I love my website too
I came across this post by Tracy Durnell on how she loves her website, and that was prompted by another post which was in turn prompted by an old talk by @adactio….
tags /authenticity /
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this website as a learning and reflection tool
why and how I’m building this website as a tool for myself
2021: little bits
I am still not sure if there’s any point to writing a post like this because no one can know what will happen in an entire year, but I thought it may…
on writing to exist, and website graveyards
I suppose the momentum of writing is like maintaining a bicycle chain, if too much time passes the chain becomes rusty and it becomes a lot harder to get it going again….
on writing as me
what it means to write as oneself, to write so deeply into yourself that people can feel your bones just by reading your words
nature of the wasteland
And what is the nature of the wasteland? It is a land where everybody is living an inauthentic life, doing as other people do, doing as you’re told, with no courage for your own life. That is the wasteland. And that is what T. S. Eliot meant in his poem The Waste Land.
Such a person has put himself off center
If the person insists on a certain program, and doesn’t listen to the demands of his own heart, he’s going to risk a schizophrenic crackup. Such a person has put himself off center. He has aligned himself with a program for life, and it’s not the one the body’s interested in at all. The world is full of people who have stopped listening to themselves or have listened only to their neighbors to learn what they ought to do, how they ought to behave, and what the values are that they should be living for.
a sociological stagnation of inauthentic lives
This is exactly T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land that you are describing, a sociological stagnation of inauthentic lives and living that has settled upon us, and that evokes nothing of our spiritual life, our potentialities, or even our physical courage—until, of course, it gets us into one of its inhuman wars.
But being himself doesn’t “solve problems”
But being himself doesn’t “solve problems.” It simply opens up a new way of living in which there is more depth and more height in the experience of his feelings; more breadth and more range. He feels more unique and hence more alone, but he is so much more real that his relationships with others lose their artificial quality, become deeper, more satisfying, and draw more of the realness of the other person into the relationship.
a profound experience of personal choice
Involved in this process of becoming himself is a profound experience of personal choice. He realizes that he can choose to continue to hide behind a façade, or that he can take the risks involved in being himself; that he is a free agent who has it within his power to destroy another, or himself, and also the power to enhance himself and others. Faced with this naked reality of decision, he chooses to move in the direction of being himself.