PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE

Our Compartmented Mind

2 January 2021

We manage to hold simultaneously many conflicting ideas by keeping them in separate compartments in our mind. Our mental worlds are not, as many of us like to believe, nicely ordered, self-consistent, clean and settled. But it is not just ideas – beliefs, views, opinions – that we compartmentalize. We also hold contradictory emotions about people or situations. We even have contradictory desires. And of course, as a result of all this, many of our actions are contradictory.

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The Incompleteness of Man

13 January 2020

We arrive into this world incomplete, go about our lives searching half-blindly for ways to complete ourselves, and in the end, after failing in our struggle, we depart almost as incomplete as we appeared. What is the purpose then of this lifelong “struggle for completeness” when our failure is preordained?

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Overlapping Circles

11 August 2019

Each one of us is a circle. In this circle we collect and enclose, as if they were little pebbles, all of our loves, interests, aims, dreams, preoccupations. We are an amalgam of many elements put together as a result of random events, choices, and c …

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Suffering as a Dissonant Chord

8 March 2019

By viewing suffering as a dissonant chord, we open ourselves to the possibility that suffering is not an evil stranger intruding in our life but a potential friend who may reveal his true identity at some later stage.

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Big is Beautiful

10 August 2018

There is a recent worldwide bias against Big. Big alienating cities are worse than small beautiful villages.[1] A big fat guy is bad; fashion-model-thin is good. A big meal is bad for your health – “eat light.” Small, boutique hotels – good. Big hote …

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The July Cicada Class

15 July 2018

We manage to hold simultaneously many conflicting ideas by keeping them in separate compartments in our mind. Our mental worlds are not, as many of us like to believe, nicely ordered, self-consistent, clean and settled. But it is not just ideas – beliefs, views, opinions – that we compartmentalize. We also hold contradictory emotions about people or situations. We even have contradictory desires. And of course, as a result of all this, many of our actions are contradictory.

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On Jane
or How I Became a Binary Black Hole

25 January 2018

You often hear phrases like “I have found my other half,” “I felt incomplete until I met you,” “I have been fulfilled in love,” and so on. In my case it has been exactly the opposite! Let me explain: All my life I felt “complete,” “sufficient unto my …

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At How Many Points Do You Touch Life?

17 November 2017

The number of points at which you touch Life and the World is the measure of the wealth of your life.  People ask themselves, “Are my days rich? Do I have a rich life?” But what they should actually be asking is, “At how many points do I touch Life?” …

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Heraclitus’s Unseen Waterfalls

20 October 2017

Ever since Heraclitus, in the sixth century BC, uttered his famous phrase “ta panta rei,” which means “everything flows” or “everything is in constant flux,” humanity has accepted Change as one of the fundamental laws that govern the cosmos. Heraclitus’s example of the continuously flowing river that a person can never enter twice – because it is never the same river – has even become the archetypal image of this constant flux that permeates everything.

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People Are Waves

5 October 2017

The people you meet are not really human. They are not even material bodies located in space and time. People are waves. A human being seems to be, most prominently, a physical object, a body with arms and legs, a beating heart and breathing lungs. Y …

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License to Raise and Rule

7 September 2017

To drive a small scooter, one must have a driver’s license. But to raise children or rule a country, one need have nothing! Seen from the vantage point of a future observer living in the twenty-fifth century, our contemporary twenty-first century soc …

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The Rational Foundations of Gratefulness

22 May 2017

“Life is given to us; every moment is given. The only appropriate response therefore is gratefulness.” – Brother David Steindl-Rast, from The Music of Silence “This world appears to us rather as a world of suffering than as a world of the delight of …

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The Restless Tribe

4 May 2017

Enough with the settled life! There is no settled life – do not fool yourselves. Restlessness is the default state of Man. When I was younger, I used to divide people into two categories: the settled and the restless. I put myself in the second categ …

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Memento Mori

29 March 2017

Everything we see, every natural or manmade object, every natural phenomenon, every animal and human activity, every event in the universe has an invisible substratum that sustains it. A substratum that nourishes, guides, informs. This invisible entity is as vast as (often much vaster than) the visible elements it springs forth.

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The Eternal Ragpicker

26 February 2017

Truly, we do not think, will or act but thought occurs in us, will occurs in us, impulse and act occur in us; our ego-sense gathers around itself, refers to itself all this flow of natural activities. It is cosmic Force, it is Nature that forms the t …

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Parallel Universes

10 February 2017

We live in a world of parallel universes. The universes of politics, cooking, fashion, music, parrots! Many years ago, I decided to buy a macaw parrot. A few weeks later, I found myself immersed in the “world of birds.” I began to discover this alrea …

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Infinite Microcosms

13 January 2017

Infinity is almost always associated with vast entities. We think of the universe as being situated in infinite Space; of Time as extending infinitely along a line backward (the past) and forward (the future); we imagine two parallel straight lines m …

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The Conscious Suffering of Development

27 July 2016

When we learn to drive a car, we are anxious, struggle, sometimes even suffer. Most importantly, we are continuously conscious. Learning is a process in and through consciousness. When learning ends, its final reward is unconsciousness: We can drive …

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Monumental Encounters

16 June 2016

Every separation is a rehearsal for death. When you part with someone whom in all likelihood you will never see again, this is almost the same as him dying for you. You will never see him again and some day he will die – before or after you, it does not matter; he is mortal.

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© 2024 Nicos Hadjicostis