Even Though The Situation In Europe Is Far Less Insane, My Grandparents Just-

Anyone ever have a day so bad you just start laughing from the absurdity of it?

I remember I had a day that, on paper, was awful. Bike had somehow had both of its wheels punctured, so I had to walk to school (it wasn't too far away from where I lived so if I made haste I wouldn't be late). While I'm walking, Aeolus decides to do everything in his power to ensure I fail. It was like walking against a leafblower, only bigger and proportinally stronger. However, while I pass the only place on the route where there are puddles, a truck speeds by, splashing a small tsunami directly at me. By this point I'm in a seriously bad mood, but it gets worse, as the moment I step foot on school grounds I trip on dogshit and fall in the earth-mud combination that the ground has become after yesterdays rainfall. On the way home I pass under a tree and I kid you not, like 3 acorns fall on my head and fall down my clothes, (these were like, decently heavy, not enough to hurt me but enough to be uncomfortable to be hit by). Then, when I get home, I realise I have lost my keys. By this point I am barely holding it together, but I can still go to my grandparent's house to get a spare and return it. Annoying, yes, but better than standing around in dirty clothes waiting for someone to come home. When I make it up there, I realise that they aren't home either, so I go to retrieve the spare key for their home, and after getting in, i realise that I don't actually know where their keys are. I call my grandmother, and she reveals that alas! The spare key is with them, as they use 1 keychain for all their keys. This was the point when the entire situation became so absurd that I just began laughing at it all, full on belly laughing at how comically unfortonate the day had been. I laughed most of the way home (it's a fairly short walk), and then it happened. As I got home to wait, my mom opened the door. She had been working from home all day, and heard me try to open the door but had been in the bathroom, and by the time she unlocked it I was already off to get the spare key. When I heard this I laughed hysterically she got genuinely worried, and then I showed her the back of my clothes and explained the entire thing, after which we both laughed like hell about it.

So it was a good day in practice, haha

Why I think self-pity is the bane of our joy

Stoicism is an old philosophy which is only now starting to have a modern rennecaince with new ideas and concepts. This is great, because it allows us to develop brand new doctrine to fit the world around us, and terrible, because it means we don't have the answer for everything. However, one of the things that are being explored the most as of now is self-pity. This is a very prevalent state of mind in the western world, where it has become so common to complain about the small things that it can seem almost competitive.

Our ability to complain has combined with our ever-rising standard of living to create cartoonish complaints that we are gasping to share with the world around us, who are trying to voice their complaints. As Vers writes: "Alle kalder ud, men ingen gider at svare" (Everybody needs to be heard, but nobody is willing to listen). This has lead Neils Overgaard, a man I deeply respect and look up to, to create what he calls the "immigrant test": Basically, you take whatever thing is bothering you in the moment, and you imagine that you have to tell it to a mother of 5 children who has left Sudan, crossed the Sahara, been illegally exported across the Mediterranean, and finally landed in Greece, ready to live out the rest of her life at the lowest bottom of our society. Your task is now to look her in the eyes, and tell her about the problem that is letting you down, and if you think you can do that, THEN it is worth thinking about.

Self-pity is not the same as complaining, though. I would argue that self-pity is what happens when you systematically feel rightious to complain and the world around you validates this feeling. And what you're doing on a psychological level is train your mind to focus on the negatives and hold on to them, so that you can pass them on to others. Surely, my friends, a brain that only notices and focuses on the bad things is not a happy one, right?

So how do YOU avoid self-pity and the need to complain in general? Well, you're not out of options (though it may be tempting to say that you are). In this post, my advice will be to FORTIFY. Back in the day, people used to say "man up", but that's kinda turned into a toxic thing that means "push it down", and it's also only for men. So now we have the new word "fortify", which is much better. How do you fortify? That's up to you, but it should ultimately make you a more emotionally resilient person. Focusing on the next step can be a great way of fortifying, for example:

Your car breaks down on your way to work. You are going to be late. Do you: A. Have your mood be ruined over the situation, complain to your boss when they ask you why you are late, and get pissy when you get the repair bill? B. Accept that the situation is out of your hands, focus on getting your car towed and finding another way to get to work, and calmly explain to your boss that your car broke down and you still showed up ready to work?

It's entirely up to you, but option B is not only a calmer, more pleasant way to handle the situation, but it also makes you a more resilient being in the future, because your brain will recognise your handling of the situation and be calmer the next time something unpredictable comes up, thus marking the start of a good spiral.

There will be more in the next post, to make it easier to digest.

Love you all! - Anthony

To the person commenting skibidi on all my posts

it was funny at first but you can stop now

Classic internet response: "I can bother as many people around me as I want to cuz I have a sacred entitlement to be myself." To a quote about growing as a person while being yourself and not bothering others.

“Seeds do not make a sound when growing, but can even reach the sky. Learn from them.”

— Matshona Dhliwayo

Perspective is everything.

In Denmark, we have a popular song which has the line "Man siger efter stormens pisken kommer solen frem, men den hjælper sjældent dem der er blevet våde", which basically means "After the storm the sun comes out, but it rarely helps those who became soaking wet".

When your life stabilises it doesn't mean you should suddenly feel alright. It means you can now BEGIN to heal and dry off.

You don't have to force yourself to bounce back so quickly. I read something recently that said "when you come in from a rainstorm, you don't expect yourself to be dry and warm right away", and it really resonated with me. It's okay to take time to dry off and warm up. Take the time you need to process what happened to you.

