Yesterday I experienced moments of joy. Maybe I need to pay better attention because it was such a surprise, it made me wonder how often I actually experience joy. I was at the grocery store with my son and it felt so good to be able to truly pay attention to him and that moment. As I was paying for the groceries I noticed a father with his toddler daughter. He was taller than average and very well dressed and she barely made it to his knees. He was busy looking for something on the top shelf while she was picking out cereal on the bottom shelf.
she fascinated me. She was so careful in picking up the box of cereal and holding up to her daddy for approval. Then she would turn around and put it back on the shelf. I watched the way she walked with the box so carefully and the way she turned and called his name. I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.I couldn't understand why my reaction was so strong to this little girl but now I think that just by being a witness to a precious child I got a glimpse of God's beauty. I wonder, is it possible to be present for these moments of beauty to the full extent? Is it possible to completely realize the goodness of another person and simultaneously feel gratitude that such beauty exist? the closest example I can come up with would be an encounter with God in my personal life. As wonder-ful as a private experience is, I think it might be even better to experience God's beauty in others. It has a renewing effect on my soul.
she fascinated me. She was so careful in picking up the box of cereal and holding up to her daddy for approval. Then she would turn around and put it back on the shelf. I watched the way she walked with the box so carefully and the way she turned and called his name. I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.I couldn't understand why my reaction was so strong to this little girl but now I think that just by being a witness to a precious child I got a glimpse of God's beauty. I wonder, is it possible to be present for these moments of beauty to the full extent? Is it possible to completely realize the goodness of another person and simultaneously feel gratitude that such beauty exist? the closest example I can come up with would be an encounter with God in my personal life. As wonder-ful as a private experience is, I think it might be even better to experience God's beauty in others. It has a renewing effect on my soul.
Comments
:P
...not to leave our blog hostess' post unresponded to. ;)
Sorry, Jen. :)
I don't know how else to explain it, but beautiful, simple moments sometimes overwhelm me. I've only got one friend who seems to understand this....
Maybe they are fully soaking in the beauty...
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tit, tit, tit....
;-)
you ARE persistent! lol (I think Emerson had a different type in mind...)
Sorry, Jen. :)
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It's okay, FJ. I would like to know, what gives you joy? (Have I asked you that before?)
Is consistent the same as persistent? You tell me. ;)
Reminds me of a former blogger friend of ours, Sue Hanes. I always admired her somehow. Wonder how she is...
i cried so hard that I had to stop thinking about it. I couldn't find any comfort. It has bothered me so much, that I'm going to choose to not dwell on it, because it leads nowhere, like asking, "why, God?"
I'm not filled with hatred for the woman. I don't know what I feel towards her. I am filled with love for the little girl. She deserved to be protected.
Things like this either push me forward or a few steps back, depending on your perspective.
Honestly, this is more important than career choices, relationships, money...this is the deepest root of everything. we worry about what's up top, what people can see, but we are rotting at the roots.
unfortunately....i flatten out in the face of these thoughts. i just want to throw all this shit to the wind.
"Pavel Konstantinovitch," he pleaded, "don't go to sleep or be lulled into complacency! While you're still young, strong and healthy, never stop doing good! happiness doesn't exist, we don't need any such thing. If life has any meaning or purpose, you won't find it in happiness, but in something more rational, in something greater. Doing good!"
Insight. Every time I catch a glimpse of it.
My own and in others.
"Afterwards all three of them sat in armchairs in different parts of the room and said nothing. Ivan Ivanych's story satisfied neither Burkin nor Alyokhin. It was boring listening to that story about some poor devil of a clerk who ate gooseberries, while those generals and ladies, who seem to have come to life in the gathering gloom, peered out of their gilt frames."
The title is familiar...
But please, don't call this poor zek a cynic, for I've passed through the "zero-point" of once owning a will of my own. :(
But please, don't call this poor zek a cynic, for I've passed through the "zero-point" of once owning a will of my own.
If i have understood your meaning correctly, a rather accurate descritpion of a cynic.
Now would you please rub my belly, and make my hunger disappear? Or at least remove your shadow from between my own corporeal being, and that of my Father, Zeus Tallaios!
"No word is there so fraught with fear to speak,
Nor sorrow, nor calamity god-sent,
But mortal man might bear the weight thereof."
My head is yours for the taking, dread Achilles!
...don't call this poor zek a cynic
:)
--Archilochus of Paros
cut-off your own balls, but keep your own thoughts.
Now I'll HAVE to change it! ;P
...cuz if you kill the father...
The Father can efficiently prohibit desire only because he is dead, and, I would add, because he himself doesn't know it - namely, that he is dead. Such is the myth that Freud proposes to the modern man as the man for whom God is dead - namely, who believes that he knows that God is dead.
Why does Freud elaborate this paradox? In order to explain how, in the case of father's death, desire will be more threatening and, consequently, the interdiction more necessary and more harsh. After God is dead, nothing is anymore permitted.
...or should he dream up something entirely new first and avoid trying to institutionalize an "older" dream?
"God forgive me (Ivan Ivanich), a wicked sinner," he murmured, as he drew the clothes over his head.
Why, do you suppose, he said this?
If virtue had led the way to fortune, I would either have been virtuous or pretended to be so like others; I was expected to play the fool, and a fool I turned myself into. [Rameau's Nephew.]
No. But precisely an inversion of the ancient cynic ideas and values ... why one can still smell a stench.
A smell of burning tobacco came from his pipe which lay on the table, and Bourkin could not sleep for a long time and was worried because he could not make out where the unpleasant smell came from.
Ivan Ivanych undressed without a word and got into bed. Then he muttered, "Lord have mercy on us sinners!" and pulled the blankets over his head. His pipe which was lying on a table, smelt strongly of stale tobacco and Burkin was so puzzled as to where the terrible smell was coming from that it was a long time before he fell asleep.
All night long the train beat against the windows.
And yes, the "values" which lead to a cynical reaction are different today than they were then, hence the stench.
As for Ivan, I suspect that despite not having dreams and aspirations of "gooseberry bushes" like his brother achieved in the end, he's at least as happy... w/o having lived in misery 3/4 of his life.
I think that the Ivan's idea fits' with more closely with Zizek's concept of "utopia", as Ivan seems to live it, whilst other merely dream...
Then asked the pupils [of Hoemr]: What is it with this Thersites,
Master? You give him the right words then with your own
Words you put him in the wrong...
"That night i realised that i too was happy and contented," Ivan Ivanych went on, getting to his feet. "I too had lectured people over dinner - or out hunting - on how to live, on what to believe, on how to handle the common people...."
And then: "...Oh if only i were young again!"
And again, I think that this "paradox" of Thersites is "true" no matter how you define your ideology... there will always be a some people (or a "class" of people) who become "trapped" in your dream, and who want nothing to do with it... for it may not "benefit" their "strengths".
The experience of climbing into the moment and fusing with it (ala Dasein)... stopping time.
...I was musing the former.
Moreover, for the cynic, this idea of an other life is a kind of preparation that must ultimately lead to the change of the world. An other life for an other world [un autre monde.]
Diogenes cynicism...
stoics...
hedonist...
epicureans...
all practiced a differently perceived "aspect" of truth...