more... :)

I'm going to have to make these shorter in the case I bore you and you lose interest in reading, aren't I? :)

So i was reading in the park this glorious Saturday afternoon, beginning my reading for my summer class starting on Monday. $160 for 3 textbooks for a class that lasts 9 days. One of the three was $4. Gotta love the system.

Anyways, I came across this portion by Victor E. Frankl in his book Man's Search For Meaning. Victor was Europe's leading psychiatrist; he was also one of those weak people who survived the concentration camps of Germany (heavy sarcasm).

I'm posting his quote because it's been an underlying theme in most of my writing, although not explicitly stated - the difference between joy and happiness and how our selfish motivations and pursuits blur the distinction between the two. As Americans, we don't typically seek a hope, because we don't know what it means to be desperate - unless you're homeless and on the streets. We rarely see the poor and desperate anymore because we choose not to see them, maybe because we don't know what to do with them, or because we've been conditioned to think that hope means getting more stuff. Anyone reading this probably has not experienced the question of where the next meal is coming from, or if we'll survive the night. They know what it means to want hope. Anyways...

"Don't aim at success--the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself."


And seriously. My thought while reading today was that I CANNOT wait for an opportunity to just do some LEISURE reading! Something not connected to LIFE! :) Something to stir the imagination - without feeling guilty for not reading textbooks.