On Sisyphus (And why Camus imagines him happy)

The story of Sisyphus is one that hits particularly close to home, and I'm sure I don't need to explain what it's about.

Similarly, Albert Camus' interpritation of the story, the one that ends with "One must imagine Sisyphus happy" has become pretty famous too, albiet more of a meme. There's a lot to unpack here, but I litterally have nothing better to do, so let's find out why Sisyphus is one lucky guy.

Sisyphus attempts to outsmart the gods, and as punishment, he must roll a boulder up a hill, knowing that it will roll back down once he reaches the top. Not only is that pretty funny, it also seems disgustingly similar to how modern life works. Doing laundry, waiting for the weekend, you name it.

It is a common thought that these things are tedious and eat up our limited time on earth, thus making us miserable. With that mindset, you would imagine Sisyphus as the most miserable human on earth. After all, he has been condemned to spending the rest of his life only working a menial task without any reward or meaning with the task at hand.

This was undoubtedly what the gods had in mind when they handed out this punishment, but Camus claims that it isn't all that bad. Personally, the line in "The Myth of Sisyphus" (which is the essay Camus wrote on the matter) that sticks with me the most is: "One always finds [their] burden", which I try to remember before I make a decision that supposedly will make my life easier.

After all, the people wealth large enough to never have to partake in work or laundry or any of these things do not enjoy a perpetual state of bliss and unconcern (unconcern is apperently a word). Their burdens simply lie elsewhere.

What am I getting at with all this? Well, I'm saying that, provided he was given enough time to accept his situation, Sisyphus wouldn't actually be happier if he was one day let back into the world and relieved of his boulder hauling duties. He would probably be happy for a while, but he would eventually find his burden, and go back to hauling a now metaphorical boulder.

So far we've established why Sisyphus would be equally miserable with or without his boulder, but why then is Sisyphus supposed to be happy?

Well, it basically boils down to a misleading segway. See, Sisyphus doesn't have to be miserable when he hauls that shitty boulder. It sounds insane, and Camus even states the absurdity of it. But if Sisyphus wanted to defy the gods one last time, could he? Could he end up happier than before he even got his punishment and end up with the last laugh? Yes, he could, and here's how.

The key is not to recognise the abusrdity of the situation. Instead of thinking about what a waste of time and how meaningless this task is, Sisyphus must instead do the opposite: Attempt to do the task to his absoloute best ability, without yielding to the idea that this task is, inherently, meaningless.

Should he succeed in this fundemental rework of his way of thinking, he will start enjoying the work. See, humans have a deep need to do a good job. When you procrastinate, or cut corners, or whatever, you will feel a tiny hit of misery (probably shame). That's just how we work. But the opposite applies too. If you truly commit to your task, no matter how meaningless or ineffecient it is, you will get a tiny reward.

If Sisyphus decides to push that boulder with all his might, every day, knowing damn well it will roll down again, he will be happy. He has defied his own misery, and found meaning in the most meaningless of tasks. And when the boulder rolls down, he will breathe a satisfied sigh, and walk back down to start pushing again.

Sounds pretty absurd, huh? One must imagine the people that are free to do menial tasks everyday happy? Well, you are free to imagine anyone any way you like. But I certainly imagine Sisyphus happy, along with any garbage worker and bus driver that find joy in their work.

Trying to explain the nature of dicipline.

Dicipline, and especially self dicipline, is not something that you can force through sheer willpower. You have to do useless things to get it. And you can't tell yourself that you're doing it for the sake of dicipline, it doesn't work like that. You have to do things for no reason. And if you find yourself asking: Why am I doing this? you should answer: "I'm doing this unnecessary task because it is unnecessary."

After all, when your boss tells you to do a task that is useless for your work, or you have to learn calculus that you will never, ever use in your adult life, will you have a better time with a brain that is geared towards hating unnecessary things and will feel frustrated over the task, or one that not only is used to dealing with these types of tasks, but can even find meaning in the meaningless, through dicipline.

I had a person track me down because I had edited a single stat on a single item in The Binding of Isaac's fandom wiki. They contacted me on Discord. They said it had been tough because I wasn't on the official Isaac discord server. They added me so that they could inform me that I had made a wrong edit, and that they had reverted it. That was it.

A strange interaction but welcome nonetheless.

Comparing yourself to others, and why you should do no such thing.

This one will be short and sweet. Don't compare youself to others. Think about it, okay? If you compare yourself to someone else, 2 things can happen.

You think you're worse than that person You think you're better than that person

Now, if you think you're worse than that person in some regard, congratulations! You are now less happy than before the comparison, about something that you cannot do anything about, no less. I mean, sure, you can lie to yourself to make them seem worse than they are, but I don't need to tell you why that isn't very healthy.

However, if you think you are better than that person, one of two things will be the case:

You will feel good about it

You will not care or mind (in which case, why would you even compare yourself to them in the first place if you don't care?)

If you feel good about yourself, that's not great. If you need to be better than someone else to be happy with yourself, that must be because you aren't fundementally at peace with who you are and what your place in the world is.

There is a secret third reason to compare yourself to others, which is healthy, but it requires that you can show some emotional distance from the comparison. This is comparing yourself to someone to see how you can improve yourself as a person, either by doing what they do or letting yourself be inspired by your differences.

If you can do that, great! I can't, personally. So I don't compare myself to others, and you (probably) shouldn't either. Alright, that's all!

Have a nice day!