by Arcturus Descending » Tue Oct 09, 2018 3:59 pm
barbarianhorde wrote:Arcturus Descending wrote:Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.
- Epicurus

Yo Epi, but was it wrong to hope for it in the first place?? Maybe you wouldn't have had it if you dint desire it dude.
*You Epi* lol. You made a good point here I think. Perhaps Epicurus was speaking more about hedonism here ~ too much desiring, too much over-the-top hoping. When we focus too much on what we do not have, we lose focus and the truth of what we do already have.
I do not think that hoping for something is necessarily wrong unless we are wasting time and energy on something which we, on some level, know that we can never have but we choose to ignore the truth of it.
But I do intuit that there is such a thing as too much hope and not enough *going after*...
I think that Epi was basically talking about balance here...the epicurean as opposed to the hedonist...the fine balance of *enjoying* perhaps something *lesser* but good now as opposed to craving *it all* and not appreciating THIS moment.
“How can a bird that is born for joy
Sit in a cage and sing?”
― William Blake
“Little Fly
Thy summers play,
My thoughtless hand
Has brush'd away.
Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?
For I dance
And drink & sing:
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.
If thought is life
And strength & breath:
And the want
Of thought is death;
Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live,
Or if I die”
― William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience
“No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.”
― William Blake