26/04/2008
"It's really easy to spend your life criticizing and tearing down the culture, but at some point, you've got to move on and pull your guts up and actually create something in the culture and stand for something. Even if it's putting one rock on another rock, it still has to end with something positive like that, something constructive, rather than continually destructive."
"We really need to be aware of what we want from our lives, what we really want to be doing, so that our job is not just a job, so that it's the thing that fulfills us, it's our life. So we don't feel like we have to rush around and get that thing done and then still go off and live our life. A way of integrating what you do with who you are and with what your entire life is, so your entire life isn't your job. By compartmentalizing these things, it's like we're constantly rushing to complete one thing - we're rushing to complete our vacation, and then we're rushing to complete our work so we can get another vacation, and rushing to complete our vacation again - and then we're dead."
"If there was some way to focus on what we really wanted, rather than doing all these things that we settle for, then we would need so little in our lives.
I need so little money, I need so few possesions, I need so little everything because I don't need to compensate with a lot of extra things. I'm so fulfilled with what I do for my living. That's what I wish people could get in society - to be doing what they want to do, rather than be doing what they don't want to do and trying to compensate with a whole bunch of other stuff."
"I have wondered if so many destructive addictions - whether they're drinking, sex, drugs, shoplifting - are because that person would really like to be a painter or something, but doesn't have the guts to be that creative painter. So they anesthetize that frustration, that sense of failure, that fear, by doing the destructive thing. It's a huge act of faith to put yourself out into the world and say 'I'm going to create'."
24/04/2008
"My friends who are teachers say that their students see their parents as achieving everything they were taught to achive in terms of money, possessions, success, status- and their parents still aren't happy.
In fact, their parents are unhappier than their own parents, who had nothing. So these kids are suddenly going, 'Oh my gosh! If we're supposed to be chasing achievement, status, money, and we're seeing it not work for our parents, what the hell? What does success mean for us? If success isn't money, what is success now?'
I see people in crisis about not wanting to chase the money thing, because it's obviously not working for so many people who have the money thing. They're not sure what to chase now. In a way, that's part of the ongoing inquiry in process. What does 'success' mean now in the world? What will success mean for the next generation? What is the next definition of success?
Despite the highest standard of living in the world, most people aren't very happy. And a lot of these people are about to get old and die. And the children of those people are seeing how money and power might not be the key to happiness. And in that case...
...what will bring happiness?"
23/04/2008
10/04/2008
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