"What the hell is water?"

This commencement address by David Foster Wallace is pretty good:

"Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed."

two quotes I like

"It is much more engaging and enlivening to talk about the cultivation of self-regulation, for example, than the management of anger." --Claire Failkov (from spam email)

"entrepreneurs from Steve Jobs to Mark Zuckerberg are in the business of discovering things that users don't already know that they will want" - Tim O'Reilly (from Slashdot)

hope

I'm setting limits with someone, needing to limit my contact with them. I'm worried they'll 'hold out hope' for more, no matter what I say.

Sometimes hope is just an expectation wearing a party dress.

rereading Marcus Aurelius

There's a new translation of Meditations by Jacob Needleman and John Piazza, and I've been enjoying it today. I liked this:

"Either the gods have power or they do not. If they do not, why do you pray? But if they do have power, why aren't you praying that they give you the power not to fear, to crave, or be troubled by a thing, rather than praying to have that thing or not have it?" (Meditations 9.40)

Such a Buddhist idea. I've been reading his biography and can't find any reference to him coming in contact with Buddhism or even knowing it existed.

"Begin to pray in the following way, and you will see. Someone else may pray, 'How may I possess that woman?' But you should pray, 'How may I not lust after that woman?' Someone else prays 'How can I be rid of him?' But you: 'How can I not wish to be rid of him?' Another: 'How may I not lose my little child?' But you: 'How may I not dread the loss of my child'? Turn your prayers around entirely, and see what happens."

Who Is The Slackmistress?

She is a leaf on the wind.
She is Still Not King.
She is the Maker of Silly Noises, after all other Makers of Silly Noises have fallen.
She speaks for the Sisterhood of Slacking.
She dips her toe into the river that is never the same river twice.
She refers to herself in the third person.
She drinks from the cup of pure awareness.
She eats nacho cheese Doritos.
She is full of Heisenberg uncertainty and win.