You know, I think the people I feel saddest for are the ones who once knew what profoundness was, but who lost or became numb to the sensation of wonder, who felt their emotions floating away and just didn't care. I guess that's what's scariest: not caring about the loss.
And then sometimes I think the people to feel saddest for are people who once knew what profoundness was, but who lost or became numb to the sensation of wonder โ people who closed the doors that leads us into the secret world โ or who had the doors closed for them by time and neglect and decisions made in times of weakness.
I am a quiet man. I tend to think things through and try not to say too much. But here I am, saying perhaps too much. But there are these feelings inside me which need badly to escape, I guess. And this makes me feel relieved because one of my big concerns these past few years is that I've been losing my ability to feel things with the same intensity- the way I felt when I was younger. It's scary- to feel your emotions floating away and just not caring. I guess what's really scary is not caring about the loss.
We cannot selectively numb emotions, when we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions.
I think that was the scariest part about bobsled, is when you just don't know what's happening, you don't know where you are on the track, you don't know when it's going to be over, and you don't know what it's supposed to feel like.
When I decided to take on acting as a career and a profession, I didn't know much about it. I knew that I was passionate about it. There was nothing else I could think of that I wanted to do and that's when I knew it was the right choice. It was also one of the scariest moments of my life.
This is what I know about love, That it is tested every day, and what is not renewed is lost. One chooses either to care more or to care less. Once the choice is to care less, then there is no stopping the momentum of goodbye. Each loved thing slips away. There is no stopping it.
A reporter once asked me if I ever cried. I wonder if people think I'm just as hard as a rock and have no emotions at all.
I would then say that there are two kinds of feeling. The first is to feel in the sense of concentrating your emotions on something immediately available for your understanding: you make your understanding out of the emotions you have about it. The second is to feel in the sense of being affected without trying to understand: something is felt, you do not know what, and it is more important to feel it than to try to understand it, since once you try to understand it you no longer feel it.
I used to want to kill myself because I had lost so much of who I knew I was because of all the other invalidation from people. It sends you spiraling where you're like, Wait, I know I have this quality, I know what my integrity is - until you're being fed all this false information about yourself. You start to wonder why. You don't feel good about yourself because you no longer believe in yourself.
I don't think I think things through like regular people would. I could be a real hateful person, and I also don't really care about my own well-being, I guess. I just kind of have that knack about me. I just don't care.
If I can feel that actual people made the thing, and that they have deeply felt opinions about it, and care about this, and don't care about that and so on and so on - then I think it falls into the 'independent' file.
That was a good time in my life, in spite of having the sensation of floating on a cloud, surrounded by both lies and things left unspoken. Occasionally I thought I glimpsed the truth, but soon found myself once again lost in a forest of ambiguities.
Your hair may be brushed, but your mind's untidy.
You've had about seven hours of sleep since Friday.
No wonder you feel that lost sensation.
You're sunk from a riot of relaxation.
I know whether or not I am confused most readily by noticing--being mindful of--my capacity for feeling caring concern. ... when I feel myself in caring connection--encouraging, consoling, or appreciating--I feel the twin pleasures of clarity and goodness. It doesn't matter if the connection I feel is to myself or a person I know or people I don't know or even the whole world. The lively impulse of caring is what counts. [p. 20]
I didn't feel that so much as an outsider when I started writing; I've felt that way all my life. I don't know, man; I guess I was just wired wrong. When I was growing up, I always wanted to be somebody else and live somewhere else. I've always felt a little uncomfortable around people. And I'm not trying to romanticize this, because it wasn't romantic. I wasn't trying to be a rebel; I just always felt a little out of it. I think that's why it's pretty easy for me to identify with people living on the margins.
I've learnt that over the years, sometimes I was caring so much about how other people felt, I wasn't standing up for myself and I wasn't caring about how I felt even when people were straight up bullying me online.