GOTCHA!
You totally thought this was going to be posted by OftenBen, didn't you?
Hey maybe if search wasn't borked I'd be able to find out if it already had been!
So, you don't think that de Botton simply doesn't feel love like you do and is working from his position rather than try to "poison" the minds of the folks like yourself?
I perfectly understand the feelings he describes about others and oneself in the article. It resonates with me - perhaps because, true to what you've written, I am a damaged man, deprived of love in my upbringing. I said I was falling in love with people before, but the truth is, I don't know what loving someone - or being loved - feels like. I like some people, and I do my best to stay around them, often for too long, with too much obvious effort that makes them push me away. My feelings are under a rock which I have to constantly move against itself, and with that, rationalizing things to make them appear like a structure rather than a feeling has been a great help: while imperfect, it's a method I can use to view whatever chaos of human interactions I'm a part of as some sort of a structure, something I can operate within. It's unwieldy, overly technical and prone to overthinking itself, but it's something.
So calm down. Maybe he wasn't talking to you. Maybe he was talking to me.
You know, I didn't feel like what he was referring to was the kind of pessimism we all hear about: the resignation kind, the fatalistic kind. Instead, I hear the notion of letting go of things that don't matter. Something akin to...
Sure, you'll make mistakes. We all will. We don't know what we want, so while hurling yourself blindly to the ever-escaping, vague light that we all strive for, you're certainly going to hurt a limb or two. That's okay. The people you meet aren't going to be perfect, in themselves or for you - and that's okay too. Don't make a fuss out of having a fight or two: it's not the end of the world.
Acceptance, if anything.
Maybe it's just me. I'm a rebellious asshole who, if told that there's nothing better in the world, marches on twice the speed. I've so far assumed that everybody in my kind of situation would develop this kind of resilience towards the ill. Otherwise, there's no living, right?
It's not an inspiring lesson like some others I've heard him pronounce, but are truths supposed to be always inspiring? can they be?
I don't think it hurt me, though. He's not poisoning me, and he's not poisoning you. So who's getting poisoned?
Let me first say that I'm not very familiar with his teachings, despite the buzz. I've only personally read the article in question and another one of his that talks about mistakes and clouds. I presume, since you speak with confidence about his teachings, that you are more knowledgable about them than I am.
I've been struggling with the idea that there must be some foundation of things beyond which you mustn't degrade your tastes or desires simply because you can't attain them for as long as I can remember. What I understand by "foundation" is a floor, a bottom - the baseline on the measure tape. If I understand your words correctly, you mean to say that there is such a foundation and that anything beyond it is undesirable because of self-absolution of responsibility and the degradation of the self that follows. Do I understand your words correctly? Correct me if I don't: you provide a perspective I've never encountered before.
It does. Thank you. I wish it could be less vague, but, as you've said, every person is different.
I hope it's okay if I ask you one more thing. If a person says they like spending time with you but, for whatever reason, can never seem to find the time unless you put effort into making it (say, by visiting them at home or at work), what does that say about the person and about the relationship?
Perhaps it was unwise of me to bring up the question without a proper context, since it impedes your ability to provide insight.
Either way, I appreciate the advice. It's been good to learn things from a more healthy perspective, since mine is quite a bit skewed still.
- Hey maybe if search wasn't borked I'd be able to find out if it already had been!
Here you go. Adding site:hubski.com to a DuckDuckGo or Google query works.
- A man is attempting to work on a train between Edinburgh and London. It is early in the afternoon on a warm spring day. Papers and a diary are on the table before him, and a book is open on the arm-rest. But the man has been unable to hold a coherent thought since Newcastle, when a woman entered the carriage and seated herself across the aisle. After looking impassively out of the window for a few moments, she turned her attention to a pile of magazines. She has been reading Vogue since Darlington. She reminds the man of a portrait by Christen Købke of Mrs Høegh-Guldberg (though he cannot recall either of these names), which he saw, and felt strangely moved and saddened by, in a museum in Denmark a few years before.
But unlike Mrs Høegh-Guldberg, she has short brown hair, and wears jeans, a pair of trainers, and a canary-yellow v-neck sweater over a T-shirt. He notices an incongruously large digital sports watch on her pale, freckle-dotted wrist. He imagines running his hand through her chestnut hair, caressing the back of her neck, sliding his hand inside the sleeve of her pullover, watching her fall asleep beside him, her lips slightly agape. He imagines living with her in a house in south London, in a cherry tree-lined street. He speculates that she may be a cellist or a graphic designer or a doctor specialising in genetic research. His mind turns over strategies for conversation. He considers asking her for the time, for a pencil, for directions to the bathroom, for reflections on the weather, for a look at one of her magazines. He longs for a train crash, in which their carriage would be thrown into one of the vast barley fields through which they are passing. In the chaos, he would guide her safely outside, and repair with her to a nearby tent set up by the ambulance service, where they would be offered luke warm tea and stare into each others’ eyes. Years later, they would attract interest by revealing that they had met in the tragic Edinburgh Express collision. But because the train seems disinclined to derail, though he knows it to be louche and absurd, the man cannot help clearing his throat and leaning over to ask the angel if she might have a spare biro. It feels like jumping off the side of a very high bridge.
Surprise! it was actually posted by flagamuffin. But, close.