Pessimism, when countered by optimistic fantasy, can decay into hopeless avoidance. Realism, on the other hand, has the potential of sending ocean-going passenger vessels to the bottom of the sea. Optimism paints lifelike portraits that are a little too perfect; AI images that lack moles and chipped teeth and about 45 pounds of unnecessary and undesirable weight.
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I have proven the impossible. I have seen the invisible. I have remembered a future that has yet to take place. I have foreseen a history, watching it take form from the immeasurably distant future. I have arisen, alive, from the impenetrable dungeon of death. I have disobeyed the laws of Nature, while casting the ashes of certainty into a sea of doubt. I have determined that all things are impossible, though accomplishments cannot be unmade. I have exposed an obvious secret—that time is forever hidden behind the face of a clock, where its fingers scratch at evidence that time is a fantasy. I have uncovered felonies hatched from unfertilized eggs. I have measured the strength of absolute weakness and the weakness at the peak of strength. I have imagined the unimaginable and claimed to have done the undoable. I have listened to sounds that cannot be heard and parroted noises that cannot be mimicked. I have escaped from inescapable conclusions and have been bound forever in a prison cell too large to hold me.
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Late last night, not long after mi novia got in bed, my phone’s “Hello?” alert (notifying me that I have received a text message) interrupted my effort to sleep. Because such late night alerts could be important, I looked at my phone. It was just a notification that a Freezing Fog Advisory had been issued. The advisory expired just a few minutes ago. As I glimpse outside, I see fog filling the woods. it is especially dense near the top of the trees, where I think I see a thin film of an icy coating on the pine needles. The garage roof, too, is white with frost. This paragraph would have been far more interesting if the advisory had alerted me to an impending invasion by a gang of weapons-toting water fowl that were suspected of carrying rabies in knapsacks on their backs.
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Water in a plastic cup on my desk is the only item in my study responding to vibrations I cannot feel. Nothing else in my study displays any movement; not even an echo of a sound that might have been made hours ago. Light reflecting from the water reveals miniscule waves on its surface; tiny ripples that would be invisible if the ceiling light above was moved by a hair’s width. My imagination offers dozens of explanations: vibrations from an earthquake thousands of miles distant, transmitting microscopic movements of the Earth’s crust directly to the surface of my cup of water; nearly undetectable sounds caused by a jet airplane’s engines, thousands of feet in the air above me; a heavy truck traveling over a nearby road, sending tremors through the asphalt and underlayment to and through the foundation of my house; the sliver quivering or bouncing of my leg on the floor below my desk, broadcast through the furniture; my breathing, sending air molecules slamming into one another, causing the commotion to reach the water’s surface; a tiny, almost invisible, insect moving its legs just enough to disturb the water, and many, many more. The core cause for the vibrations probably does not matter. But it could. Unless the vibrations grow in intensity, though, my attention will no doubt be drawn elsewhere, to yet another diversion…another distraction that makes little difference in the way I experience the world around me. That, of course, raises a question: how intrusive must a distraction be to capture enough of one’s attention to cause that attention to deviate from the thoughts or things that drew one’s attention previously? That question, if applied to every instance in which one’s attention left its earlier path, could rob a person of actionable focus. It could cause madness; a sort of mental explosion that might leave him incapable of other, more rational, though. Is this something we should carefully watch for? Should we ask friends and family to be on the lookout for evidence of psychological eruptions? If so, what might we advise them to do if they found such evidence?
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