The world is currently extremely depressing and frustrating to look as, especially watching COVID numbers rise in the US, as the President tweets that "The reason that we show so many cases ... is that our TESTING is much bigger and better.", Florida is running out of ICU space, meanwhile we watch countries like Italy have formerly covid battered hospitals become COVID free, life as an American feels more and more like some fucked up simulation with each passing day.
With this overwhelming feeling of "Why is this happening and when will it end?", I figured I'd share a few Alan Watts quotes and maybe relate them to what is going on.
1. "I once had a terrible argument with Margaret Mead. She was holding forth one evening on the absolute horror of the atomic bomb, and how everybody should spring into action and abolish it, but she was getting so furious about it that I said to her: "You scare me because I think you are the kind of person who will push the button in order to get rid of the other people who were going to push it first." So she told me that I had no love for my future generations, that I had no responsibility for my children, and that I was a phony swami who believed in retreating from facts. But I maintained my position."
By trying so hard and vehemently to create a sense of security, we may become the exact thing we are trying to protect others from.
2. “If you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you'll spend your life completely wasting your time. You'll be doing things you don't like doing in order to go on living, that is to go on doing thing you don't like doing, which is stupid.”
We make money so that we can live, not the other way around. We can't take it with us when we die, and it's nonsensical to put so much focus on it, rather than enjoying what we have and striving for a life we enjoy.
3. “To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.”
We move best when we go with the flow.
4. “The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”
Life is constantly changing everyday, with masks being the safest way to go about and resume daily life, it's important fore us to work with the change, rather than against it.
5. "To remain stable is to refrain from trying to separate yourself from a pain because you know that you cannot. Running away from fear is fear, fighting pain is pain, trying to be brave is being scared. If the mind is in pain, the mind is pain. The thinker has no other form than his thought. There is no escape. But so long as you are not aware of the inseparability of thinker and thought, you will try to escape."
Trying to escape our thoughts and feelings on the situation will only amplify them. It's inevitable to feel a little pain and discomfort through all of this, but the best thing we can do for ourselves is allow ourselves to feel our emotions.
6. “Human beings are largely engaged in wasting enormous amounts of psychic energy in attempting to do things that are quite impossible… All sensible people therefore begin, in life with two fundamental presuppositions. You are not going to improve the world, and you are not going to improve yourself. You are, just what you are. And once you have accepted that situation, you have an enormous amount of energy available to do things that can be done. And everybody else looking at you from an external point of view will say, 'My god, how much so-and-so has improved!'"
There's nothing we can do to change the situation we or the world is in, so the next best thing is to exercise the little control we do have, rather than wasting energy on something we can barely put a dent in.
