War and Peace Pt. 1
June 11th, 2026
I am reading War and Peace, and I have to say I have a strong understanding of why this is one of the greatest books of all time.
As of great books of all time, they're timeless. And it's only in my mid-twenties, my raven years of my adolescence, do I really start to understand why timeless books are so great. Just as I felt when reading In Search of Lost Time, I felt old memories of my life rush back as the vivid scenes of these classic books describe seemingly unrelated junctures of high-class Russian society colliding with one another.
In the ballroom or the soiree or the visits to distant family members, or the begging for money of extended families by those downtrodden by life (Anna) I feel as if memories if gatherings at my grandfather's house as siblings talk amongst one another, or the vibrant memory of all my father's siblings (nine of them) sat seated in a circle discussing who would be bequeathed and how the inheritance would be distributed. These dramatic re-enactments in the novel only seem to seize my memories and rush them up to the surface.
My grandmother was dying on her deathbed, and all my father's siblings knew it. With grim and grave faces, one of the older brothers stood and gathered his siblings into a room. He held a serious tone, one that was steady and calm and authoritative, though with a greyness with which you could tell was still masking the fact his mother was on her deathbed. Sad moments like this shared by many people.
On a lighter note, how many times I've felt like Pierre at parties! Oh how I've seen his character too many times too, and the bumbling awkwardness, and how I've seen the kissing cousins time and time again as the Rostov children enter the drawing room. How I remember how a dashing young man has such a brilliant career ahead of him, or the oh so perfect livelihood of a Prince Andrei seems to be nothing of the glory of what he wants.
These timeless books, I used to love them because of how extravagent a world they paint, but now, oh dear, I love them for how vivid of a memory they seem to force me to recollect of my life. They are my window into a narrative of my life.
Critical, original thought
I have been as of late, too eager to validate my thoughts against other people. When's the last time I had a true original thought, untainted by other people's opinions?
I think with my rise in status, I've been more and more fearful of independent thinking. What would they think, perhaps, if what I thought was so different? We all really do fall into society's clutches as we age in and out.
It's a travesty in a way, truly. But I do not know what of it.
Maybe it's not that I don't know the answers to my life, but I am afraid of being wrong. I don't have the courage to accept what I really think.
That I think, you really shouldn't be messing with other people's girlfriends, or that you shouldn't be hitting out or practicing polygamy when there's people who care for you deeply right in front of you. That, I think you should take interest in other people's lives, or not really, or really, just keep it a relaxing time. Just relax. It's a good time after all, and we're here for a long time. It's better to have that feeling of acceptance for who you are than to try and force yourself to be "some great man."
I don't think we're independent blobs, I think we're entities in networks. We're all interconnected in our web of relations, and our position and power are dictated by the neurons of which we are connected to, whether they are neurons of culture or neurons of people.
It's not that some people are smarter, it's that they're embedded in a language that actively encourages deeper introspection and thought and more care—they inherited a culture of a lack of carelessness and more thought put into it. It's simply that, and well we do want to move ourselves out of this web towards certain directions, but what of it?
Accept all the feelings and tentacles of yourself, of all the branching opinions and directions. I do want to make money, while at the same time I do want to be lazy. But not too lazy, where I feel like my belly is too full and feel a bit sick to just digest it all. I want friends, but not friends to the extent I have to manage them, and I like good company, but not company in which I have to feel like I am driving the conversation. But I want the responsibility of driving the conversation, because being a good spokesman makes me feel good about myself and my abilities. But at the same time it feels like a lot of work. Oh, I want to be smart, but not smart enough where I drive people away!
I want a lot of things, and I want to not want a lot of things. It's true. I am not going to sugarcoat it. I am a greedy, lustful man for a prestine silver of character, and while it seems I may be bronze in spirit, I feel one day it may be achievable to be golden. I want to not want things, I want to be enlightened, I want to find peace, and I want to find my happiness.
