The next poem that spoke to me was not because I liked it particular but because it was once again about reality, or the world we are aware of, and how we mold it to our needs. Remember, the nerves that connect to our eyes leave a blind spot, we miss a part of the picture when it is send to the brain, but that brain combines the two pictures of both our eyes and “makes up” the information that is missing.

That is a more physical reason why our senses are not a hundred per cent accurate or trustworthy. But our mind can play more tricks on us like cognitive dissonance or a lack of critical thinking. I was also listening to a book about stoicism, and specifically Seneca. One of the ideas of stoicism is that you should not let the outside world be responsible for your happiness, don’t think that money, a big house or (in ancient Greases case) many slaves will make you happy, because it can be taken away from you. Find a spot in yourself as the source of your happiness and than it doesn’t matter where you are or what you have or loose.

I like the last sentence of the poem I chose for today: “the world stops out there”. Your world stops outside of you, or said in an other way, the way you see the world is constructed (subconsciously) by you, and can resemble reality but it most definitely does not do that all the time. You construct a world internally, your eyes are corrected internally and your cognitive dissonance, phobia’s, upbringing and other ideas are part of the way you look, see and think about the world and yourself, they are part of the internal construct that determines how you see the world.

I like what the stoics are saying, and I think that it is useful to…aim for the idea that happiness should be found internally. But I also believe that the way we look from this internal platform to the world is marked by all the scars of our past and the way we are as humans. So in this mess we have to try to find a place where we can safely store our happiness. I am not finished with these two.

The poem is from Day 826:

Towards the outside of my awareness.

The transition is veiled.

Reality and imagery are tangled.

The world stops out there.

And one from Seneca:

If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you’re needing is not to be in a different place but to be a different person.