Meaning is what you have to buttress yourself against the tragedy of life
Despite the fact that you're a fragile damaged mortal creature
You found something to do that announced itself as worthwhile
That's meaning
It's an instinct
It's a deep-deep instinct
It's maybe the deepest instinct
It's like a form of vision
Meaning tells you when you in the right place
And the right place is between chaos and order
And those are real places your hemispheres
The right hemisphere is roughly evolved let's say to deal with things you don't understand that’s chaos
And your left is there to deal with things you do understand
You can't just stay with the things that you do understand because you already understand that
And you can't just stay with what you don't understand because then your lost
You need to be in the middle of those two
And you can tell when you in the middle because everything lines up
Despite the fact that you're a fragile damaged mortal creature
You found something to do that announced itself as worthwhile
That's meaning
It's an instinct
It's a deep-deep instinct
It's maybe the deepest instinct
It's like a form of vision
Meaning tells you when you in the right place
And the right place is between chaos and order
And those are real places your hemispheres
The right hemisphere is roughly evolved let's say to deal with things you don't understand that’s chaos
And your left is there to deal with things you do understand
You can't just stay with the things that you do understand because you already understand that
And you can't just stay with what you don't understand because then your lost
You need to be in the middle of those two
And you can tell when you in the middle because everything lines up
Well there's plenty of things to criticize about being
It's tragic and there's malevolence that's basically the issue
And you can complain about that
But the thing is if you complain about that if you adopt that attitude
Which is sort of an anti being attitude
You go places that if you knew you were going you probably wouldn't want to go
It's the places where like the kids that showed up Columbine web
Those are bad places
If you read the writings of the Columbine High School kids and you really read them
If they don't make the hair stand up in the back here you are not paying attention
It's tragic and there's malevolence that's basically the issue
And you can complain about that
But the thing is if you complain about that if you adopt that attitude
Which is sort of an anti being attitude
You go places that if you knew you were going you probably wouldn't want to go
It's the places where like the kids that showed up Columbine web
Those are bad places
If you read the writings of the Columbine High School kids and you really read them
If they don't make the hair stand up in the back here you are not paying attention
There is this idea that Young had which I really love which is the idea of the shadow
Which is the dark side of humanity
Its roots reached all the way to hell
He meant something very specific by that
The metaphysical element was he meant hell literally and metaphysically
But he also meant that if you were able to understand your dark side
Then you would see in yourself a reflection of the behavior that was present at Ashwood's
And that the reason that people don't take the dark side of themselves seriously at all
And even confront the fact that it exists is because no one wants to see that reflected within them
And no wonder
Which is the dark side of humanity
Its roots reached all the way to hell
He meant something very specific by that
The metaphysical element was he meant hell literally and metaphysically
But he also meant that if you were able to understand your dark side
Then you would see in yourself a reflection of the behavior that was present at Ashwood's
And that the reason that people don't take the dark side of themselves seriously at all
And even confront the fact that it exists is because no one wants to see that reflected within them
And no wonder
If you have a friend and you tell the bad news there ought to be sad and you can tell them
They will listen
You know they'll listen
They'll take the damn pain
And they won't tell you about some worst thing that happened them defensively sake
And they won't secretly be happy that you got knocked off your pedestal
They'll listen
And then another thing is this if you have a friend and something good happens to you
They’re happy
Like you have an ethical responsibility to take care of yourself
You have an ethical responsibility to surround yourself
With people who have the courage and faith and wisdom
To wish you well when you’ve done something good
They will listen
You know they'll listen
They'll take the damn pain
And they won't tell you about some worst thing that happened them defensively sake
And they won't secretly be happy that you got knocked off your pedestal
They'll listen
And then another thing is this if you have a friend and something good happens to you
They’re happy
Like you have an ethical responsibility to take care of yourself
You have an ethical responsibility to surround yourself
With people who have the courage and faith and wisdom
To wish you well when you’ve done something good
I read this piece of work by Yung a long while back
It was a meditation on the injunction to treat your neighbor as you would like to be treated
And what Yung pointed out which I really liked
Was that an injunction to be nice to other people
It was an invitation to reciprocity
It was something like this
Is like you should figure out how you would like to be treated like you were taking care of yourself
Not how you would like people to respond to you
It's more important than that
It's like imagine you had a child that you really cared for
And someone said “Well people will treat this child exactly like you want them to”
“But you have to figure out what that is.”
And so, then you'd have to sit down for like a month
And you think okay well how do you want your child to be treated
You don't want everyone just to be nice to them
You know you want people to challenge them and you want people to discipline him
It was a meditation on the injunction to treat your neighbor as you would like to be treated
And what Yung pointed out which I really liked
Was that an injunction to be nice to other people
It was an invitation to reciprocity
It was something like this
Is like you should figure out how you would like to be treated like you were taking care of yourself
Not how you would like people to respond to you
It's more important than that
It's like imagine you had a child that you really cared for
And someone said “Well people will treat this child exactly like you want them to”
“But you have to figure out what that is.”
And so, then you'd have to sit down for like a month
And you think okay well how do you want your child to be treated
You don't want everyone just to be nice to them
You know you want people to challenge them and you want people to discipline him