I want to solve all my problems, and I want to have problems at the same time. I want responsibility, and I don't want responsibility. I want to do great things, and I do not want to do great things. I want to live a quiet life, and I want attention towards my life. I want to standout, yet not too much to the point I am bombarded with attention.
I want a lot of things. I feel a lot of things. And I don't want to want a lot of things, and I don't want to feel a lot of things.
I got offered to join a startup today. I am not sure if I want to take it—it feels too good to be true, but they want the young men. They want the young, hard-working men to join and start moving the needle. And I don't want that. I like my work-life balance, but at the same time I want to make movement and do things.
I want to draw. I don't want to draw. I don't want to disappoint myself, and I do want to explore what I can create. It's all that. I can see it. It's really, just, all that.
There's a fear, that if I just imagine a scenery, that I'll describe it very well, but it'd be scary as to what I'd describe. It'd be scary.
I accept all that I am with open arms. I accept all the contradictions and the voices that disagree. For even if the voices and opinions disagree, a world is a single world. It's all one, after all. One network. One movement. One world. One reality.
We are all one with reality. I truly, believe that. If you look at the night sky, and ponder about the truth of the world, that's what we are.
And no, I'm not just lying to you to be some pseudo-enlightened freak. I am telling you plainly. That you look into the lives of every single human being, every surface, every building, every tree, every sunrise. Yes, all these things happening at this very moment to make this world, is that not the magic of one? The consciousness, the perspective, the seeing, the mystery of it all, it's that, we are all sharing this. We are truly just one at this very moment. You look out into the sea of stars, and that's what we truly are.
Something someone actually doesn't believe, that maybe, I am the only one that holds this conviction
I think that when it comes to living your life, you should live your life like a book. Really. Pick a narrative, and live it out as strongly as you can. Pick an identity, instead of letting one be handed to you, but at the same time realize that it's probably handed to you. And that any narrative you pick probably was influenced by the world around you, so this binary classification of extrinsic vs. intrinsic beliefs don't really exist, and most of the words which we use to categorize realities and abstractions of said reality are probably too constricting to ever be completely true, and that the only truth is in front of you in the present situation. But to exist in this reality you still have to pick the abstractions you listen to and pretend like you didn't just hear the music play a minor chord. That, you really don't have much control over your life if at all, but you have to cover your ears and pretend like you do have that control over your life, it's a scary thing really. That, you have to listen to the myth and the fable and take that leap of faith anyway, and yet, you've got to acknowledge the truth of influence and how we really are networked amongst each other, yet if you want any real shot believe that we have free will, wholeheartedly, yet acknowleging the paradoxes that form itself of the very abstractions that we trap ourselves in. We really, really, do not need to develop more abstractions to make sense of it. And logic is complete bullshit, I know it's just culture we invented to help convince one another.
We still have paradox after paradox, and like those Zen koans I don't think there's a good answer. There's just abstractions upon abstractions, and while it may feel useless to keep engaging in the realm of language, we really have to to interact with the network of one another—now we don't need language to interact in the language of nature, we just need to experience it in the language of the senses, but all of our truths are through mediums of which are abstractions and simplifications of something we can't even fathom to imagine and understand. It's just that it feels like life's just out of control and reach, and we're just goaded time and time again to believe in the mystery and not believe in the mystery.
I think that you have to believe in God and not believe in God at the same time. It's not even something in the middle, not some compromise, not some faceted double-wave state, it's moreso, it's moreso something like that it's both, neither, and partway, all at the same time. It's a different abstractive state that's barely even comprehensible.
See that it's tangled. That it's messy, and that it's not something that resolves. It's not something the unresolves either, if you get what I'm saying. Life is just a tangled network, and I don't think it'll stop moving. It's moving, it's tangled, it's messy, and that it keeps spiraling. One moment you think you've grasped the truth, only to open your hand to a balled up wad of string.