Month: August 2008

determination can accomplish

“The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.” –Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

”Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” –Calvin Coolidge

”An invincible determination can accomplish almost anything and in this lies the great distinction between great men and little men.” –Thomas Fuller

”Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.” –Hal Borland

“The rewards for those who persevere far exceed the pain that must precede the victory.” –Ted W. Engstrom

”Persistence is to the character of man as carbon is to steel.” –Napoleon Hill

“Enter every activity without giving mental recognition to the possibility of defeat. Concentrate on your strengths, instead of your weaknesses… on your powers, instead of your problems.” –Paul J. Meyer

“The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.” –Napoleon Hill

“Success is almost totally dependent upon drive and persistence. The extra energy required to make another effort or try another approach is the secret of winning.” –Dennis Waitley

”Morale is the state of mind. It is steadfastness and courage and hope. It is confidence and zeal and loyalty. It is elan, esprit de corps and determination.” –Gen. George C. Marshall

”We all have dreams. But in order to make dreams come into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline, and effort.” –Jesse Owens

licking the earth

No longer do I wish to form judgmental opinions of the world. I am as lost as the rest. I speak of ‘the rest’ as if they were somehow outside the sanctums of reality, disillusioned by choice. We are all disillusioned. I am as much a wanderer as anyone. My desires are as unpredictable as an infants first thoughts or an old mans last. Since I came into this world, my intuition has kindly afforded me with a singular constant: the feeling of strangeness. It has successfully weaved its way throughout my pursuits, pervading my heart and jading my innocence, so that I am left feeling alone and alienated in my own world. Whereas I thought understanding would provide a saving clairvoyance and break the shackles holding me back from the true world, it has only doubled the distortion and distanced me farther. Despite how far I run from the pining habits of subjectivism, or however poignant my desperation to shed the all encompassing feelings in relation to ‘me’, I am always straddled the nascent cogitations I’m trying to escape. Who can run from their thoughts? Does this make sense?

Is there any security other than the affirmations I authenticate with my own will? That alone leaves me doubting. Doubt is corrosive. It imbues the heart with malignant motives. It does not fortify a cause but weakens it.

The question is: If I decide reality, how should I decide it to be? Do I adopt another’s philosophical gestalt? or is it subjective? If I want the most accurate representation of whats going on, how should I perceive? What should I perceive? What matters most? Do I gauge reality through my senses? Do senses exact accuracy? Do I render through feelings? Are good feelings trustworthy? Are positive feelings to be trusted? What is good? What is positive? No no no no no no.

Feelings lie. My imagination corrupts the sensual reality. All man sees is a hallucination. Man needs laws and governing principles to construct his reality, and faith that they are workable. Enough faith to test them and find them true. Otherwise man in all his decadence goes on “Licking the earth” as Muggeridge put it. Trifling pursuits of instant gratification, indulging in feelings and pleasures fabricated by mundane impulses, striving to fill the vacuity of a soul meant for a unification with its creator.

Words are powerful. They invoke reality. They color and illustrate the pallid landscapes of the mind.
Would it be too hard to believe that a God revealed himself to the world through those who opened themselves to Him? Who, disenchanted by the things (impulses, satisfactions, feelings, pleasures, pains, etc.) of this world, looked to a metaphysical unification, a relationship, with something greater? Could this something greater have genuinely instilled truth through their pen, despite their flawed human condition?

gotta go..

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“There is something ridiculous and even quite indecent in an individual claiming to be happy. Still more a people or a nation making such a claim. The pursuit of happiness… is without any question the most fatuous which could possibly be undertaken. This lamentable phrase ”the pursuit of happiness” is responsible for a good part of the ills and miseries of the modern world.” Muggeridge

“When I look back on my life nowadays, which I sometimes do, what strikes me most forcibly about it is that what seemed at the time most significant and seductive, seems now most futile and absurd. For instance, success in all of its various guises, being known and praised, ostensible pleasures like acquiring money or seducing women, or traveling, going to and fro in the world and up and down in it like Satan, explaining and experiencing whatever Vanity Fair has to offer. In retrospect, all these exercises in self-gratification seem pure fantasy, what Pascal called, ‘licking the earth’.” Malcolm Muggeridge

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Powerful

William Blake, "The Everlasting Gospel" in 1818:

"Humility is only doubt And does the sun and moon blot out, Rooting over with thorns and stems The buried soul and all its gems. This life’s dim windows of the soul Distorts the heavens from pole to pole And leads you to believe a lie When you see with not through the eye."

“The most terrible thing about materialism, even more terrible than its proneness to violence, is its boredom, from which sex, alcohol, drugs, all devices for putting out the accusing light of reason and suppressing the unrealizable aspirations of love, offer a prospect of deliverance.”

Malcolm Muggeridge quote

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Simply AMAZING… Imbibe what you can from this timeless poem. There is much to be gleaned. Give it thought and it will burgeon with idiosyncratic perspicuity and sagacity.

