Paul Conti

Ortega y Gasset said, I'm myself and my circumstances.

We can't control everything.

We live in circumstances around us, but within those circumstances, we can make decisions and define ourselves.

And I think the brilliance of that, and I think tying it all together, right, in a way that's not trying to be, in a sense it ties it all together by not trying to answer everything concisely.

That yes, we can make meaning.

Like we see that.

If someone trips in front of me, I could walk around them or I could help them up.

I mean, no one can tell me that it doesn't matter what I do.

I absolutely reject the idea that, oh, I could step over them or on them, or I could help them up and it doesn't matter.

Oh yeah, try being the person on the ground.

Right?

So we create meaning, but we live in our circumstances and there are absurdities both within us and outside of us in our social structures.

And there are a lot of things that pretend to have meaning that don't.

And there's the shades of nihilism, but ultimately there's something going on here that's doing the best we can in the context of just not knowing.

And we can look at that and just kind of marvel and go, huh.

Which I think is a relation to at least a lot of what we in the Western world think of as Eastern, as non-attachment.

Because then if there's something absurd,

and it's like not good for me, then I accept that too instead of getting angry about it and railing about it or seeing some cosmic meaning in it.

I think there's also a healthy non-attachment in what you're saying too.

I think it is a fundamental part of life.