I have been having a good time at Ralph's doing L11 and, more recently, L10.

When I write a success story, I have previously gone, "Wow" etc.  Well this will be different.  Here is a definition of misery for you.  It is actually a definition of happiness that I saw recently by another philosopher called Betrand Russell.  But, it suits me to turn it on its head (the lower tone often impinges better):

Miserable is the personality that is divided against itself and/or pitted against the world.  Such a personality is inevitably withdrawn from the world, unable to fully participate in life and troubled by thoughts of death because he or she sees themself separate from the world and the future.

The road out of this is the path of personal integrity.

The path of personal integrity is strange.  It goes two ways. The wrong way goes to oblivion.  The right way, when fully and earnestly followed, also leads, indeed must lead, can only lead one to the gates of hell.  The difference is that clean hands provide one with a "visitor's pass for an hour". And you will find the clinker that passes for souls.  Those who have played the game of life as half a person with a purpose that was ill thought, inevitably lost and, who then in error of explanation, have fought and raged until it is only themselves that are listening still.  If indeed they even talk to themselves anymore, such is the depths of their misery.

If that were truly an end of it, then nothing would be amiss. But, perhaps the one true thing about 'forever', is that a being never gives up.  Not completely.  Their one last hold on sanity is the belief that they were right all along.  And so the problem just gets worse and worse and the passage of the millenia simply accumulates more and more failures and mass.

And among the inmates you may find a few old friends.  You
may even be presented with something that looks like a
mirror, except that it isn't a mirror.

The beauty of it is that a relatively few well chosen
questions can bring the graveyard of the long gone back to life.

If you are not ready for an L, then the FPRD is a good substitute for many and the HRD is suitable for those at the beginning of the Bridge.  I've enjoyed them all.

Nick





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