Auguries of Innocence by William Blake

As to their studies, it would be well if they could be taught everything that is useful and everything that is ornamental: But art is long and their time is short. It is therefore proposed that they learn those things that are the most useful and the most ornamental.
– Benjamin Franklin

ess

I want to be happy. I want to be free. I want to be an iconoclast, breaking all the social molds. I want to free myself from the propaganda. I want to rise above the petty politics of culture. I want to see the bigger picture in everyone. I want to surmise the means to the ends. I don’t want to impress. I want to express. I want people to lick the flavor of my words with delight. I want to plant endangered seeds of thought in the minds of many. I want to watch their world change and grow unfamiliar before they let go of ideal and accept reality. I want to escape the cliche titles and stigmas. I want to transcend the norms without being labeled postmodern. I want to retain direction without being called rigid or conservative. I want to swim freely in the ideas of men without the fear of losing my own. I want to make a mark that hasn’t been seen before. I want to speak words of wisdom the appeal to everyones need for meaning and familiarity. I want to provide real sense. I want to invoke the need to listen. E pluribus Unum. Out of the many, one. I want to show people the way, the truth and the life that they oft miss.

Even realists are ideal. They expect the world to be predictable. The world is never predictable.

Brit.

“Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head.” G.K. Chesterton

Very interesting…
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More recently I’ve fallen in love with British poets, playwrights, and philosophers. G.K Chesterton, Malcolm Muggeridge, George Bernard Shaw, T.S. Eliot and the likes. They have been endowed with a true gift of igniting the imagination of another.

The Strange Music by G. K. Chesterton
Other loves may sink and settle, other loves may loose and slack,
But I wander like a minstrel with a harp upon his back,
Though the harp be on my bosom, though I finger and I fret,
Still, my hope is all before me: for I cannot play it yet.

In your strings is hid a music that no hand hath e’er let fall,
In your soul is sealed a pleasure that you have not known at all;
Pleasure subtle as your spirit, strange and slender as your frame,
Fiercer than the pain that folds you, softer than your sorrow’s name.

Not as mine, my soul’s annointed, not as mine the rude and light
Easy mirth of many faces, swaggering pride of song and fight;
Something stranger, something sweeter, something waiting you afar,
Secret as your stricken senses, magic as your sorrows are.

But on this, God’s harp supernal, stretched but to be stricken once,
Hoary time is a beginner, Life a bungler, Death a dunce.
But I will not fear to match them-no, by God, I will not fear,
I will learn you, I will play you and the stars stand still to hear.

lissome cognition’s

The problem with the world?

People do not know what they want. You ask someone what they want out of life and they don’t know. They might give you a vague, round about answer, but they really don’t know. They have wishes but no dreams. People coast through life, expecting good fortune to come their way. Very few individuals go out and look for favorable circumstances. Those that look know what they’re looking for.

People just drift. The vast majority. They may be ‘good’ people with ‘good’ hearts, but they are totally helpless. How do people think life works? The materialists out there, fueled through the evolutionary framework that bred the notion of determinism, point to outside causality to place the blame and point the finger. People genuinely believe that certain people are born with better lives than others, endowed with better gifts and talents. This is a lie. This is avoiding the responsibility people have with the life they are given and the gifts they do have.

I watch people, in the store, the mall, the food isles- and I look upon them with disdain. They buy, buy, buy- indulging in simple satisfactions to make up for the major dissatisfaction they call their life. Some people are happy. Those people are ignorant. The ones who settle. The saying “What you don’t know can’t hurt you” is a lie. On the contrary, what you don’t know WILL hurt you. Only, you may not know it. Foolishness. We have unlimited potential. We are the only people who hold ourselves back. Most people fail to think. I suppose they fail to seek the truths and principles that lead to fulfillment. I think most people have bought into the lie that however they decide to live their life is up to them, and no one should tell them otherwise. These people miss out on the larger treasures in life. They display the greatest weakness among men: Pride. Humility reins over knowledge and power and love and goodness. “Every man I meet is my superior in some way, in that, I learn of him.” Can you imagine the positive world we’d live in if people took time to learn from others, either what to do or what not to do?

I wonder if I’m ever apart of the very masses I speak of. If those greater souls, free from being buffeted by external occurrences, all while maintaining a loyal responsibility to themselves, look upon me as a slave as I do others. Am I a slave in my own way? Have I overlooked some greater truths that may enable me to achieve greater happiness and fulfillment? I pray I am not so naive. I pray that my eyes would be open to the ostensible opportunities of life. I am still in the nascent stages of wisdom. I will never stop extending my reach, however weak I may be, however many times I may stumble and fall. I will maintain a stolid resolve toward flawless refinement.

Many people face life’s vicissitudes vehemently trying to reconfigure their external world with no success. They cogitate “If my world will be right, I will be right” but the very opposite is true. “If I am right, my world will be right.” `

Change the way you think about the world, not how the world thinks about you.