Journal // 25th June 2024

Jun 25

On this day I…

I have to admit, I have nothing to write about. Usually, I’ll come across a quote that will spark something or have something on my mind that I can write about, but today I have nothing.

I mean, I have all day, it’s 07:34 and I won’t publish this blog until 22:30, so I have time.

frankly the only thing on my mind this morning wasn’t a something at all, but a someone. A young woman I met many years ago. I would see her regularly. In that, we were both in the same place at the same time. I had feelings for her, but they seemed to diminish with time, and I stopped being in that place and she moved away.

Though, today, there she is, Intruding on my thoughts, those old romantic feelings resurfacing. Who is he that she can do this? We haven’t spoken face-to-face in over a year.

The weird thing is, she isn’t my type.

First, she’s too young, early 20’s. She’s into spirituality and crystals and Disney music. She is, by definition, the polar opposite of my type. She goes out of her way to celebrate You even if you don’t want her to.

Maybe that’s what attracts me to her, the fact that she isn’t what I normally look for. She’s different. Not my normal.

Okay, maybe I do have something to talk about.

“I have no right to do myself an injury. have I ever injured anyone else if I could avoid it?“

Marcus Aurelius - Meditations 8:42.

I look in my leather-bound copy of Meditations (Thank you Ryan Holiday) and that is the first thing I see. It makes sense. I have no intention of pursuing anything beyond my own thoughts with this woman. Sure, okay she invaded my mind but that is all.

If I would try my best to avoid hurting someone, why on earth would I actively injure myself, even if it’s only an image in my mind?

In his thirteenth letter, 'On groundless fears', Seneca wrote: 'There are more things … likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.

We can create more destruction in our minds than we could do to ourselves in reality. Because we can’t escape the mind, it’s always right there.

This is why the best horror movies never show you the villain. What you create in your head is always worse than anything the studio can conjure up.

This blog provides a fairly decent therapist. By writing all this down, and getting it off my chest, I can ‘exercise the daemon’. Clearing up that space in my brain for more useful processes.

Now, go away, I need to find a subject to write about for my Friday post.