You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.
David Foster WallaceRead
I think it's easy to stop smoking; it's just hard not to commit a felony after you stop.
Interpretation
Quitting smoking is simple in theory, but the underlying struggles often complicate the process.
David Foster Wallace's quote highlights the irony in the simplicity of quitting smoking versus the complex emotional and behavioral challenges that follow. It emphasizes that while the act of stopping smoking may seem straightforward, it is often accompanied by deeper issues, making the entire process more difficult than it first appears.
In practice
This quote can be used in a support group for individuals trying to quit smoking.
You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.
Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence.
It seems important to find ways of reminding ourselves that most 'familiarity' is meditated and delusive.
Under fun's new administration, writing fiction becomes a way to go deep inside yourself and illuminate precisely the stuff you don't want to see or let anyone else see, and this stuff usually turns out (paradoxically) to be precisely the stuff all writers and readers share and respond to, feel.
Acceptance is usually more a matter of fatigue than anything else.
Bliss - a-second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious - lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom. Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (Tax Returns, Televised Golf) and, in waves, a boredom like youβve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and itβs like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom.
Some critics are stimulating in that they make you realise how you could do better, and those are valued.
The principal point of cleverness is to know how to value things just as they deserve.
Let go of your ego's need to be right. When you're in the middle of an argument, ask yourself: Do I want to be right or be happy? When you choose the joyous, loving, spiritual mode, your connection to intention is strengthened.
Tolerance, like any aspect of peace, is forever a work in progress, never completed, and, if we're as intelligent as we like to think we are, never abandoned.
You don't have to be a creative maverick to have a troubled mind. You just have to be human. There is no 'us' and 'them.' No one is one hundred per cent healthy, physically or mentally.
When we safeguard (the heavenly virtue of freedom), when we honor it, when we protect it, we will walk with Washington, we will pray with patriots, and we shall have peace on earth, good will to men.
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