's One Little Micron Or One Little Neutron That You've Put In There.
Nice
Coffee
Littles
I Think The Path For A Young Writer Might Be One That Says, "i Have To Accept Myself, This Is What I Am. I Can't Eradicate My Defects. I Can Work On Them."
Thinking
Might
Path
I Always Describe Writing A Story As Throwing Bowling Pins In The Air And Then Catching Them.
Writing
Air
Stories
There's A Really Nice Moment In The Life Of A Piece Of Writing Where The Writer Starts To Get A Feeling Of It Outgrowing Him - Or He Starts To See It Having A Life Of Its Own That Doesn't Have Anything To Do With His Ego Or His Desire To 'be A Good Writer'.
Nice
Writing
Feelings
Our First Responsibility In All Things Is To Preserve Our Goodness Of Heart - Then And Only Then Act.
Responsibility
Heart
Firsts
What Evil Does First In The World, Maybe, Is Distract Us From Our Pursuit Of Goodness.
Evil
Firsts
Doe
There Are Some Things Fundamentally Off About The Stance Of The Book. And Maybe That's Okay; Maybe Every Book Is Flawed, And Great Books, As Flawed As They Might Be, Articulate A Moral Argument That The Reader Then Carries Forward. The Critique To This Model Is, Of Course, To Ask: Should A Book Be Ever So Perfect That You Come Out Of It With Complete Moral Agreement That Can Be Sustained?
Book
Agreement
Perfect
I Think When You Get To Export Your Creative Impulse Into Something, It Kind Of Lessens That Busy Energy That Can Be So Confrontational And Pissy.
Thinking
Creative
Energy
I Think Something That I Can't Name About Our Media Has Made Us Move Away From That Kind Of Specificity And That Kind Of Curiosity.
Moving
Thinking
Names
Even The Written History [of Abraham Lincoln's Times] Is Poorly Understood By Most People.
People
Abraham
Understood
I Heard Zen Teacher One Time Talking About Abortion, And He Was Saying The Way That Abortion Makes Bad Karma Is Any Time The Person Involved Pretends That There's Not A Cost To The Choice, One Way Or The Other; Whether You Get It Or Don't Get It, There's A Cost. That's Just Basic Responsibility, To Admit That There's A Cost. And The Bad Karma Is When You Pretend That The Thing Is Free.
Karma
Teacher
Responsibility
One Of The Inspiring Things About Susan Sarandon Career Is That There's A Quality Of Real Fearlessness In It - You Seem To Be In It For The Challenge And The Experience.
Real
Careers
Challenges
The Word 'funny' Is A Bit Like The Word 'love' - We Don't Have Enough Words To Describe The Many Varieties.
Enough
Words Love
Variety
The Idea Of Inclusion Has Become Kind Of A Stone That We've Passed Our Hand Over So Many Times That It Doesn't Mean Anything.
Mean
Hands
Ideas
[writing] Is Almost Like Those Boats That Sit Really Low In The Water; They Look Kind Of Ugly. And Then You Get One Of Them Up To 80 Miles An Hour And The Hull Comes Up, And It's A Beautiful Thing. I'm Okay With That For Myself.
Beautiful
Writing
Water
Fiction Is Open To Whoever Comes In The Door, As Long As You Come In Energetically.
Doors
Long
Fiction
It Was Like Either: (a) I Was A Terrible Guy Who Was Knowingly Doing This Rotten Thing Over And Over, Or (b) It Wasn’t So Rotten, Really, Just Normal, And The Way To Confirm It Was Normal Was To Keep Doing It, Over And Over.
Guy
Rotten
Way
Just Through The Process Of Trying To Make The Living And The Dead Feel Real, All These Little Benefits Came Out. And These Benefits Turned Out To Be Much More Articulate Statements Of What I Really Believe. And Somehow They Were More Convincing Because They Were Arrived At At Such Length.
Real
Believe
Trying
I'm Not Thinking Much About Overall Themes Or Preoccupations Or Anything Like That. Instead I'm Just Trusting That, If I'm Working Hard, Various Notions And Riffs And Motifs And So On Are Very Naturally Suffusing The Stories And The Resulting Book.
Book
Thinking
Stories
Whatever You Love, That Will Be An Influence. It Just Will. So In Effect The Young Writer's Job Is: Go Out And Find Some Stuff To Love.
Jobs
Stuff
Young Writers
My Go-to Default Is To Try To Be Nice, Which I Feel Does Less Harm In The Long Run Than Trying To Be, Say, Assertive. If I Am Nice And Maybe Too Passive, I Find That Easier To Live With.
