Reflecting on dating has me thinking again about one of Alan Watts' toughest and funniest riffs: "the reason you want to be a better person is the reason why you aren't". If you're a needy person, how do you become less needy, without being needy about it?
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There are many ways you can rephrase the question to find the paradox that resonates with you. Isn't "self-improvement" fundamentally flawed, since the person doing the improvement is imperfect and in need of improvement? How is a sinful person to accept/receive grace? Etc etc
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You can find some breathing room by taking a sort of incrementalist perspective – and you can see several bricks from that wall in my twitter header. But this does not resolve the fundamental absurdity of the human condition. And indeed, I think it *cannot* be "resolved"pic.twitter.com/uRp5hq1hyr
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when you really fully immerse yourself in that absurdity, and really go all the way, I think there are two outcomes, both sides of the same coin. Maximum anxiety and maximum laughter. Your expectations are the setup, and the reality of existence is the punchline. Life is a jokepic.twitter.com/Oo9NpMyngm
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in my experience – which maybe is a small, limited experience, idk if my experiences of profundity are *as* profound as what others have reportedly experienced – there is a lightness that comes on the other side of laughter at the absurdity of all things. surfing the wavespic.twitter.com/ftz3YTon2B
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all of this can seem very removed, very abstract but here's what I think I know, from my personal experience I used to be a much needier person than I am now and I believe you can actually *see* this change in my *face* people can feel this difference and treat me differentlypic.twitter.com/Gr1Wswf0e2
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Replying to @visakanv
i love seeing this comparison. i think most people have no idea how much their fear, anxiety, etc. shows on their face, and / or how much it's possible for their faces to lighten and become more beautiful
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Replying to @QiaochuYuan @visakanv
One of the standard memes I was raised with was "True beauty is on the inside"; while there is some truth in this, it also taught me (& perhaps a whole generation) to overlook the meaning that can be seen in faces and bodies
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Replying to @levity @QiaochuYuan
Roald Dahl had a riff on thispic.twitter.com/bkTZrJFXmb
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Replying to @visakanv @QiaochuYuan
Emerson too: "There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us."
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yes! one of the biggest upgrades i got from circling is that i gave myself permission to actually look at faces and bodies and actually notice things about them, and it unlocked a whole world of reading people that i didn't have access to before
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