Read on Twitter
In my understanding, freedom implies the following idea: since we all live in the universe without a plan embedded in it, we ourselves must be the authors of our own lives, choices and actions. This freedom creates anxiety so intense that many of us willingly create gods or ...
1/2
dictators for ourselves in order to throw this burden off our psyche.
Irwin Yalom.
dictators for ourselves in order to throw this burden off our psyche.
Irwin Yalom.
1/3
If we, in Sartre's terminology, are the "undisputed authors" of everything we experience, then all our cherished ideas, the noblest truths, the very basis of beliefs, are undermined by the realization that everything in the universe is subject to chance.
Irwin Yalom.
If we, in Sartre's terminology, are the "undisputed authors" of everything we experience, then all our cherished ideas, the noblest truths, the very basis of beliefs, are undermined by the realization that everything in the universe is subject to chance.
Irwin Yalom.
1/4
citing an excerpt from Vladimir Nabokov's memoirs "Speak Memory", where he describes life as a "gap of weak light" between two identical eternities of darkness ~ one before birth and the other after death.
Irwin Yalom.
citing an excerpt from Vladimir Nabokov's memoirs "Speak Memory", where he describes life as a "gap of weak light" between two identical eternities of darkness ~ one before birth and the other after death.
Irwin Yalom.
1/5
I also believe that a true confrontation with mortality can be life-changing: it can help us be more comfortable with the little things and encourage us to live a life free of regret.
Irwin Yalom.
I also believe that a true confrontation with mortality can be life-changing: it can help us be more comfortable with the little things and encourage us to live a life free of regret.
Irwin Yalom.
1/6
(...)
the celebrated "symmetry argument", which posits that our state of non-being after death is identical to our state of non-being before birth, yet the thought of our "pre-being" state is never alarming.
Irwin Yalom.
(...)
the celebrated "symmetry argument", which posits that our state of non-being after death is identical to our state of non-being before birth, yet the thought of our "pre-being" state is never alarming.
Irwin Yalom.
At the top, I relax and begin a long slide down the slope. I love to rush forward when gusts of warm air hit my face in jets. Only at these moments do I begin to understand my Buddhist friends, who say that it is necessary to empty the mind and bask in the sensation of just being
"If a person has a 'why' to live, he can endure any 'how'."
Irwin Yalom. All quotes from the book "How I Became Me". Memories.
Irwin Yalom. All quotes from the book "How I Became Me". Memories.