haecceitagain, brother

That no matter how smart you thought you were, you are actually way less smart than that.

That sleeping can be a form of emotional escape and can with sustained effort be abused.

That purposeful sleep-deprivation can also be an abusable escape. That gambling can be an abusable escape, too, and work, shopping, and shoplifting, and sex, and abstention, and masturbation, and food, and exercise, and meditation/prayer, and sitting so close to Ennet House’s old D.E.C. TP cartridge-viewer that the screen fills your whole vision and the screen’s static charge tickles your nose like a linty mitten.

That lonliness is not a function of solitude.

That logical validity is not a guarantee of truth.

That sometimes human beings have to just sit in one place and, like, hurt. That you will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.

That most Substance-addicted people are also addicted to thinking, meaning that they have a compulsive and unhealthy relationship with their own thinking.

That 99% of compulsive thinkers’ thinking is about themselves; that 100% of the things they spend 99% of their time and energy imagining and trying to prepare for all the contingencies and consequences of are never good. That this connects interestingly with the early-sobriety urge to pray for the literal loss of one’s mind. In short that 99% of the head’s thinking activity consists of trying to scare the everliving shit out of itself.

That the people to be most frightened of are the people who are the most frightened. That it takes great personal courage to let yourself appear weak.

That no single, individual moment is in and of itself unendurable.

That having a lot of money does not immunize people from suffering or fear.

That everybody is identical in their unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everybody else. That this isn’t necessarily perverse.

That God might regard the issue of whether you believe there’s a God or not as fairly low on his/her/its list of things s/he/it’s interested in re you.