"thy neighbor as thyself".

It said treat your neighbor as you treat yourself, but really, I wouldn't be so thoughtless or indifferent or self-destructive with the person of my neighbor.

I would hope to treat them better.

I would spare my neighbor the little indecencies and shortcuts with which I burden my own physicality, giving them, not only better food, but a better credit score, a kinder word, and so forth.

The second fiddles. The back-up crew. Hymn to the secondaries.

 

hey there

CBS Sunday Morning about sidemen and understudies, the back-up players.  Imagine the dedication, they train just as hard as the top banana, they practice just as hard, so as to be ready at a moment's notice: they live the life of discipline without all the rewards.

As Katz says, "I play in about a third of the games, but I train and practice everyday."

And of course, saxophonist Mark Rivera gets an unsung hero moment in the limelight with Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden.

We see the unsung heroes so often in professional wrestling as well, with bit players sacrificing so much of their health and well-being for those myriad lesser-known moments.

I think of my good Cornbread who was second team so much of high school football career, but he practiced everyday and had a determination.  They could rely on him, though he wasn't particularly talented.  

In his senior year, in a fill-in moment in a runaway game, they sent some B team players in, and Cornbread not only caught in interception, but ran it in for a touchdown.

I was quite happy Cornbread got his moment.

Also, he once let me try on his jersey, as if I were his hoochie or something.

Greco-Roman was more my thing, though I was about 5 pounds away from the weight class I wanted.  I was 5'7 and they were gonna put me in the Unlimited class, with men that were 6'5, 300 or 400 pounds, and I knew I would be something of a rubber chicken.

Bravery and Faith as the Absence of Fear

 

Bravery is going forward even when you're scared, not the absence of fear.  

It's natural to be afraid, but its not always natural to be frozen into stillness.  Maybe weary animals in nature come forward; the key is to know your reason for action.

The absence of fear is probably Faith.

he felt the responsibility very much.....

He certainly felt the weight of his responsibilities: podcaster, comtemt creator, husband, amd father.

Week one.  Anxiety.  How am I going to do this?

Week two.  Anxiety.

Week three.  Anxiety.

But in the midst of that he had a revelation that he needed to curtail his anxiety.  Amd why?

He had banked weeks of experience already, and while he worried about how he would, he had already did.

He was no longer worrying then about how to be, because in the midst of being caught up in all that worry and doubt, he had been functioning in those roles all along.

And not only that, he had already banked weeks of experience in his tasks.

The worry was just a smoke-screen, a natural inflation of self-doubt.  We all have some of that, amd in fact, often times the doubt drives growth and change.

But it also sometimes convinces people to quit too early, as they underestimate woefully what they are capable of.

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Mindset of the future, and some quotes on "revenge".

We have to stop worshiping the past sometime, and then killing ourselves for the future; these things accounted for, the future then begins to bloom.

"Revenge is a dish best not served."  -Ryan Holiday.

"Do not render evil for evil."  -Paul the Apostle.

Lao Tzu on self-control and making oneself available....

He who masters others is strong, but the true master is he who conquers himself." -#laotsu #TheTaoOfSelfConfidence

 

Laziness: not quite a virtue. Plus Epictetus on kindness.

So, I was on the cusp of talking about Buddhism to strangers.  Everyday people.  In South Carolina.

But we came up earlier in conversation, me saying "laziness is a virtue", that "if I did more, I'd make a lot more trouble"(evil laugh).

As if I only affect being a nicer person by virtue of not doing much at all, read as not doing much bad or wrong things.

But a true through-and-through modern "wife and mother", a dominus, as it were, reminded me that there are always different things to do, things to look after, things to take care of...

Therefore, in being lazy, erring on the side of doing nothing, one can basically not tend to a lot of things that really need attention.......

Hence laziness only seems a virtue on the surface.

There's probably always a better way.

Plus a meme I made from an Epictetus stoic quote.

 

Tooth and Claw: The dichotomy of the head and the tail.

So often through life, we may not feel like we're in control of things, whether its a matter of relationships with parents or other loved ones, or perhaps situations of strong emotions, emotional upset and other matters.

And, worse, when we do feel in control, we feel like we just don't have a lot of options.  We don't have, in conversation, our "full range of expression".  We don't have money or time to paint our bedroom the colors we like.  Or something else.  Maybe communication isn't going well with the loved ones.

But the truth is, no matter the cost, we are indeed in control--we just so often don't see it, or we feel otherwise.

We can convince ourselves that we just can't do what's best, what's necessary, and can only skate buy doing the most expedient thing, such as delaying the bills for other things, or those darned onion rings.

Those darned onion rings?  A separate story.

Be assured that there is a time and place for that Monster drink, or that order of onion rings, nevermind that you order the family size, and the cashier rolls their eyes because they know you're gonna eat it all by yourself.

It was the stoics that told us that a man that leads his own self is lead by a bad man, and yet another told us that a man that is lead by the crowd is roundly mislead.

The point is to mistrust that first instinct, that "doing what is easiest", mistrust and know, somewhere deep down, you have a better idea.

You have the right idea.

Things will come out better than before.

And you were in control all alone, but before, you were just selling yourself short.

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