Running
Nice
Long
My Heart Goes Out To Him. Sort Of. Because Empathy Depends On How You've Spent Your Day.
Heart
Empathy
My Heart
All Of This Strife On The Political Front Might Just Be The Death Throes Of Another Set Of [less-honorable] American Beliefs, That Have, At Their Core, The Notion That Equality Is Something The Privileged Group "gives" To Those Not So Privileged - A Reaching Down, As It Were.
Giving
Political
Might
I Attended Catholic School. We Received A Great Education From The Nuns. ... Also, Guilt. Guilt And A Feeling Of Never Being Satisfied With What You've Done. And A Sense That You Are Inadequate And A Big Phony. All Useful For A Writer. I'm Always Being Edited By My Inner Nun.
School
Catholic
Feelings
When I Write I Know That I'm Going To Have To Produce 40 Percent More Than I Need.
Writing
Needs
Produce
Nothing Will Turn You Into A Civil War Buff Like Five Years Of Reading. Some Of The Letters That People Wrote From That Time Are So Deep And So Beautifully Articulate. And You Realize, Especially With The Stuff That's Going On Now In America, That It's Always Been Chaos - People Were Disagreeing At Least As Much As They Are Now And 20,000 People Would Die In A Day. It's The Scale That's Amazing, And Also The Proximity To Our Own Time.
War
Reading
America
This Whole Literary Game Of Trying To Put Yourself In The Shoes Of Your Opponent Is Good For Everybody. It Leaves You More Open-hearted, It Gives You A More Accurate Vision Of The Other Person, Because It's More Based On Curiosity Than Projection. In The End If You Do Have To Fight, You're Better Equipped To Fight. Also It Doesn't Leave You Damaged At The End, It Doesn't Leave You Hateful Or Malformed By Your Own Anger.
Fighting
Games
Shoes
One Of The Things I Noticed About The Trump Supporters Was A Lot Of Projected Fear. I Can't Tell You How Many Times A Conversation Went Like This: "we've Got To Stop These Immigrants, Because It's Terrible." I'd Say, "okay, What Personally Have You Observed About This?" And There Would Be Basically Nothing In That Box. And I'd Say, "where'd You Get Your Information?" Thinking They Were Going To Say Fox. But They Would Always Say, "well, I Get My Information From All Kinds Of Sources." Fox Is Kind Of Center-left To A Lot Of People Now.
Thinking
People
Information
If You're Going To Make An Emotional Connection With Somebody, Whether It's In The Story Or In The World, There's A Certain Amount Of Self-acceptance That Is Required.
Acceptance
Emotional
Self
If I'm Writing A Story And You're Reading It, Or Vice Versa, You Took Time Out Of Your Day To Pick Up My Book. I Think The One Thing That Will Kill That Relationship Is If You Feel Me Condescending To You In The Process.
Book
Reading
Writing
From The Perspective Of Someone With Two Grown And Wonderful Kids, That Your Instincts As Parents Are Correct: A Minute Spent Reading To Your Kids Now Will Repay Itself A Million-fold Later, Not Only Because They Love You For Reading To Them, But Also Because, Years Later, When They’re Gone And Miles Away, Those Quiet Evenings, When You Were Tucked In With Them, Everything Quiet But The Sound Of The Page-turns, Will, Seem To You, I Promise...... Sacred.
Reading
Love You
Kids
And I Have Finally Realized That, You Know, It's Not A Given That My Lifespan Will Accommodate My Writing Aspirations. It Could Be That It Would Take Me 12 More Books At Six Years Each To Get It - Which Means I Would Have To Live To Be 126. Which I Fully Intend To Do, Of Course.
Book
Writing
Mean
I Always Cheerfully Say, "well, You Know, The Species Is Adapting, And Whatever It Needs To Do, It'll Do," But I Do Think It's Maybe A Little Bit Alarming. Everybody Knows That One Thing We Really Have To Do Is To Be More Wherever We Are, More Present, That's Just Kind Of A Commonplace. And The Whole Mobile Phone Thing Is Completely 100% The Opposite - To Never Be Where You Are Because You Can Always Be Somewhere Else; And Yet It's So Fun And Addictive.
Fun
Thinking
Phones
As Far As Which Writers Embody This Form Of Gentle Power - Tobias Wolff, For Sure. His Persona And His Writing Both Share An Easy, Capacious Confidence That Says He Has Faith In His Readers.
Writing
Have Faith
Tobias
We Try, We Fail, We Posture, We Aspire, We Pontificate - And Then We Age, Shrink, Die, And Vanish.
