Want not want

Photo by Parag Sharma on Unsplash

Photo by Parag Sharma on Unsplash

Fantasies have to be unrealistic because the moment, the second that you get what you seek, you don’t, you can’t want it anymore. In order to continue to exist, desire must have its objects perpetually absent. It’s not the ‘it’ that you want, it’s the fantasy of ‘it.’ So, desire supports crazy fantasies. This is what Pascal means when he says that we are only truly happy when daydreaming about future happiness. Or why we say ‘the hunt is sweeter than the kill.’ Or ‘be careful what you wish for.’ Not because you’ll get it, but because you’re doomed not to want it once you do. So the lesson of Lacan is, living by your wants will never make you happy. What it means to be fully human is to strive to live by ideas and ideals, and not to measure your life by what you’ve attained in terms of your desires but those small moments of integrity, compassion, rationality, even self-sacrifice. Because in the end, the only way that we can measure the significance of our own lives is by valuing the lives of others.
— from the film "The Life of David Gale"

Painfully beautiful

Photo by Patrick Hendry on Unsplash

​I'm a fan of C.S. Lewis, even though I've read very little of his work. Truly I'm a fan of anyone who can take a crude amalgam of thoughts, feelings and experience, and, with a few simple words, crystalize them into something painfully beautiful.

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.

– C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

Joy, truth, love

I just started reading a book I got as a gift from my mom, Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch. I'm literally just a few pages in, but I wanted to post this quote. 

I love finding these little treasures in things—thoughts so tightly strung together you can touch them. Well, they touch you. 

The Highest Thought is always that thought which contains joy. The Clearest Words are those words which contain truth. The Grandest Feeling is that feeling which you call love.

Photo by Ben Watts on Unsplash

Photo by Ben Watts on Unsplash

Commitment

Commitment is what transforms a promise into reality. It is the words that speak boldly of your intentions, and the actions which speak louder than the words. It is making the time when there is none—coming through time after time after time, year after year after year. Commitment is the stuff character is made of; the power to change the face of things. It is the daily triumph of integrity over skepticism.

– commonly attributed to Abraham Lincoln,
Shearson Lehman or anon

I hope

Photo by Liam Macleod on Unsplash

Photo by Liam Macleod on Unsplash

I find I'm so excited, I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it's the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.

– Red (narrating), The Shawshank Redemption