"I'm not interested in making myself feel better. I want to feel real, no matter how it is."
– Unknown –
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Q: Why not just go on in your life and do as you do, why do you want to practice?
A: I want to learn. I want to improve and feel better about myself.
Q: How do you know when you feel better enough, so you can say to yourself: "I'm there, there's nothing to be improved anymore"?
A: When I'm enlightened.
Q: So how do you know when you're enlightened?
A: I would assume that by the way I feel. I'm sure I will know it when it happens.
Q: Hmm, perhaps, perhaps you will then. What if it never happens before you die?
A: Then I will die knowing that I tried.
Q: If that happens, will you then be ready to die knowing that you lived your life waiting for some good feeling that did not come, instead of living in present moment with your real feelings that you had all the time?
– Unknown –
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"Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make; you can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won't know for twenty years. And you may never ever trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out. Just try and figure out your own divorce. And they say there is no fate, but there is: it's what you create.
And even though the world goes on for eons and eons, you are only here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time is spent being dead or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain, wasting years, for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right. And it never comes or it seems to but it doesn't really.
And so you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope that something good will come along. Something to make you feel connected, something to make you feel whole, something to make you feel loved. And the truth is I feel so angry, and the truth is I feel so fucking sad, and the truth is I've felt so fucking hurt for so fucking long and for just as long I've been pretending I'm OK, just to get along, just for, I don't know why, maybe because no one wants to hear about my misery, because they have their own. Well, fuck everybody. Amen."
– Minister in the movie 'Synecdoche, New York' –
