I have a hard time figuring out what kind of box to put me in, too, because I don't know exactly what's going on around me or why. But I need to stay outside of boxes because then I can look at what's inside of them without being part of them.
Interpretation
The quote expresses the struggle of self-identification and the importance of maintaining an outsider perspective.
Jordan Peterson highlights the challenges individuals face when trying to categorize themselves within societal norms or predefined roles. He advocates for the value of stepping outside these limits, allowing for a broader understanding of the complexities of existence and the ability to analyze without being confined by rigid labels.
In practice
In a discussion about personal identity at a seminar.
Part of the reason there's an injunction to the truth, for example, is that if you're in a circumstance of extreme uncertainty, your best weapon, let's say, or your best tool or your best defense is the truth, because it keeps things simpler.
I don't tell people, 'You're okay the way that you are.' That's not the right story. The right story is, 'You're way less than you could be.'
Once someone has spent enough time cultivating bad habits and biding their time, they are much diminished. Much of what they could have been has dissipated.
If you learn a martial art, you learn to be dangerous, but simultaneously, you learn to control it.
Life is tragic. You are tiny and flawed and ignorant and weak, and everything else is huge, complex, and overwhelming.
Music has an intrinsic meaning, which has always been mysterious to me.
As long as there is still one beggar around, there will still be myth.
And that is the secret of this world. If you remove love of dunya from your heart, the dunya is yours for the taking. You can have the dunya because it's in your hand and not in your heart
If atomic bombs are to be added as new weapons to the arsenals of a warring world, or to the arsenals of nations preparing for war, then the time will come when mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and Hiroshima. The people must unite or they will perish.
Perfect people don't exist. And perfect people, if they existed, would be very boring. It is imperfection that keeps life interesting.
When we accept all of life's contradictions, when we can comfortably flow between the banks of pleasure and pain, experiencing them both while getting stuck in neither, then we are free.
I don't presume to have knowledge of what happens after I die. But I feel very strongly that whether the reward is in the here and now or in the hereafter, the aligning myself to my faith and my values is a good thing.
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