Posted by Ryan
March 25, 2009
A few quotes I’ve collected over the last few weeks on twitter, or just had lying around, or whatever.
My Goal of the Day: Fully listen to my critics, even if they may not know exactly what they’re critical of.
– Malcolm Gladwell
I don’t think I mentioned it, but I ran into Malcolm Gladwell in the lobby of the office building I work in. I always feel a little bad in interrupting someone who probably gets interrupted a lot, but if I actually care about who they are I will usually interrupt anyway. Some may see that as backwards, but whatever. I don’t try to become their friend. I just say hi, express my appreciation for their work, and go on my merry way.
The following advice, given by the deceitful Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood in C. S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, describes a common malady afflicting many of us today: “Do what you will, there is going to be some benevolence, as well as some malice, in your patient’s soul. The great thing is to direct the malice to his immediate neighbours whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary.”
– Michael J. Teh quoting The Screwtape Letters
I posted this quote back in November of 2007 and I’ve already said everything I have to say about it (for now).
“To carry a grudge is like being stung to death by one bee.”
– William H. Walton
Which would be pretty terrible, especially if you had no allergic reaction to the bee. I choose a grudge-free life.
Also, that would be quite the persistent, death-resistant bee.
Few concepts have more potential to mislead us than the idea that choice, or agency, is an ultimate goal.
– Dallin H. Oaks, “Weightier Matters,” Ensign, Jan 2001, 13
Choice, or agency, is a condition of life. This should not be confused with the ability to act on choices without undesired consequences. That’s called freedom.
If your knees aren’t green by the end of the day, you need to seriously rethink your life.
– Calvin (Calvin & Hobbes)
And in the spirit of Calvin & Hobbes, here’s a semi-sad reminder (if you love Calvin & Hobbes) about saving things for your children instead of throwing them away. I’m really just putting it here because I like Calvin & Hobbes, I’m sentimental, and I wanted an excuse to post it.
Posted by Ryan
July 29, 2008
Take a moment and think about your best friend, or several good friends. Can you remember when you first met? Was that meeting memorable? How was it different than meeting any of the hundreds or thousands of people you’ve met since then?
More likely than not, meeting your best friend, or whoever we’re thinking about here, was just like meeting anyone else: nothing special. Perhaps you were introduced through another friend, bumped into each other at school, or maybe he/she punched you in the face.
The memories I have of my best friends are there, but faded. Best childhood friend: my dad took me over to his house shortly after he moved in to meet him and his family. I think I was 5 years old. There were lots of unpacked boxes in his room and all over their house. We might have played with legos. That’s about all I remember. Two friends I’ve had for 14+ years now were public enemies number 1 and 2. I couldn’t stand them, and I’m pretty sure their feelings towards me were pretty hostile, too. Of course, looking back, I have no idea why we didn’t get along. Maybe we did the first time we met? No idea. That’s not the point though.
The point is, when I look back on those first meetings, I remember very little about what actually happened. What I do remember is the outcome. I think of how it is now. Looking at those first meetings from the perspective of someone living in that same time period, nothing special happened. Looking at it from 2008, it’s quite different.
The poem is a good example. For the most splendid line becomes fully splendid only by means of all the lines after it; if you went back to it you would find it less splendid than you thought.
- Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis
Perhaps you’re married. Think of the first date with your spouse. Was it that different from any other date you may have been on? Probably not. But you remember it with fondness because of what your relationship has become.
People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey… stuff.
- The Tenth Doctor, Doctor Who (British sci-fi TV show), in the episode “Blink”
To think of our experiences, all the people we’ve met, everyone we really know, as being part of some time line places a brick wall between us and who we are. We aren’t on some time line. Well, perhaps we are, but I don’t see it that way. I see it like this: today is the only day there is. There is no tomorrow, there is no yesterday. There is only today. All our experiences fill our life, our today. That doesn’t mean we can’t correct mistakes; it makes correcting mistakes possible. You don’t have to change the past. You can’t change it, because it doesn’t exist. The only thing you can change is what is actually real: yourself.
