I heard a speech about a man named Colin Wilson - there was an article about him in the New York Times - he is a British philosopher who at the age of 16 decided he would be the next Albert Einstein. He was in college, and his parents ran out of money so he had to quit. This was very traumatic for him - he was just devastated - and so he decided he would kill himself with hydrocyonic acid. He then had two powerful insights. The first insight was that there were two people inside of him - one person was a self-pitying idiot - the other person was the real Colin Wilson. Then he had another powerful insight - the self pitying idiot was about to kill the real Colin Wilson.
I have been thinking about this all week - the self-pitying idiot inside us that tells me/us that, "You are not good enough. You are worthless. You mean nothing." That "It", that self-pitying idiot is that voice inside us trying to destroy us. Our imperfection. I have been catching myself this week when that idiot, that "It" has been trying to minimize me in all sorts of areas of my life. I keep having to restore my integrity.
Here is the link to the article about him - he operated on the belief that pessimism was at the root of all ills, an interesting viewpoint and the article touches on it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/17/books/17wils.html?pagewanted=all
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