Obsidian Sync 2024-12-10 09:08:39

content/daily-notes/2024-12-10.md

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 ### 2024-12-10
 #### Meditations for Mortals Day Fourteen
+This chapter is titled *Develop a taste for problems: On never reaching the trouble-free phase.*
 
-> “He’s surely far from alone. I suspect that most of us, except perhaps the very Zen or the very elderly, move through our days with a similar if largely unconscious assumption that at some point – maybe not soon, but eventually – we’ll make it to the phase of life which won’t involve confronting an endless fusillade of things to deal with. The unfortunate consequence is that we experience our ordinary problems – the bills to pay, the minor conflicts to resolve, each little impediment that stands between us and realizing our goals – as doubly problematic. First, there’s the problem itself. But then there’s the way in which the very existence of any such problems undermines our yearning to feel perfectly secure and in control. So we spend our lives leaning into the future, unconsciously deeming whatever’s happening now to be fundamentally flawed, because it’s marred by too many problems. And quite possibly deeming ourselves to be fundamentally flawed, too – or else wouldn’t we have figured out some way to eliminate all these problems by now? Yet the reality, as Harris goes on, is that ‘… life is an unending series of complications, so it doesn’t make any sense to be surprised by the arrival of the next one.”
-
-Excerpt From
-Meditations for Mortals
-Oliver Burkeman
-This material may be protected by copyright.
-
-Excerpt From
-Meditations for Mortals
-Oliver Burkeman
-This material may be protected by copyright.
+> I suspect that most of us, except perhaps the very Zen or the very elderly, move through our days with a similar if largely unconscious assumption that at some point – maybe not soon, but eventually – we’ll make it to the phase of life which won’t involve confronting an endless fusillade of things to deal with. The unfortunate consequence is that we experience our ordinary problems – the bills to pay, the minor conflicts to resolve, each little impediment that stands between us and realizing our goals – as doubly problematic. First, there’s the problem itself. But then there’s the way in which the very existence of any such problems undermines our yearning to feel perfectly secure and in control. So we spend our lives leaning into the future, unconsciously deeming whatever’s happening now to be fundamentally flawed, because it’s marred by too many problems. And quite possibly deeming ourselves to be fundamentally flawed, too – or else wouldn’t we have figured out some way to eliminate all these problems by now? Yet the reality, as Harris goes on, is that ‘… life is an unending series of complications, so it doesn’t make any sense to be surprised by the arrival of the next one.’