{"id":989,"date":"2015-09-15T23:43:44","date_gmt":"2015-09-16T03:43:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nathanbrooksthompson.com\/?p=989"},"modified":"2021-05-18T22:44:53","modified_gmt":"2021-05-19T03:44:53","slug":"life-is-hard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nathanbrooksthompson.com\/life-is-hard\/","title":{"rendered":"Life Is Hard and Other Non Trivial Truisms"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

If life is what we make it, I’m going to need more duct tape.<\/p>Myself<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I love a well-written \u201cTop Things I\u2019ve Learned in X Years<\/em>\u201d article where some brave soul attempts to distill a lifetime of experience into a curated list of lessons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s a daunting task. Even if the author finds a way to synthesize and communicate a lifetime’s worth of experience in a succinct way, it\u2019s usually not enough to make a person stop and think, much less take action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s because single thoughts, no matter how profound, rarely impress us after the first encounter. What started as a deep insight eventually turned into a tired old truism. And truisms trick us into believing we still know things we\u2019ve forgotten. We hear a truism, something we used to know, and brush it off because it doesn\u2019t seem valuable anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the insight contained within a truism is still there. You just need to think a little deeper and work a little harder to cut away the meaninglessness that\u2019s grown on top of it, revealing the value underneath. Sometimes this extra effort, or reminder, can change everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sift through these truisms I\u2019ve collected below. If you give them enough thought, maybe you\u2019ll be reminded of something you <\/em>used to know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I claim no authorship of these truisms. They were truths long before I came along. Like anything worth a damn, I paraphrased, misquoted and outright stole them in my quest for rhyme and reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Few of My Favorite Non-Trivial Truisms<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For best results, read each item twice, and pause to add thinking to each.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. There are two reasons why people don\u2019t talk about things; either it doesn\u2019t mean anything to them, or it means everything.<\/li>
  2. The biggest obstacle to the next great thing is the last great thing.<\/li>
  3. You either get better or you get worse; you never stay the same.<\/li>
  4. Day by day nothing changes, but when you look back everything is different.<\/li>
  5. We don’t see the world as it is. We see the world as we are.<\/li>
  6. If you’re not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold.<\/li>
  7. So often travel elongates the conversation, not broadens it.<\/li>
  8. The people who are the hardest to love are the ones who need it the most.<\/li>
  9. Even disasters that strike those we are closest to only reach us filtered through our own colossal egotism.<\/li>
  10. Words are just symbols for the things they represent, often making the unreal seem real.<\/li>
  11. It is not the strongest that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.<\/li>
  12. Those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.<\/li>
  13. We find our strength deep in the valley of our fears.<\/li>
  14. Discipline is remembering what you want.<\/li>
  15. You are not your thoughts.<\/li><\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    If life is what we make it, I’m going to need more duct tape. Myself I love a well-written \u201cTop Things I\u2019ve Learned in X Years\u201d article where some brave soul attempts to distill a lifetime of experience into a curated list of lessons. It’s a daunting task. Even if the author finds a way… Continue reading Life Is Hard and Other Non Trivial Truisms<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1076,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nathanbrooksthompson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/989"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nathanbrooksthompson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nathanbrooksthompson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nathanbrooksthompson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nathanbrooksthompson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nathanbrooksthompson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nathanbrooksthompson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nathanbrooksthompson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nathanbrooksthompson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nathanbrooksthompson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}