the euphoria of pessimism

like this – “not being able to wait” itself cannot wait. How, then, should we understand an instantaneous, on-demand, twenty-first-century, “global” culture such as ours, constituted almost exclusively by waiting? Waiting for the subway, waiting for lunch, waiting for a friend, waiting at the airport, waiting to be called, waiting to not hurt,

“…the stammerings of an old man who does not seem to have achieved a full psychic victory over an awkward adolescence…”

Morbidity. I used to be afraid of exercising. That was before I was dealing with these health problems. Now I’m afraid of not exercising. The fear is the same.

“What prevents a work from being completed becomes the work itself.”

Askesis. A paraphrase of Schopenhauer: what death is for the organism, sleep is for the individual. Contrary to what many may think, pessimists sleep not because they are depressed, but because for them sleep is a form of training.

For optimists, the most perplexing question is how one becomes a pessimist – if one is not born one.

Nietzsche once described the pessimist as a clever person who has ruined their stomach so as to complain about the food,

If enthusiasm is the weakness of pessimists, then procrastination is the weakness of optimists. Stanisław Lec: “Optimists and pessimists differ only on the date of the end of the world.”

“What can be usefully postponed can be even more usefully abandoned” (Epictetus).