Gardner

what we need first is probably closer to an acceptance. not acceptance really, but something like it. whatever we are right now, whatever our perceived faults, lostness, failures, that's what we get to be. we have to train ourselves to see what we are, feel what we are, as a neutral force. i don't have proof of this, but my intuition is telling me that i can live the life i want only after i can see myself as a neutral thing. neither good nor bad. neither progressing nor failing. i need to see myself as a person that just is. i can see a bird or a squirrel as a creature that merely exists, no baggage. i need to do that seeing towards myself too.

standard advice probably won't work until we work out something even more basic: that we're here on the same level as any other living thing. nothing is losing or winning, deep down, because it doesn't work that way.

getting to that base acceptance-like state of being is probably going to suck. because we're not used to it. a lot of things need to be confronted, or acknowledged. but i think it's needed.