This quote

[Arcadia]

I recently read a book called "Now Wait For Last Year" by Philip K Dick. Most of the book is about a suicidal man who is doctor to the leader of the planet, during an interstellar war. (The leader is also suicidal). The doctor also has a wife who has become psychotic due to drug use. At the end of the book, having seen a variety of alternate futures concerning his life and faced with the option of taking care of his wife for the rest of her life (having eschewed the idea of suicide himself), he has a conversation with an automatic taxi over whether or not he should divorce his wife.
The cab replies that he would stay with her, because:

"life is composed of reality configurations so constituted. To abandon her would be to say, I can't endure reality as such. I have to have uniquely special easier conditions"

This quote really helped me cos it made me feel like I have to take responsibility and motivate myself. If I have to use tools to be able to cope with life (and I DONT mean SI, i mean ad's, herbal medecine and alchohol) then thats fine. And perhaps people who can live without any crutches, or don't have any problems, are way stronger than me, or luckier. Or perhaps they just don't live life hard enough, well enough to feel the need for relief from it occasionally.

I'm sorry if this is a little garbled, but the quote had a massive and incomprehensible effect on me.

[Tamrick]

I can't endure reality as such. I have to have uniquely special easier conditions

I guess in part this is what coping is all about - trying to make the reality we battle with easier, but at the same time not escaping reality, but facing it.

I don't believe anyone sails through life even if it may appera like that sometimes. Sometimes coping is about believeing that we are just normal people and that we are living in the world and that we can cope.

[limestone]

I guess in part this is what coping is all about - trying to make the reality we battle with easier, but at the same time not escaping reality, but facing it....Sometimes coping is about believeing that we are just normal people and that we are living in the world and that we can cope.

^^ I really liked what you said here Tamrick especially about not escaping reality.

[Arcadia]

That's exactly what the quote was about and actually, what teh book was about. He wants to kill himself because he's got himself into a bad situation and can't motivate himself to change that bad situation, or to cope with it. Another big deal for this doctor is discovering that the leader of his planet isn't a addled, ill fool, but a powerful man who loves his people and will do anything he has to to protect them, even pushing himself over the brink on a daily basis - it teaches him that sometimes you have to do what you don't want to do, becasue it might be the best thing for you. But he wants to escape. He plans suicide, then sees a little wire cart with a control centre attached. He knows that the cart was made and released ten years ago. It is intelligent and sentient, to a degree, and has nothing, and has no hope of ever having anything, but persists. Soon after, he chooses to face reality.

I've been doing that a lot lately; completing things I've been putting off, telling my parents about my depression, facing that breaking up with my bf (which I've been regretting) was the best thing I could have possibly done, that taking drugs and drinking loads aren't gonna make me feel better in the long run, that I need to get a job if possible to get a few hundred behind me before I go to uni, that I need to prepare for uni, that I need to indulge my hobbies, interests and passions to keep alive.

It feels wonderful, and this book is my inspiration.

[Proximity]

thanks.

PKD is pretty cool, and I'm gald you found something that inspired you and fit so perfectly.

prox.
[sour?]

[limestone]

...it teaches him that sometimes you have to do what you don't want to do, becasue it might be the best thing for you.

^^ I found this interesting as it fits my on-going dilema with education. I was seriously considering last night to pack in my degree and get a job but in the long run it might not be the best thing for me. But it doesn't make it any easier just *knowing* that, does it? Do you reckon that part of this not facing up to reality and not doing what we want to do is because we're scared of the thing we are doing even though at some level we still want to be doing it?

[Arcadia]

Most definitely. I also think most people have an inbuilt desire to cut corners. I went through the same dilemma as you are considering now when I was doing my foundation course. Most of my friends quit, it was incredibly difficult, I held most of my classmates in disguised contempt, and my tutors were melodramatic and a bit crazy - Whenever anyone was having trouble meeting a deadline, they would be really nice about it, but they'd be nightmarish as well cos they would blow everything out of proportion.

I would say stick with it, cos it feels satisfying now that i had the guts to see it through and I think a degree would be worth it in the end.