My Specialty

My parents asked me when I was a teen-ager, what do you want to be? I said, more than anything else, I like helping people and making them happy. I want to be a nurse. I certainly wasn't concerned then about being right.

I started political activism, but not till twenty-three years after I became an adult. I don't think twenty-three years shows that I'm quick to anger. 

I still feel that helping people and making them happy is my purpose in life. I feel that it's my inner nature. More than anything else, I don't want to lose this, no matter how other people act or what they say. 

A Reason to Be in Love with Life: The Beauty of Urban Nightscapes

I got back to my own city so late, the bus had stopped running, and I had to take a taxi across town to where I live.

I can't tell you how beautiful that taxi ride was. We glided through a glittery nightscape. It was like we were floating. There was wind through the window. I told the taxi driver how beautiful it was. Tonight I am in love with life.

Enough Tears

There's a lot to be sad about. I spent three decades in depression because I handled external circumstances beyond my control poorly. It wasn't irrational. I saw and see a side of human nature that most people don't know about. People believe in themselves, each other, their families, and ideas which are  actually no more than chimeras or facsimiles.

But, enough tears. I understand their appeal, but I'm tired of sadness, misery, and pity.

Before the Gods on Your Behalf: A Roman Soldier's Letter Home

This is an article from March of this year. It's about a Roman soldier's letter home. It's touching. The article calls it a 'guilt-trip letter', which is funny. Of course, in reality, that may or not have been the case. 

I am off to Toastmaster's this morning. I got two ribbons there for impromptu speaking. One was plainly charity. The other one, perhaps not. 

I pray to the gods on your behalf, 

Bedtime Prayer

Prayer to the gods that everyone has a spiritual safe harbor and does not go through life as a wandering ghost.

Prayer for the World

Prayer to the gods for the whole world.

Good night from Asia.

Lots of love,
Tuccia

How to Handle a False Accusation

These are my thoughts on handling false accusations. I don't know if they're good or not. The title of the post may sound overconfident, but these are mainly intended as notes to myself. By 'handle', I mean how to handle it emotionally. 

I recently experienced a false accusation. A relatively minor one. Someone thought I was staring at them, and this was taken to mean something about my character. 

This got me thinking. 

Of course, if the accusation is not false and you actually did it, you must apologize and make amends, if possible to do so without causing further harm.

(1) The accusation may be false but sincerely believed. Trying to remember how views arise may allay your anxiety. Most interface with the world consists of using substitutes for direct observation. A state of mind in another person, for example, is inferred from an expression, a tone of voice, or circumstances we know him or her to be experiencing. Substitutes for direct observation are by nature imperfect. They are also commonly relied on for navigating a world with limited resources and time. Thus, while the complaint that a certain judgement required more circumspection than was employed may have some merit, asking for a world in which no one ever employs substitutes for direct observation is to ask for a world that can't exist. Perhaps most importantly, when you pay attention to your own inner train of thought, you will find that you do it too, and yet, when your judgments turn out to have been inaccurate, you will jump to your feet to defend yourself, like a defense attorney in a Hollywood movie, the hero for exonerating his client. 

(2) The reliability of substitutes for direct observation are refined through the accumulation of experience. As you go along through life, some are acquired; some are discarded; and those that have been acquired are made more specific. But here's the crucial point: by nature each human, even if she lived to be 900 years old, can only experience a limited portion of reality. No human can or has ever made a decision with the benefit of omniscience. When you are falsely accused, remember that every decision you have ever made or will ever make is will also be done so without the benefit of omniscience. 

(3) It is true that cultures make up for the limited experience short human lifespans can acquire by passing down wisdom from one generation to the next, but this has its own shortcomings: (a) Its antiquity can bestow an artificial sense of authority to a judgment that goes unquestioned by the culture's modern members. (b) It can be misperceived as universal by those members of the culture who have never lived outside of the culture. (c) Learning by reading or hearing is often difficult to apply in comparison to learning by experience. Learning by reading or hearing often resides in a state of abstraction in one's mind, until a lived experience makes it concrete.

(4) This might be the most important one: If falsely accused, under all circumstances, maintain your obligations to those around you. You have a duty to be virtuous, even to the person who has falsely accused you. Anything else may aggravate the problem or create new problems altogether. 

Your Last Act

Marcus says, "Execute every act as if it were thy last." 

We simply don't know the date of our departure from this life. For some of us, it could very well be today. For example, there could be a bus accident that takes my life as I go to language exchange this morning. 

How then, to respond, and how would one conduct one's last acts? I would say, with highest of motives and the noblest of intentions. Because there would a clarity in that final moment that one wealthy in years and time forever has trouble appreciating.

In other words, with compassion, with forgiveness, and with love, toward all brothers and sisters of humanity, be they friends or enemies, allies or one or another variety of tormentors.

This morning, I can feel life's impermanence, and it makes me feel free. 

Prayer for North Koreans

Prayer to Vesta on this day in late spring 2014, that in North Korea everyone has enough calories and that kitchens and homes in North Korea overflow with delicious food and cheerful laughter. 

Nostalgia

I'd like my blog to be characterized by restraint, but this is also my personal journal.

When I have nostalgia, it is almost always not for what was, but more for what might have been--but wasn't--for being just out of reach.

One recurring daydream of mine as a teen-ager involved working or going to university in Europe and the altogether different life I thought I would have there. Perhaps this is an eye-roller for most people (not for anything bad about Europe, but for being too romantic). But still, it was a dream of mine, and I don't look down on it from the vantage point of early middle age. I like myself for having wanted this. 

In my daydream, I would somehow have a neater, tidier and more fashionable style of clothing. I would learn to comport myself in a less clumsy way. I would speak another language well. I would go to discotheques. I would have a boyfriend there. We'd find ourselves in alleys in Marseilles, the Gare de Lyon, a moonlit section of pastoral countryside, a Milan or Berlin nightclub. All those famous places, all those famous atmospheres. We would have sweet secrets we'd never share till death. I'd eat cheese that wasn't cheddar.

Later, I did go to France, and I did study there, at least for four months. I wasn't able to have those other experiences, however, for a reason that I don't wish to share even on this blog. 

You're entitled to spend your life in a location. That's it, and no more. You aren't entitled to spend your life in the location of your choice, or the location you find most desirable. Perhaps more importantly, there-versus-here is to some degree often a false choice created by misapprehension, as romanticism usually can't withstand familiarity. Therefore, life is what you make it, wherever you are, which means that in order to have a happy life--to tweak the words of Marcus Aurelius--you must love the location to which fate binds you, but do so with all your heart.