| Lik-See's website |
| Links: (websites I enjoy, nothing really to do with the monthly topics) http://www.howstuffworks.com/ This is an interesting website where you can have fun educating yourself�good website too if you have absolutely nothing to do but want to learn something useful. http://www.bahiker.com/ Excellent website about where to hike around the San Francisco Bay Area. Great description of trails and plenty of pictures. http://www.terragalleria.com This is an excellent website which has beautiful pictures of different places in the world. http://news.bbc.co.uk/ Good website to news events in different parts of the world. |
| If you have any comments, suggestions, thoughts, etc. about this website, please email me at [email protected] Thank you! |
| WHY THIS WEBSITE EXISTS: To share and stimulate thought and insight on life issues we can relate to. |
| Quotes: The tragedy of life is not so much what men suffer, but rather what they miss. -- Thomas Carlyle Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise. -- George Orwell At the bottom of the heart of every human being, from earliest infancy until the tomb, there is something that goes on indomitably expecting, in the teeth of all experience of crimes committed, suffered, and witnessed, that good and not evil will be done. -- Simone Weil The purpose of quotes on this website is to provoke thought and may or may not be an endorsement of the person being quoted and his or her beliefs. |
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| Question of the month: What is the most common way that you cope with pain and suffering? a) you get angry and frustrated and feel victimized, questioning what you did to deserve such a hardship. b) you try to run away from it by diverting your attention to other things or pursuits in your life. c) you try to emotionally detach yourself from it by resigning yourself to think that there's nothing you can do about it except get through it as best as possible. d) you try to pacify your sorrow by focusing your attention on other areas of your life; you try to avoid talking or dealing with it as much as possible. e) you try to be optimistic, holding onto a belief or faith that there's reason and meaning beyond the pain and suffering itself, e.g., its ability to make you a stronger person. f) you become apathetic and demoralized about living life, feeling things will just go wrong anyway. g) other ways of coping |
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| Some more thoughts and reflections: -I think there's something in us that wants to do as much as possible to run away from pain and suffering - particularly the sort that directly affects us. I wonder if life is so painful and hard for some people, that the purpose of their life becomes getting by and using whatever they can to pacify themselves from the pain they don't want to feel, whether it's drowning themselves in some addictive habit (e.g., substance abuse, T.V.) or avoiding interaction with others. -It seems a (universally?) common response to pain and suffering is to ask why it happens. Is that question based on a belief that there should a reason and purpose behind the pain and suffering beyond just being an end in itself? Maybe it's too much of a dead-end feeling for people if they're not left with some meaning to hold onto, possibly that there's some good to be gained from the hardship... |
| LSC's BASEMENT: Besides putting my favorites here, I'll start putting some quotes once in a while that I come up with. I call these quotes "likseeisms". Here's one: A way to define waste is to know so much and love so little. ANTI-PET PEEVES: For a growing list of things I really like, click here. ARCHIVES: for website topics from previous months, click here. General Note: just to let you know, I update this website with a new topic around the beginning of each month. |
| Thank you for checking out my website this month. The topic for September is coping with pain and suffering. Lik-See, 09-11-04 I was thinking about this topic, in light of all the messed-up and horrific news I hear, whether it's from a personal, local or global standpoint. I was also motivated to share on this topic when I think about how we cope with pain and suffering, in relation to expectations we have in life, particularly going from childhood to adulthood. I remember as a child that so much of life seemed to be about having fun - from watching Saturday morning cartoons for 4 straight hours to getting the latest G.I. Joe Figure at Toys-R-Us. It was about trying to discover and learn and enjoy things around you, as you get educated toward a career from kindergarten to college. Through these experiences, expectations for good and even better things develop, change and grow as you move from one stage of life to the other...and even sometimes you do experience some of your expectations being met. But eventually all of us experience sorrow and loss from painful situations - even things you never expect could happen to you. You may remember those experiences very well, maybe really early in your life, when things go drastically worse that you could have imagined - death of a close relative or friend, parents getting a divorce after endless shouting matches, tragic news affecting your community, acute or chronic condition that affects your health, or just the painful realization that so much of life doesn't go the way that you want - but often goes in the opposite direction beyond your control. What do you do then? |
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