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Attitudes



j jackson



This page started out as a personal list of ideas that I wanted to use to keep my attitude in line, since I'm always drifting away from what I know to be important. (It's sort of like George Washington's list of ideas for self-improvement.) But the list got to be too long (most of it is not yet posted). Keeping all of these ideas in mind could occupy my whole day as I read them over and recite them to myself--which, maybe, is not so bad a way to live, sitting meditating, or walking around a pleasant environment like the living books in Fahrenheit 451. But I (decide that I) have other things to do--which is a shame, because I could get into that kind of contemplative lifestyle. And so I'm posting this list because, as I've discovered, posting material to a Website is a good way to keep it relatively fresh in mind, as I review the site from time to time--certainly more often than I'd review the file if I left it sitting in a folder on my computer disconsidered for years.



Except for one poem in a local newspaper, none of Emily Dickinson's 1700 plus poems were ever published while she was alive. Except for a few minor excerpts in a local newspaper, Mary Boykin Chesnut's journals were not published until twenty years after her death. From this point of view, I'm well ahead of the game.


If people want to laugh at you, ridicule you, make fun of you, that's their business. They're the ones who have to live with their psychologies, not you. But if you allow their behavior to influence the way you feel, then by enabling them, you give them power over you.


Some of your hurts you have cured.
And others you still have survived.
But what torments of grief you endured
from evils which never arrived.
 
Ralph Waldo Emerson
No matter how bad things look, no matter how difficult or foreboding times seem, right now, everything is probably okay. Very seldom are things bad, in the moment, and when they are, you're not concerned with worrying about them, because you're too busy responding to the immediate situation to think about it. All problems are increased by worry about the future, and life becomes a miserable existence instead of a celebration of the present, when everything is usually just fine. (And when things aren't fine, worrying about them only compounds the problem.)


Sometimes life goes easily, and we relax and let it flow;
sometimes life will not flow, and we worry, doubt, and fear.
At these times, any little thing gets blown out of proportion.

Time-wise, i.e., re personal pain and discomfort, physical or mental,
very little ever actually goes wrong in our lives; a greater percentage
of our time we are comfortable and we actually more or less enjoy it.

Except that we will worry, doubt, feel anxious, fear, sometimes
allowing it to escalate into obsessive-compulsive paranoia.
This is the difference between peace and discord: the flow of life.


In this kind of world... absurd if you will, possibilities nevertheless proliferate and escalate all around us and there are opportunities for beginning again. I am a minor artist and my dealer won't even display my work if he can help it but minor is as minor does and lightning may strike even yet. Don't be reconciled. Turn off your television sets, ...cash in your life insurance, indulge in mindless optimism. Visit girls at dusk. Play the guitar. How can you be alienated without first having been connected? Think back and remember how it was.
 
Donald Barthleme, "A Shower of Gold",
from Come Back, Dr. Caligari
I have been connected. And how! Oh, how I have been connected.
I am still connected, all evidence to the contrary. I still feel, a part.
I am worthy of being alienated, I have the background to relive it.
I was alienated as a child, coming out of it to survive, then retreat.
Now, as spring nears, I feel the urge to rejoin others once again.
Keep in mind, I'm not what I appear to be. That's only half of me.
So much more exists, so much I can never take full advantage of.
Everything I want is always available, if I will only but look for it.
Yet life is not a tragedy because I allow opportunities to pass by.


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