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Dr. Deborah Hall's avatar

Thank you, Sam,

for asking us all to choose loving attention

to the person we are with.

Let us be tender and aware.

I pray each morning

that I will at all times

be tender and aware of my husband.

I learned those two words from DH Lawrence

as he speaks of love.

Being tender and aware of each other

as we live and as we speak

permits no rude intrusions

to come between us.

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Sam Alaimo's avatar

That is a noble way to start each morning. Thank you Dr. Hall, for your thoughts here, and for these two invaluable words.

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Nick Herman's avatar

Hi, thanks for following.

"I would rather spend some time each day serenading myself in extremes, alternating between 210 degrees and 35 degrees, greater than 170 bpm and less than 50 bpm, over every single day spent lukewarm and predictable and atrophied."

This is more or less what Nassim Taleb advocates in his books. From an evolutionary perspective, variance is certainly far more natural.

"loving attention,"

This is pretty much exactly what buddhism advocates, and why I personally think it's a deeper philosophy/practice in many respects than stoic as popularized in our current times, as these issues have been extensively written about going back a few thousand years, even though they have a lot in common.

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Sam Alaimo's avatar

Great points Nick. No single school has it all, and then there is significant overlap between them. I think the art of living is combining the best of the laws of nature and the best of the philosophies of mankind

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Nick Herman's avatar

We seem to be in agreement there!

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Sam Alaimo's avatar

Or at least that’s the path my life has lead

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Persephone's avatar

So willingly open!

We suffer information spread. We are what never was, connected.

I dream of a time where we have adjusted to reaching only those reachable by our boundaries, flesh. Then we would crave the interaction, and even submit to lower levels for the benevolence of it.

"I’m telling her that whatever else I’m focusing on is more important than her as a human being;" I see this as I am telling her I am not worthy of your interaction, because my mind is used to clicks that get the job done, you demand effort. But I could be wrong.

Information spread has humanity locked from within. Nice work.

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Sam Alaimo's avatar

I really like your perspective on this.

And I agree - we need to make sure we're no longer "locked from within".

If we don't have real interactions with each other, what do have left? What's the point?

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Enfilade13's avatar

"If I know that this is the last moment on earth I will ever have, and this person before me the last person I will ever speak with, how would I act differently?"

This is true perspective.

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Sam Alaimo's avatar

Thank you.

It's a point I try to drive home constantly, and yet the mind being what it is, I always seem to forget this truth.

I've learned the hard way to enjoy the process of trial and error, of focus and unfocus, because I'm not sure there is a state of perfection - it all comes down to how much we can learn to love the process.

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