There is Nothing Worse Than Nothing
Bad things are not the worst things that can happen to us. NOTHING is the worst thing that can happen to us.
— Richard Bach
Similar Posts
Joys of Yacht Racing
ByHeatherIf you want to experience the joys of yacht racing in the comfort of your own home, simply stand fully clothed in an ice cold shower and tear up $100 bills.
— Unknown
Live Life’s Questions
ByHeatherI want to beg you as much as I can . . . to be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek answers which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything.
Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
Take whatever comes with great trust, and if only it comes out of your own will, out of some need of your innermost being, take it upon yourself and hate nothing.
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
We just decided to go
ByHeatherFrom now on, we live in a world where man has walked on the moon. And it’s not a miracle, we just decided to go.
— Jim Lovell
There is a scene in the movie Apollo 13 in which astronaut Jim Lovell is hosting a dinner party at his house. At some point in the evening he escapes the hubbub of his guests and takes a seat in a lawn chair in the back yard. When someone comes out to join him he utters the phrase above.
The moon landings were the culmination of a gargantuan series of tasks. Thousands of people invested hundreds of thousands of hours coordinating and delivering on thousands of tasks. It wasn’t a miracle that we landed on the moon. We just set our minds to it and decided to go.
Theme of the week: Just decide to go.
Forecasting the Future
ByHeatherWe have two classes of forecasters: Those who don’t know — and those who don’t know they don’t know.— John Kenneth Galbraith, economist
Problem of Evil
ByHeatherIs God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
— Epicurus, philosopher (c. 341-270 BCE)
Years ago I struggled deeply with the Problem of Evil, i.e. the reconciliation of the existence of evil and suffering with the existence of a benevolent and omnipotent God. At the time, I found Dostoyevski’s novel The Brother’s Karamozov to be a great comfort and insight on the dilemma. I wish I had found Epicurus’ quote earlier in my life. The logic is compelling and impeccable.
Pessimism
ByHeatherPessimism is a luxury we can only afford in good times, in difficult times it easily represents a self-inflicted, self-fulfilling death sentence.
— Evelin Lindner, social scientist, Auschwitz survivor, Founder of Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies