[Image: “(Half-)Shoeless in Paradise,” by John E. Simpson. (Shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH). This was #779 (2019-11-14) in my series of 1,000 “everyday black-and-white” posts on Instagram (a series which I wrapped up in June, 2020).]

From whiskey river:

For the crust presented by the life of lies is made of strange stuff. As long as it seals off hermetically the entire society, it appears to be made of stone. But the moment someone breaks through in one place, when one person cries out, “The emperor is naked!” — when a single person breaks the rules of the game, thus exposing it as a game — everything suddenly appears in another light and the whole crust seems then to be made of a tissue on the point of tearing and disintegrating uncontrollably.

(Václav Havel [source])

…and:

But there are other people, people who choose to be crazy in order to cope with what they regard as a crazy world. They have adopted craziness as a lifestyle. I’ve found that there is nothing I can do for these people because the only way you can get them to give up their craziness is to convince them that the world is actually sane. I must confess that I have found such a conviction almost impossible to support.

(Tom Robbins [source])

…and:

Reality Is Always Freshly Born

The more successful a technique, the more it is guaranteed to produce certain results.
But reality can never be known in advance.
Creativity is not a matter of just applying know-how in order to achieve ends that have been figured out in advance.
Indeed, we may say that if you know what to do in any situation, it’s the wrong thing.
Living truth has to be created in the act of living and even the means have to be created in the act of giving ourselves to the task.
If you know what to say, it’s a lie.
If you know how to teach, you’re a propagandist.
If you know how to compose a verse, you’re not a poet.
If you know how to get along with your husband or wife, you’re not really married, you’re simply applying psychology.
(If you know how to heal your client, you’re not a real therapist.)
Reality is not gained by know how.
Reality is always freshly born.
Whenever a relationship or action is real, it is being created and re-created from moment to moment.
The real question is not what to do, but
How can I give myself more completely to the situation, to the task, to the person at hand?
As one learns how to give oneself more and more unreservedly, one is led step by step and
Discovers what to do

(Bernard Phillips [source (anecdotal/hearsay)])

[Read more…]