Age
Trying
Failing
I Don't Mind Being Criticized Intelligently; Although I Don't Love It.
Mind
One Of The Ways That We Cope With Anxiety Is By Over Planning And Over Controlling. If We Know Where It's Going To, We Can Just Relax And Do It. Unfortunately, In My Experience, That's Not The Way It Works. The Story Doesn't Want To Be Told What To Do. You Have To Enter Into This Process With A High Level Of Trust That The Many Hours Of Choosing That You're Doing Every Day Will Gradually Clarify The Narrative For You. And That's What Happens.
Anxiety
Relax
Stories
Err In The Direction Of Kindness.
Kindness
Collaboration
The Cool Parts - The Parts That Have Won Dubai Its Reputation As 'the Vegas Of The Middle East' Or 'the Venice Of The Middle East' Or 'the Disney World Of The Middle East, If Disney World Were The Size Of San Francisco And Out In A Desert' - Have Been Built In The Last Ten Years.
Dubai
Years
San Francisco
I Watched A Documentary About The Immigrant Crisis Around The World. And It Does Make Me Blush At All The Times I've Stood Up On The Stage And Given Your Speech About The Healing Power Of Fiction.
Healing
Speech
Documentaries
I Actually Believe That A Lot Of What People Call Originality Has To Do With Persistence In The Craft.
Believe
Persistence
People
Humor Is What Happens When We're Told The Truth Quicker And More Directly Than We're Used To.
Writing
Used
Happens
In A Sense My Whole Life As A Writer Is Trying To Find Structural Ways, Or Formal Ways, To Permit That Outflowing So It Doesn't Just Look Like Crazy Output. In Other Words, If It Turns Out That You Can Do A Given Voice, That's Just Kind Of Inclination. But Then If You Can Find A Way To Put That Voice In A Story So That The Voice Serves A Purpose, Then I Would Say That's Being A Writer.
Crazy
Voice
Trying
That For Me Was The Big Turning Point In My Artistic Life, When My Wife And I Had Our Kids. The World Got Infused With Morality Again. Every Person In The World Should Theoretically Be Loved As Much As I Love My Daughters.
Daughter
Mother
Kids
So Here's Something I Know To Be True, Although It's A Little Corny, And I Don't Quite Know What To Do With It.
Advice
Littles
Corny
Some Of Buddhist Texts Say That, In The Moment After You Die, You Think Of New Jersey And You Go To New Jersey Or You Think Of 1820 And You Go To 1820. Also, All Your Sort Of Inner-symbology Gets Writ Large. So, If You're A Christian, You See Christian Iconography.
Christian
Buddhist
Thinking
I Guess: People Who Are Comfortable Enough With Reality To Allow Other Sorts Of Realities And Other Mindsets To Just Be, And Then To Regard These With Real Interest And Joy [and The Joy Appears In The Prose Quality Itself].
Real
People
Joy
As A Young Kid I Assumed That Everybody Was Sort Of On The Same Wavelength As I Was And Then I Found Out In A Lot Of Small Ways That That Wasn't The Case. It's Sort Of A Mixed Blessing. My Mind Is Like A Puppy. It Goes All Over. I Guess Writing Fiction Was A Way Of Harnessing That. I Could Hook A Puppy Up To A Treadmill And Get Something Out Of It.
Writing
Kids
Blessing
Nostalgia Is, 'hey, Remember The Other Mall That Used To Be There?'
Hey
Nostalgia
Remember
I Haven't Written A Novel Or Something That Long, Because I Really Am Improvising All Along And The Story Is Growing New Limbs To Do What It Needs To Do. So There's Very Little Planning. There's A Little Planning Where I Say, "well, It Looks Like I'm Going In This Direction, Ok, Good." But There's Very Little Forethought Or Intellectual Justification: "oh, Look, I'm Putting In A Theme Park Because That Represents Dystopian America!"
America
Long
Intellectual
I Watched A Bunch Of Kids Movies On Christmas. I Was Kind Of Joking With Our Family By Asking, "is Anyone Allowed To Die In A Kid's Movie Anymore?"
Kids
Asking
Kind
With Nonfiction, I Go In Trying To Be Really Honest About What My Preconceptions Are.
Trying
Nonfiction
Honest
Let's Say There's Something Operating In You Called Mind. It's Very Powerful, But It's Dampened By The Body, By Physicality. When You Die, That Tether Gets Cut And Off The Mind Goes With Incredible Power.
