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February 17, 2023. 1203 EST
When the Buddha first left his palace as a young man, he saw three things that radically altered his perspective on life: an old man, a sick man, and a dead man.
Aging, illness, and death -- pretty much the only things guaranteed to encounter in life. It's pretty much it all comes down to. If I'm not preparing for these three things, I'm, by default, otherwise occupied with some other idle distraction. And if I seeked a permanent, external so-called happiness rooted in senescence, decay, and disintegration, then I'd be inadvertently tying my own noose, and neglecting the actual lesson that the Buddha saw clearly, because happiness predicated on attachment to what is impermanent and ultimately painful is, well, semantically, exactly that: impermanent and painful.
I suppose that's the nature of dukkha. If it's not outright stabbing you in the heart, it waits to hug you before it stabs you in the back.
I'll admit: that rant sounded a lot more coherent in my head.
I'm gonna be celebrating my grandmother's birthday. Suffice to say, she's pretty old, and by the grace of God, pretty healthy, and pretty lucid.
Old people are kinda funny. It's kinda sad, though, when I think about it, because a lot of old people feel lonely as they get closer to death. Not my grandma though. She actually has a morbid, cavalier attitude towards death.
For example, if I visit her, she'll just mention in passing, with a big smile, "Oh, yeah, I'm going to die soon, so I'm getting rid of my personal possessions. Anyways, want this little drawing you made for me when you were five?"
I finally ended up talking to that chick. Turns out she still likes me. We're not, ya know, fucking married, ya know, but at least my friends and I can hang out at our usual spot in peace.
A few friends don't approve of the arrangement though. Understandably, I'll admit. It's just, objectively speaking, unstable. Just keep the stakes low, I guess.
One of my friends told me I was better off walking "the path" -- the path of celibacy, it seems.
I recently started a new job. It's an alright job. I feel useful. I make my money. Nobody's poisoned my water supply. But I hate those first few months at a new job, where you have to get to know everyone. Ya know? Especially, when it's like, I just got used to all my old coworkers from my previous job. Growing pains, it seems.
And it doesn't seem like it's particularly socially acceptable to have a dark sense of humor at my new job, so now I don't elicit laughter quite as easily from my new coworkers. Being alone with my thoughts -- the stuff of nightmares.
I'm gonna be fasting through Lent and Ramadan, God-willing. My friends and I planned on committing to it, and taking the opportunity to switch from bulking to cutting. We've made some great improvements in our muscular strength -- now we're gonna actually start doing cardio and trimming all that fat. I'm kind of excited for it.
I can't really think of anything else to say at the moment. People in the material world often tell me I don't talk much, and I usually reply, "There's not much to say," to which they usually laugh nervously.
But yeah. There's not really much to say.