For most people, self-awareness and self-pity blossom simultaneously in early adolescence. It's about that time that we start viewing the world as something other than a whoop-de-doo playground, we start to experience personally how threatening it can be, how cruel and unjust. At the very moment when we become, for the first time, both introspective and socially conscientious, we receive the bad news that the world, by and large, doesn't give a rat's ass. Even an old tomato like me can recall how painful, scary, and disillusioning that realization was.
So, there's a tendency, then, to slip into rage and self-pity, which if indulged, can fester into bouts of depression. Now, unless someone stronger and wiser—a friend, a parent, a novelist, filmmaker, teacher, or musician—can josh us out of it, can elevate us and show us how petty and pompous and monumentally useless it is to take ourselves so seriously, then depression can become a habit, which, in tern, can produce a neurological imprint.
Are you with me? Gradually, our brain chemistry becomes conditioned to react to negative stimuli in a particular, predictable way. Once depression has become electrochemically integrated, it can be extremely difficult to philosophically or psychologically override it; by then it's playing by physical rules, a whole different ball game.
Preventive medicine, boy. Self-esteem is for sissies. That way lies grace—and maybe even glory. Have you risked disapproval? Have you ever risked economic security? Have you ever risked a belief? I see nothing particularly courageous about risking one's life. So you lose it, you go to your hero's heaven and everything is milk and honey 'til the end of time. You get your reward and suffer no earthly consequences. That's not courage. Real courage is risking something that might force you to rethink your thoughts and suffer change and stretch consciousness.
You may have called in sick a few times yourself. But have you ever thought about calling in well? It'd go like this: You'd get the boss on the line and say, "Listen, I've been sick ever since I started working here, but today I'm well and I won't be in anymore. All Quotes Add A Quote. Books by Tom Robbins.
Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Preview — Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins. Welcome back. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. Share this quote:. Like Quote. Recommend to friends. To see what your friends thought of this quote, please sign up! Shae 85 books view quotes.
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Have you risked disapproval? Have you ever risked economic security? Have you ever risked a belief? You get your reward and suffer no earthly consequences.
Real courage is risking something that might force you to rethink your thoughts and suffer change and stretch consciousness. Smoking cigarettes is as intimate as we can become with fire without immediate excruciation. Every smoker is an embodiment of Prometheus, stealing fire from the gods and bringing it on back home. We smoke to capture the power of the sun, to pacify Hell, to identify with the primordial spark, to feed on them arrow of the volcano.
When we smoke, we are performing a version of the fire dance, a ritual as ancient as lightning. Euphoria is not knowing who one is and not caring. Ecstasy is knowing exactly who one is — and still not caring. Life is messy. Give me life, the more complicated the better. You know how to live in it. The world, the universe, life, reality.
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