15.08.2024 - Procrastination
Seneca wrote “The fool,[...]is always getting ready to live.” Sometimes we permit ourselves to be in a rut. A position that is exhausting and drains our energy little by little, but requires very little of us day to day. 

Growing at times, we have separated from those in our lives that may be well meaning, but overbearing, or those who wish to put us down for their own selfish reasons. The same force, that helped to shield from them helps the procrastinating mind dismiss their opinion.

A friend is one that will be at your side, and be with you in your petrification. A good friend will also remind you that you should move on and will not let you rationalize yourself into inaction.

25.08.2024 - Small Hero
A participatory study published in the Journal of positive Psychology by Tribot et al. (2023) on 'What makes a teddy bear comforting' has found, that above all else, being cute and cuddly, feeling nice to the touch and smelling good, it was the personal emotional bond that made a stuffed bear a comfort. Ownership and emotional attachment, or rather - as I like to think of it - the bears true character. The story we tell about them in our hearts.

The monsters under our bed, summoned by ourself imagining them there, cannot touch us, for our bears are brave and strong against foes such as this. And sometimes their comfort shields us even against the woes of the waking world.

07.09.2024 - Alone
After air to breathe and water to drink, after we are fed and rested, we crave the company of others. To see ourselves reflected in them. To be perceived by them makes us certain that we actually exist at all. 

Though we may appear to walk through life a Monad - as Leibniz wrote - a self enclosed 'windowless being', drifting through the cosmos, in truth, non of us is ever so free. Within us is generations of social instinct, making us seek out one-another since long before we were human, long before we were mammals even.
But then, we are never as alone, as when we are among our kind and remain unseen, unrecognized, overlooked and unnoticed. 

At least in solitude we imagine, that another would know us for who we are, if they were with us. Anonymous in a crowd we may be faced with the existential dread that we are in fact perhaps truly alone.