Miscellaneous Rambling
This is an interesting piece: "10 Troubling Habits Of Chronically Unhappy People." I'm happy to report, I suffer from fewer than half (probably two strongly and two weakly). It's a pretty good list, but I was surprised I didn't see, "Being mean." I've recently been exposed to a shockingly mean couple, who, by all appearances, are angry and disgruntled all the time, the kind who haven't emotionally progressed past eighth grade. I just tell myself, "They must be miserable," but their number one trait--bitterness and anger at other people--didn't make the list.
I haven't felt their wrath, btw; probably because I give such people a VERY wide berth. It's one reason I don't sit with other parents in the stands during sporting events. I can't stand the complaining, yelling, mean-spiritedness that youth sports bring out in adults.
Random Blurb from the Notebooks: Modern society is full of Faustians, men willing to sell–sacrifice–their souls and highest nature for the allures of the world: money, fame, power. In our society, it seems
that the “toys” of our increasingly-wealthy middle class are failing to fulfill us, failing to bring happiness, and failing to quell existential anxiety, with the result that we continuously increase our efforts to obtain more. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say, in a way, we are a magical society. Everyone, to conventional ways of thinking, is supposed to sacrifice his highest nature (the spiritual soul) for earthly gain. It's taken for granted, so much so that no one even thinks of it or notices the careermen and women drowning their souls in long bouts of rush hour traffic and fifty hour work weeks. They're not explicit Faustians, but the results tend to be the same. They attach so much importance to their money and toys, that I suspect, like Marlowe's Faustus, they couldn't bring themselves to abandon them even if the devil came and explicitly demanded their souls.
Feast Day of St. Boniface today. Apostle to Germany. Also patron saint of beer, which I guess makes sense.
