Sterling Terrell

smart ideas from books (mostly)

Control The Outcome

Control The Outcome

Great reminder today from Todd Stoddart’s The Blank Page – as I struggle with trying to control the outcome of a few things myself.

Ugh, this stuff can be hard…

My thoughts today were filled with fear.

It became so clear to me why I have been so tense. How come my muscles are sore and my shoulders are always cramped? I’m tense and stressed about so many things I can’t control.

Today in the float tank, I suddenly remembered that sweet and enlightening lesson. The lesson I have to learn over and over again.

The only thing I will ever be able to control are my actions. That’s it. I can’t control the outcome. I can’t control what other people do.

I have no control. None.

So why not just accept the outcomes to be whatever they will be? What more can I do?

Anything more is simply wasted energy.

On A Speaker’s Feelings

On A Speaker’s Feelings

This is an interesting point about a speaker’s feelings.

You often project (want) the opposite of what you are feeling.

To say “that is peaceful” you show that you are not at peace.

It’s a statement of internal feeling that you put on something external.

But is that true? 🤔

Lewis has doubts. Why?

Because all value statements are not subjective and trivial!

Even if it were granted that such qualities as sublimity were simply and solely projected into things from our own emotions, yet the emotions which prompt the projection are the correlatives, and therefore almost the opposities, of the qualities projected. The feelings which make a man call an object sublime are not sublime feelings but feelings of veneration. If This is sublime is to be reduced at all to a statement about the speaker’s feelings, the proper translation would be I have humble feelings. If the view held by Gaius and Titius were consistently applied it would lead to obvious absurdities. It would force them to maintain that You are contemptible means I have contemptible feelings: in fact that Your feelings are contemptible means My feelings are contemptible.

-C.S. Lewis, The Abolition Of Man (Amazon)

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