“So, why is ennui unusual and crippling? Most people are manipulated by little bursts of pleasure and displeasure in response to stimuli once the brain abstracts them. Your whole life is a little symphony of up and down votes coming from pre-sentient parts of your brain, pushing you to move in certain ways. That’s all that willpower and character really are, initially.
Depression mutes the upvotes. You don’t get strongly rewarded for doing anything. This is why it suddenly seems like socializing is hard, as there’s no burst of reward chemicals to make the stress of trying to model another primate pleasant. This is why cleaning is hard, since all you can feel is the effort and none of the reward for “doing the right thing”.
Eventually, the rest of your brain mutes the downvotes. There’s nothing to compare them to, so they’re ignored. Then you’re numb, and not really operating that well since you’re built around the idea of perceiving inherent rewards and punishments for certain activities and you have nothing to guide your actions. Life is pointless and confusing.”
At the first I tried to categorize you
I tried to explain you away so I could be content with you
but you are too extraordinary, too terrible.
You are hatred and you are love, you can not be comprehended by my feeble mind.
Next I tried to categorize your denizens, I tried to put some in this group,
I tried to put some in that. But your creations are vast.
Your creations are not of two kinds, or even a thousand.
Those that inhabit you lie in as many categories as they number.
After that I tried to learn to get along with them individually.
For each encounter I tried to create a set of rules, an edict,
For each I created laws to follow, a precedent, a formula.
And even that did not work.
I tried to change myself to be so flawed that my real flaws would be understood.
I tried to make everything understand why I was the way I was.
But I tried to do this by changing my persona, by changing how I was seen.
How could anyone possibly understand me? If I wasn’t me?
So Lord, God, King of kings, Lord of lords, Earth, Home, Jehovah, Mighty and awesome,
El-Shaddai, Avenger, Captain of salvation, Consolation of Israel, I AM, You who have infinite names.
I, am utterly and truely lost, I am lost in my own thoughts, I have tried to understand,
I have tried to understand the unfathomable and have failed.
I have begged for guidance in an unforgiving world.
Show me the way! help me through the chains of my ceaseless criticism.
Help me through the mire of my constant thought, my constant calculation.
For lord, if you are just a fabrication of my ancestors,
If you are just the culmination of hundreds of thousands of desires for more.
Lord, if you are nothing more than desire.
then I am lost.
cold beer and unwatched episodes of Modern Family. Maybe I’ll make ti through 2013
This is quite possibly my new favorite song of all time. I’ve listened to it like 50 times in a row now. still not even close to getting old.
In these deep solitudes and awful cells,
Where heav’nly-pensive contemplation dwells,
And ever-musing melancholy reigns;
What means this tumult in a vestal’s veins?
Why rove my thoughts beyond this last retreat?
Why feels my heart its long-forgotten heat?
…
How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d;
-Alexander Pope
Love this song! Love Neutral Milk Hotel!Neutral Milk Hotel - In The Aeroplane Over The Sea
and one day we will die
and our ashes will fly
from the aeroplane over the sea
but for now we are young
let us lay in the sun
and count every beautiful thing we can see
love to be
in the arms of all I’m keeping here with me
(via savannahhieronymus)