I am reading Start Finishing by Charlie Gilkey, and I have underlined most of the book. I am particularly struck by one line he said that I rewrote with conviction that it applies to being a person. We are many things at a time consistently.

Charlie says:

I´m well aware that I´ve juxtaposed the reality that we´re naturally cooperative creatures and have a lot of head trask that keeps us from collaborating. There´s no logical tension there, but it´s an experimental tension that plays out every day.

I think we could describe a lot of what is hard for us as “experimental tension”. The difference between what we think and what is. The difference between what we desire and what we get. The difference between our expectations of the world and others and what they really are.

Charlie cuts straight through to the way we delude ourselves in identifying what is important to us.

…it’s easy to see how much people’s suffering comes from being attached to the world matching their intention. The world has an annoying way of not doing what we want it to, but as the thirteenth century Persian poet Rumi said, “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise so I am changing myself.”