Guaranteed unhappiness
If your happiness depends on other people acting the way you want, sooner or later, you're guaranteed to be unhappy.
If your happiness depends on other people acting the way you want, sooner or later, you're guaranteed to be unhappy.
Certainty is impossible. Show me someone who's certain, and I'll show you someone who's underinformed.
Am I guilty of overconfidence in my views? Of course. I think many people are. It's something I'd like to continually, imperfectly correct for, however.
Don't trust others' plans for you. You'll soon discover they don't have very much planned at all.
I'm not sure where I first heard that advice, but it appears to be derived from a quote which is, accurately or not, attributed to Jim Rohn:
If you don't design your own life plan, chances are you'll fall into someone else's plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.
I tend to prefer the shorter version, but they both have their strengths. In any case, I think the advice is sound, and I hope to remember it.
Every movement needs their boogeyman.
I subscribe to the daily Mutts comic by email. A recent message included a quote by Marc Bekoff which resembles something I wrote in Saying goodbye to Taggy.
I wrote the following:
All animals are conscious. All animals feel comfort and pain. In that way, we are equal.
Bekoff put it differently:
Although other animals may be different from us, this does not make them less than us.
How do things change? Slowly, then all at once.
This paraphrases Ernest Hemingway and Cory Doctorow.
Being wrong doesn't always feel like being wrong.
As usual, there's no subtext here. I'm not trying to be mysterious or send someone a message. I just think some truths are best summarized concisely. They may also be easier to remember that way.