{"id":48175,"date":"2022-12-23T13:07:32","date_gmt":"2022-12-23T13:07:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/?p=48175"},"modified":"2022-12-23T13:07:36","modified_gmt":"2022-12-23T13:07:36","slug":"nothing-really-sticks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/2022\/12\/23\/nothing-really-sticks\/","title":{"rendered":"Nothing really sticks."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When you think you know and it turns out you don\u2019t.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you totally believe that you’ve seen the light, and then somehow, somewhere, you find another light, a different light.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you\u2019re convinced that you finally found the truth in or about something, and you rest in that for a while, only to get the sense that it might not be that simple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it turns out it wasn’t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When those things happen, you get less arrogant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or, well, you CAN get less arrogant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More real.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More stupid, in a way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How many times can you realize you\u2019ve been full of shit about something that made perfect sense until it stopped doing that, and not change, not open up?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seems that we need to defend what we believe in because finding out it\u2019s not the truth might shatter us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We need to fall in love with stuff and defend it, obviously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We need it and do it until we don\u2019t need it anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Until we start to see the repetitiveness of our stubbornness, our questionable certainty, and realize our lack of a truly open mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s like being a ball in a pinball machine, trying to stick to a specific side, to the flipper, or to the thing that automatically bounces you back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Doesn’t work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WILL not work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve been putting stuff in my head for as long as I can remember.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thousands and thousands of ideas and methods and ways to navigate life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quotes, mantras, affirmations, exercises.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sensible stuff, well-researched stuff, stuff that has been taught and practiced for ages, by sages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But no matter what I try to absorb, no matter how excited I am the first time I read about it or become aware of it, it just disappears, eventually, and I am left with\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Huh?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nothing really sticks or stays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nothing keeps making sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nothing becomes The Thing I Do And Sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It just vanishes, completely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m watching the grey Amsterdam sky from my window, while a few men are collecting the garbage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cars are forced to slow down in the afternoon traffic jam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s raining.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And after all these years of crazy hard work, I still don\u2019t know what \u2018it\u2019 really is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Photo by @matthewhenry, for Unsplash)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When you think you know and it turns out you don\u2019t. When you totally believe that you’ve seen the light, and then somehow, somewhere, you find another light, a different light. When you\u2019re convinced that you finally found the truth in or about something, and you rest in that for a while, only to get […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48176,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[97,117,100,105,116,113,107,103,112],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48175"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48175"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48177,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48175\/revisions\/48177"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}