Saturday, September 29, 2007

Self Expression and Blogging

I read these paragraph this morning, from Matthieu Ricard's book, "Happiness." He's the Buddhist monk I mentioned a few posts ago.

It may be true that "expressing ourselves," giving free reign to our "natural " impulses, gives us momentary relief from our inner tensions, but we remain trapped in the endless circle of our usual habits. Such a lax attitude doesn't solve any serous problems, since in being ordinarily oneself, one remains ordinary. As the French philosopher Alain has written, "you don't need to be a sorcerer to cast a spell over yourself by saying 'This is how I am. I can do nothing about it.'"

We are very much like birds that have lived too long in a cage to which we return even when we get the chance to fly away. We have grown so accustomed to our faults that we can barely imagine what life would be like without them. The prospect of change makes us dizzy.
Any thoughts on how this relates to self-expression and blogging (or just talking)?

3 comments:

Bon said...

I don't know, but ever since this whole censorship stuff happened, I can't write a darn thing about boogers and flowers. I feel like I'm spending more time wondering what to post than actually enjoying real moments and sayint to myself, "I have to post that!"

Angelo Villagomez said...

Hmmm...are we meant to change ourselves or change the world?

Bruce A. Bateman said...

Post what you want, where you want and let the chips fall out however they may. If the blog owner wants to censor/alter/delete/comment or whatever then so be it. Post and move on.