Tag: Newsletter

Hello lovely readers and welcome back to my high-flying newsletter! The only newsletter that believes the inherent meaningless of existence is a blank canvas you’re meant to paint meaning on to… And the only newsletter to suggest you should paint it fucking red!

Following a 3-2-1 approach, it contains 3 thoughts from me (that you should ignore), 2 quotes from others (that you should read), and 1 joke that’s so bad, it’s good!

Let’s begin!

3 Thoughts:

1) “What typically follows atheism is a confrontation with nihilism. It sits like a dark storm cloud gathering strength on the horizon. This is where we run the risk of throwing out the baby with the holy bathwater in the modern age. When we decide that we can do whatever we feel like – only whatever feels good. This, of course, makes everything harder. Over time, it only serves to reinforce the belief that our own lives are meaningless. This is the trap that nihilism sets.”

2) “When we ask what the meaning of life is, the instinct is to search the stars for some cosmic significance. In doing so, we unwittingly set the bar for what a meaningful life should be so high that only God Himself can reach it. If you don’t believe in God, that’s a big problem.”

3) Meaning is the lift we need to get out of bed in the morning. We generate it in one of two ways:

• The first is by taking responsibility for our life. Our responsibilities are the weight we carry. If we neglect them they keep us grounded. By taking responsibility for our lives we lighten the load. In doing so we have more energy to tackle the things we really want to.

• The second is by helping others. We want to help others intrinsically. But we’re also intrinsically selfish. The difference is, helping others gives us the lasting peace we crave. The kind of lasting peace we fail to find when only acting for ourselves. It’s the lift we need to sustain us over the long-haul.

2 Quotes:

“What I relate is the history of the next two centuries. I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently: the advent of nihilism. . . For some time now, our whole European culture has been moving as toward a catastrophe, with a tortured tension that is a growing from decade to decade: relentlessly, violently, headlong, like a river that wants to reach the end, that no longer reflects, that is afraid to reflect.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

“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 dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run—in the long run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.”

– Viktor Frankl

1 Joke Poem: 

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

– Dylan Thomas – 1914-1953

You can find more of AP2’s writing here at: https://wiseandshinezine.com

You can also find him on Medium at: https://anxiouspilot2.medium.com

You can also email him directly at: anxiouspilot2@gmail.com

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