Powerful
Cutting
Mind
I Love The Feeling Of Being On The Hunt - The Feeling That The Story Is Refusing To Be Solved In Some Lesser Way And Is Insisting That You See It On Its Highest Terms.
Feelings
Stories
Way
I Knew If I Evoked That Stuff Too Easily Or Gratuitously, As A Way Of Assuaging My Fears Of Not Being Edgy Or Whatever, The Writing Would Fall Apart. This Book [lincoln In The Bardo] Was Going To Have To Have Some Earnestness In It.
Book
Fall
Writing
I Don't Know How You Feel, But I Feel Like Writing, Clarity Of Thought, And Truth Have Been Validated Because We See What Happens When We Get Lax In Those Areas. I'm Excited By The Idea That Writers Like Us Can Actually Reach Out And Try To Understand And Prod And Agitate The People Who Are In Support Of Trump Because We Have The Tools To Do It. We're Language People And We're Idea People.
Writing
Ideas
People
I Had To Go In And Do The Work Of Toning [invented "historical" Bits] Down In Order To Make Them Fit [in Lincoln In The Bardo]. It's Like If You're An Actor And You're Always Overacting, Well, You're A Bad Actor. But If You're An Actor Who Subdues Yourself To The Extent That's Necessary, Then You're Really Acting.
Order
Historical
Acting
I Still Believe That Capitalism Is Too Harsh And I Believe That, Even Within That, There Is A Lot Of Satisfaction And Beauty If You Happen To Be One Of The Lucky Ones, Although That Doesn't Eradicate The Reality Of The Suffering. It's All True At Once, Kind Of Humming And Sublime.
Believe
Reality
Sublime
In Fact Unrestrained Capitalism Is Quite Cruel And The Cost Is On The Individual Human, On His Or Her Grace.
Grace
Cost
Facts
It's Funny With Fiction - Once You Cut Something, It Hasn't Happened Anymore.
Cutting
Fiction
Happened
Back In 1992, I Had My First Story Accepted By 'the New Yorker.'
Stories
Firsts
Accepted
I've Had That My Whole Career. People Were Always Hedging Around The Question Of: Why Are You So Dark? What Happened To You?
Dark
Careers
People
I've Noticed That Nowadays I'm Doing A Lot Of Stuff On The Phone And On The Computer, Which I Usually Wouldn't Do Earlier. And I Can Feel My Brain Being Rewired: I'm Getting Anxious, I'm Getting More Manic. Now, I'm An Extreme Case Because I'm Old And I'm Overdoing It. But Still, It's Really Interesting That I Can Actually Feel A Change In My Neurochemistry From This Interaction With The Technology.
Technology
Phones
Interesting
What I Regret Most In My Life Are Failures Of Kindness. Those Moments When Another Human Being Was There, In Front Of Me, Suffering, And I Responded . . . Sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.
Graduation
Kindness
Regret
I've Had The Thought That A Person's 'artistic Vision' Is Really Just The Cumulative Combination Of Whatever Particular Stances He Has Sincerely Occupied During His Creative Life - Even If Some Of Those Might Appear Contradictory.
Creative
Vision
Might
The Weird Thing Was That I Went To Trump Rallies Thinking I Was Going To Run Into Militant, Right Wing, Racist People And Mostly I Didn't. That Should Have Been A Clue To Me. The People I Talked To Were Not, On The Surface Level, Crazy. They Were Quite Nice, Quite Normal, Employed, And Actually Were Wealthier Than The Press At That Time Would Have Led Us To Believe. At That Time, The Narrative Was That These Were All Working Poor But These Were Not Working Poor. That Should've Been A Clue To Me That This Was A Little Bigger Than I Thought.
Running
Crazy
Nice
Certainly We're Always Rooting For Our Particular Contingent Moment To Be A Great One. Pain-free. But The More Expansive Vision Has To Include The Idea That, Even For Us, Sometimes Our Particular Contingent Moment Is Going To Be Horrific.
Pain
Ideas
Vision
People Who've Written About Abraham Lincoln's Writing Emphasize How Logical He Was. His Writing Was A Syllogistic Tool. He Would Say, If A, Then B, And He Would Reason Through It. His Late Writing Especially Is So Tight And So Beautifully Reasoned.
Writing
People
Tools
It Seems To Me A Worthy Goal: Try To Create A Representation Of Consciousness That's Durable And Truthful, I.e., That Accounts, Somewhat, For All The Strange, Tiny, Hard-to-articulate, Instantaneous, Unwilled Things That Actually Go On In Our Minds In The Course Of A Given Day, Or Even A Given Moment.
Goal
Mind
Trying
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