A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered. You are speaking, [Human], as if the pleasure were one thing and the memory another. It is all one thing. … What you call remembering is the last part of the pleasure, as the crah is the last part of a poem. When you and I met, the meeting was over very shortly, it was nothing. Now it is growing something as we remember it. But still we know very little about it. What it will be when I remember it as I lie down to die, what it makes in me all my days till then–that is the real meeting. The other is only the beginning of it.
- Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis
When you reflect on what we call the past, when you remember pleasures gone by, do not wish you could go back. Remembering pleasures is what makes the pleasure full. It makes it real.
And how could we endure to live and let time pass if we were always crying for one day or one year to come back–if we did not know that every day in a life fills the whole life with expectation and memory and that these are that day?
- Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis (emphasis added)
Posted by Ryan
May 17, 2008
As my family and close friends will attest, I get bored a lot. It doesn’t, however, take much to remove said boredom. I’m pretty easily entertained. For example, I was bored 3 minutes ago. Now I’m not. I was bored the other day, then I went outside and sat on the porch and was bored no more.
I’m far from an avid moviegoer. The number of times I’ve heard “what? you haven’t seen ___?! how have you lived?” numbers in the hundreds. I can probably name all of the movies that I have not liked… Mission to Mars, The Brothers Grimm, some movie that was so terrible I blocked the name from my memory, High School Musical and… okay no I can’t name them all, but it’s not that many.
Okay I must confess: I’ve never actually seen High School Musical. I know I would detest it though. I heard part of it from another room and that was enough. I am not a fan of musicals. Except Newsies. Newsies is cool.
Other people do like musicals though. And that’s ok, so long as I’m not roped to a chair in front of the screen with my eyelids taped open.
Doubters do not achieve; skeptics do not contribute; cynics do not create.
- Calvin Coolidge, speech, Jul. 25, 1924
From time to time a movie will come out that I am really excited about. So I go see it. And it’s amazing. And then because I’m all excited about it I read reviews to see what other people thought (if I happen to come across them in my daily browsing). And they didn’t like it. What? And I look at the box office results, and it’s going crazy. Apparently people like it, so why are most of the reviews negative? I don’t get it. Have professional movie critics seen too many movies? Is there something in a movie critics’ job description that states they must be negative? What’s more interesting is that if the movie does get super popular the reviews seem to change from negative to positive (Napoleon Dynamite anyone?). Maybe I’m wrong? I don’t actually have any data to prove this; it’s just my perception. Also, I’m not sure if that’s a correct use of a semi-colon.
Any guesses about where this all came from? If you read my last post you’ll have a pretty good chance of getting it right. Prince Caspian was really good. The 18 people I saw it with liked it too, but the reviews I’ve read have been rather negative. Why? Well obviously they didn’t like it. No big deal. Some people are bound to have differing opinions, and who am I to say they’re not just as valid, or more so, than mine?
I guess my issue here comes from the word critic in “movie critic.” I am often guilty of being critical, skeptical, and doubting. Perhaps I am just being critical here, I won’t argue with you on that one. I don’t expect every movie or book review to be glowing with praise, that’s just silly. We read reviews because we value other’s opinions. I read a few reviews this week about an episode of a TV show I saw (Doctor Who). I didn’t think the episode was super amazing, but I did enjoy it. As I read the reviews (all negative) I found myself liking the episode less and less. I started thinking of more reasons why the episode was rubbish. An enjoyable experience (watching the episode) quickly became a painful experience.
What on earth. Did you catch that? A decently positive experience was turned into a negative one by something that happened after it. History was changed. The present moment changed the past.
More on this in an upcoming post with a few C.S. Lewis quotes from Out of the Silent Planet, which I recently finished.
Edited to add: apparently I read all the wrong reviews. Prince Caspian is getting good reviews. So like I said was possible: I’m wrong. Nothing new there. Still though, it’s not the first time this has seemed to happen. Also, my main point of this post was about cynicism and what it does, but the post got long and I never reached the conclusion. So I split in two.
