My personal thoughts on how to live a happy and moral life.
Revolving thoughts
You know those revolving sushi bars where you sit down at a table and the food passes you by on a conveyor belt? You grab the items that look good to you, and you let the rest pass you by. I think that’s a good illustration of our thoughts. In this illustration our brain is…
Pride
Someone recently told me that pride is always a bad thing, and that it would be a good idea to remove one’s pride completely. That got me thinking, what do you replace pride with? I think I have an answer. First, I will admit that pride had always been a tool of motivation for me.…
Extremes
Life is full of mysteries and unknowns, and that is good-enough reason to search for answers. But, sometimes, we get tired of looking. We decide there’s nothing to find. Or, at least, we act like it. Then, we are in danger of missing the truth. Let’s assume that the truth is useful. It helps us…
Journey or destination
What’s more important, being right or being thoughtful? I’m a big fan of logic and reason and critical thinking (though I don’t claim to be particularly good at it). As a consequence, I often find myself struggling to reach conclusions on controversial topics. I think it’s important to consider different facts and opinions. Then, we…
Like a badge
It’s tempting to try to use our weaknesses as an excuse. After all, weaknesses are obstacles that can seriously derail our plans. Coming to terms with these obstacles is the first step in any strategy to live with them. But we could get too comfortable with our flaws, to the point where we pretend to…
No more threat
You ever feel nostalgic about bad things? It makes a lot of sense to miss a good thing, because then there’s an incentive for the good thing to happen again. But what incentive is there to repeat, or even remember, a bad experience? Nostalgia is like missing something, but with a deeper, personal, and sometimes…
Cloying
In Spanish, we have a word to describe foods that are sickenly sweet (the word is empalagoso). I never knew it, until now, but the equivalent word in English is “cloying”. This word is often used to describe the taste of overly-sweet wines, for example. When something is cloying, it’s not that it doesn’t taste…
I wouldn’t lie
I was listening to an NPR show the other night, and the episode was about lying. One of the guests claimed that lying is more about opportunity than it is about character. So, I asked myself, did I ever lie when I had the opportunity simply because it was convenient do so or because it…
Ivan Cortes 