Zenobia

"I have to understand the world, you see."

[zenobiavita]

"Nobody ever reacts negatively to a truthful philosophy because of what it says, but because of how it makes them feel."

[zenobiavita]

"Opinions have almost nothing to do with experience. You can have an opinion about love and death, but only while you’re not experiencing them."

[zenobiavita]

The problem is not having different worldviews with others, the problem is thinking that your worldview is the only right one and that everyone else is wrong.

[nessieac]

but how do i know why i chose what i chose? uhh actually, i probably didn't even ask anything

[icarus-but-better]

Well im still going to treat my worldview as the true one bc if i don't do that i start to hate myself and act against my interests and make myself miserable in the process

[zenobiavita]

Well you should act according to your current worldviews, because they are your “ current best” views that you have supposedly reached after careful scrutiny, because it is psychologically not possible if you don’t, but you should be open to change if something questioned them, openness and confidence can coexist. However what can guide you through the changes are your foundation, your frameworks through which you function, they are your roots through which you build and arrive at views!

[zenobiavita]

The problem is not having different worldviews with others, the problem is thinking that your worldview is the only right one and that everyone else is wrong.

[zenobiavita]

"It is life that, little by little, case by case, enables us to observe that what is most important to our hearts or to our minds is taught us not by reasoning but by other powers. And then it is the intelligence itself which, acknowledging their superiority, abdicates to them through reasoning and consents to become their collaborator and their servant."

[zenobiavita]

The psychology of Dalinar is described in an absolutely amazing and real way!

{Explain: 'I.... Well, I'm a man of extremes, Navani. I discovered that when I was a youth. I've learned, repeatedly, that the only way to control those extremes is to dedicate my life to something. First it was Gavilar. Now it's the Codes and the teachings of Nohadon. They're the means by which I bind myself.

Like the enclosure of a fire, meant to contain and controlit.' ….The momentum of following the Codes these years after Gavilar's death is what keeps me strong. If I let a few cracks into that armor, I might return to the man I once was. A man I never want to be again.'}

[beguines]

I certainly have experienced many moments when my own faith seems to be answered—or, maybe more accurately, fulfilled, a moment of being so replete and consummate that the word "faith" just falls away. How to make a life out of these moments? How to turn this mystical sense of God into a daily faith? How to simply rest in God? These are questions I still struggle to answer.

Miroslav Volf and Christian Wiman, Glimmerings: Letters on Faith Between a Poet and a Theologian

[beguines]

Bianca Stone, from "The Students Singing Before a Flood", The Near and Distant World

[zenobiavita]

“… I mean what do I know, what does anybody else know either? There might be another adventure like this one, I don’t know! It is a mystery ….”

[zenobiavita]

I fear those big words—faith, grace, sin, redemption, love—which make us so sad. Why sad? Because they seethe and shift and slip free from meaning. Because they seem to demand some whole-souled attention but are not stable enough to warrant that. Because they are both necessary and impossible, and pinch individual life in that vise.

[zenobiavita]

Your beliefs should serve reality and not the other way around.

[zenobiavita]

We have frameworks through which we hold our beliefs, and then we have beliefs. Frameworks work like the roots of a tree, they shape the way you approach the world, and then we have the branches, the beliefs ( morals, metaphysical, epistemic, existential …). And how those fit together guide your interpretation of reality.

[zenobiavita]

“You search for truth, Jasnah said, 'but you also hold to your faith. There is much to admire in that. Seek out the Devotary of Sincerity. They are one of the very smallest of the devotaries, but this book is their guide?' ‘One with blank pages?' Indeed. They worship the Almighty, but are guided by the belief that there are always more answers to be found. The book cannot be filled, as there is always something to learn. This devotary is a place where one is never penalized for questions, even those challenging Vorinism's own tenets.' She shook her head.”

[zenobiavita]

“Those who truly seek wisdom are those who will acknowledge the virtue in their adversaries and who will learn from those who disabuse them of error.”

[zenobiavita]

But whatever a man thinks about himself is of little importance in comparison with what he is, with what he truly feels, and most of us are not aware of what we feel.

[zenobiavita]

We should accept the complexity of each one of us, only then we would understand each others.

[funeral]

He looks everywhere for the right words—the right words to describe everything, to define everything, and to know everything. When he struggles to find what he's after, he continues to look for more words. He invents more words. He speaks them louder and louder. Soon, he yells. Then he screams. The screams only echo, returning to him with no new insights. They're still just his words. They teach him nothing. In between his screams and their echoes, he experiences silence. This is when, if he listens, he finds what he is after.

Robert Pantano, The Terrible Paradox of Self-Awareness