Vanmorgen kreeg ik de volgende mail:
Cool ! i love it. Thanks Hans x(-:
You have my permission to
post this letter to me
in your blog, if you like—i think
people would enjoy it, too.
Those banana’s are great 😀
Veel liefs van K
Ik was blij met deze spontane reactie op wat ik haar gisteravond had gemaild.
Het past precies in mijn ‘ontwikkeling’ waar ik het in de vorige bijdrage over had.
Daar komt ie:
Hi Kristina,
There are still some searches open on my pc, amongst others the one on envy that I also happened to do after you left.
That’s my way of learning when alone, I guess. Doing a lot of reading and looking.
What I do is this: I search, in this case for envy, in google and go to google images, (often after having read a bit first in the most prominent searches that showed up, for instance wikipedia envy).
Then I scroll the images and go for the pics that catch my eye and visit the website that belongs to the picture.
That brings a lot of information.
I give you some things that i saw yesterday and a few pics.
For instance the 3 bananas that belonged to envy, but that I associated right away with lying in bed with 3 people.
(I was always intrigued by this and have some experience. And yes, those were confusing times, especially because i was so confused)).
Here’s the bananas:
Hier hoort een stukje bij waaruit ik de titel van deze email heb gehaald:
http://www.businessesgrow.com/2013/02/19/research-shows-facebook-use-may-cause-spiral-of-envy/
Now I stumbled on the wiki thing, a great article, with great pictures and it mentions Bertrand Russell’s book on
happiness that i also have read some pieces of yesterday, and out of which i’ll give a qquote later.
Hello, here is wiki again: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Envy
Een stukje Bertrand over zichzelf toen hij jong was:
Perhaps the best introduction to the philosophy which I wish to advocate will be a few words of autobiography. I was not born happy. As a child, my favourite hymn was: ‘Weary of earth and laden with my sin’. At the age of five, I reflected that, if I should live to be seventy, I had only endured, so far, a fourteenth part of my whole life, and I felt the long-spreadout boredom ahead ot me to be almost unendurable. In adolescence, I hated life and was continually on the verge of suicide, from which, however, I was restrained by the desire to know more mathematics.
Now, on the contrary, I enjoy life; I might almost say that with every year that passes I enjoy it more. This is due partly to having discovered what were the things that I most desired and having gradually acquired many of these things. Partly it is due to having successfully dismissed certain objects of desire – such as the acquisition of indubitable knowledge about something or other – as essentially unattainable. But very largely it is due to a diminishing preoccupation with myself.
Like others who had a Puritan educatim, I had the habit of meditating on my sins, follies, and shortcomings. I seemed to myself – no doubt justly – a miserable specimen.
Gradually I learned to be indifferent to myself and my deficiencies; I came to centre my attention increasingly upon external objects: the state of the world, various branches of knowledge, individuals for whom I felt affection. External interests, it is true, bring each its own possibility of pain: the world may be plunged in war, knowledge in some direction may be hard to achieve, friends may die. But pains of these kinds do not destroy the essential quality of life, as do those that spring from disgust with self. And every external interest inspires some activity which, so long as the interest remains alive, is a complete preventive of ennui.
Ik vind steeds leuke boeiende stukjes, zoals deze:
When such young people go to a university they probably discover congenial souls and enjoy a few years of great happiness. If they are fortunate, they may succeed, on leaving the university, in obtaining some kind of work that gives them still the possibility of choosing congenial companions; an intelligent man who lives in a city as large as London or New York can generally find some congenial set in which it is not necessary to practise any constraint or hypocrisy. But if his work obliges him to live in some smaller place, and more particularly if it necessitates retention of the respect of ordinary people, as is the case, for example, with a doctor or a lawyer, he may find himself throughout his whole life practically compelled to conceal his real tastes and convictions from most of the people that he meets in the course of his day. This is especially true in America because of the vastness of the country. In the most unlikely places, north, south, east, and west, one finds lonely individuals who know from books that there are places where they would not be lonely, but who have no chance to live in such places, and only the rarest opportunity of congenial conversation. Real happiness in such circumstances is impossible to those who are built on a less magnificent scale than Blake and Emily Bronte. If it is to become possible, some way must be found by which the tyranny of public opioion can be either lessened or evaded, and by which members of the intelligent minority can come to know each other and enjoy each other’s society.
Dit brengt zo mooi onder woorden vanuit een andere gezichtshoek wat ik altijd over mezelf zeg als dat ik in ballingschap leef in Amsterdam.
Heerlijk om zo begrepen te worden door iemand die dat 20 jaar voor mijn geboorte opschreef in dit boek: http://russell-j.com/beginner/COH-TEXT.HTM
Heb net een nederlandse vertaling tweedehands per telefoon besteld in Utrecht, morgen heb ik het.
Nou, veel leesplezier. (Dat hoop ik althans)
Hug,
hans
