THURSDAY, 3 AUGUST 2006
Private life, that starts with concern for your own well-being before it circles out, and then involvement with the world – selective involvement, because there is much suffering, and even activists who live for involvement only do so selectively (only refugees, for example, or only refugees in one area).
It is true that some people suffer from what can be called “acrophobia”. It is also important to understand that staying low is not the same as being trapped in a tunnel.
FRIDAY, 4 AUGUST 2006
True faith is not knowing.
Knowing and believing are two different things. Many religious people conflate the two – with very significant consequences.
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“I don’t know, but I believe.”
SATURDAY, 19 AUGUST 2006
“A man only needs one thing: to have someone to love. If you can’t give him that, give him some hope. If you can’t give him that, just give him something to do.” ~ quote from a movie about a plane that crashed in a desert
THURSDAY, 24 AUGUST 2016
An idea will come to me: I’ll be standing in the kitchen, staring at the wall, sucking on a Nat Sherman, and then … BAM! I’ll make my calculations, sit down at the computer, open some files; the idea will grow, and then this, and then that … and before I can stop myself, I am working mainly on this new idea. Then the idea will become even more exciting. I will frantically start sorting files and documents, make a list, get my admin under control. And then a thought will suddenly occur to me: “Wasn’t I working on something else as recently as a couple of days ago?”
THURSDAY, 31 AUGUST 2006
I can see that in order to achieve any significant degree of financial success it would be necessary to rethink my view of money. So, what has my view of money been until now?
As a child, I learned that money was something everyone needed. In fact, and this I had already realised in my teenage years, without it, you didn’t stand a monkey’s chance in hell. Money was also something, so I always believed, that you had to work hard for, probably in an office – if you were lucky, or in a factory, or outside in the hot sun if you were an unskilled labourer – or if you couldn’t find work in an office or a factory. I also grew up with the idea that you had to work at least eight hours a day Monday to Friday – unless you didn’t earn enough money from Monday to Friday, which meant you also had to work on Saturdays and perhaps even on Sundays. Finally, my view of money (in my earlier years, at least) also included that you most likely had a “boss” and that you had to do and say as the “boss” wanted you to do and say if you didn’t want to get fired. Oh, and the owner or manager of the place where you earned money granted you “leave” only once or twice a year – those short but pleasant periods when you didn’t have to go to work, when you could spend time with your family, if you were lucky, at the seaside.
This – was the view of money I grew up with. I accepted these things, because it seemed to me as if everyone in the environments where I spent my existence accepted it.
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