“We may like to think ourselves as civilized, but that civilization is in a large part bestowed by material wealth. Without this stuff, we would quickly be confronted by the same basic struggle that animals are faced with.”

“Wrapping a present with paper gives it a crispness and pristineness that emphasize the newness and value of the present inside. …The unwrapping of a present is akin to the act of birth; a new life for the object begins.”

“People love books, more perhaps than they love the written word. They use them as a way to define who they are and to provide physical evidence of their values.”

“Silica aerogel, the lightest solid in the world, which is 99.8 percent air.”

“Aerogel were created out of pure curiosity, ingenuity and wonder.”

“…materials are a reflection of who we are, a multi-scale expression of our human needs and desires.”

www.markmiodownik.net

Hear The Wind Sing 風の歌を聴け (1979)

“Expression and communication are essential; without these, civilization ends.”

“Everyone who has something is afraid of losing it, and people with nothing are worried they’ll forever have nothing. Everyone is the same.”

Pinball 1973年のピンボール (1973)

“So many dreams, so many disappointments, so many promises. And in the end, they all just vanish.”

“Each of us had, to a greater or lesser degree, resolved to live according to his or her own system. If another person’s way of thinking was too different from mine, it made me mad; too close, and I got sad.”

www.harukimurakami.com
The 10 Best Murakami Books – Publishers Weekly, Aug 8, 2014

“…I believe that what’s most important is what cannot be measured. I’m not denying your way of thinking, but the greater part of people’s lives consist of things that are unmeasurable, and trying to change all these to something measurable is realistically impossible.”

“Maybe they think about things a little too seriously. Perhaps there’s some pain they’re carrying around inside. They’re not good at making their feelings known to others and are somewhat troubled. They can’t find a suitable means to express themselves, and bounce back and forth between feelings of pride and inadequacy. That might very well be me. It might be you.”

I felt how important the simplest things were, like feeling proud, finding something funny, stretching yourself, retreating into yourself.

“I think we regular people may have forgotten a basic truth—we don’t really have the right to judge anyone else.”

”Happiness is as fragile and fleeting as a bubble of soap.”

Questions and answers can only be exchanged between things in the same category. Spirit and body can never engage in dialogue.

“It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.”

“Don’t give in to your fears. If you do, you won’t be able to talk to your heart.”

There’s a huge seal called ‘impossibility’ pasted all over this world. And don’t ever forget that we’re the only ones who can tear it off once and for all.

永遠的生命…… 現在想要長命百歲還有什麼困難?
問題是，得到了永遠的生命之後…… 你還會知道自己為什麼而活嗎？

(taken from Amazon.com)

1. Rejection – The emotional cuts and scrapes of daily life
   Description:
   Rejections can inflict four distinct emotional wounds, each of which might require some from of emotional first aid: lingering visceral pain, anger and aggressive urges, harm to self-esteem, and damage to feeling that we belong. (p. 17)
   Treatments:
   • Argue with self-criticism
   • Revive your self-worth
   • Replenish feelings of social connection
   • Desensitize yourself
2. Loneliness – Relationship muscle weakens
   Description:
   Loneliness makes us constantly on guard, prepared for the disappointment and rejection we are sure will come. As a result, we miss opportunities to make social connections and behave in ways that push others away. (p. 53)
   Treatments:
   • Remove your negatively tinted glasses
   • Identify your self-defeating behaviors
   • Take on the other person’s perspective
   • Deepen your emotional bonds
   • Create opportunities for social connection
   • Adopt a best friend
3. Loss and Trauma – Walking on broken bones
   Description:
   Loss and trauma create four psychological wounds. They cause overwhelming emotional pain, they undermine our basic sense of identity and the roles we play in life, they destabilize our belief systems and our understanding of the world, and they challenge our ability to remain present and engaged in our most important relationships. (p. 85)
   Treatments:
   • Soothe your emotional pain your way
   • Recover lost aspects of your self
   • Find meaning in tragedy
4. Guilt – The poison in our system
   Description:
   Guilt usually serves an important function by alerting us to when we might have harmed another person or when any actions we’re considering might do so. However, if our offense is serious or if we’ve already made significant efforts to apologize to a person we harmed or atone for our actions in other ways and our guilt remains excessive, or if we suffer from substantial survivor guilt, or separation and disloyalty guilt, emotional first aid is indeed necessary. (p. 119)
   Treatments:
   • Learn the recipe for an effective apology
   • Forgive yourself
   • Reengage in life
5. Rumination – Picking at emotional scabs
   Description:
   In order to break the self-reinforcing nature of ruminative thoughts and allow our wounds to heal, we must interrupt the cycle of rumination once it gets triggered, and we should weaken the urge to ruminate at the source by diminishing the intensity of the feelings that fuel it. We must also make efforts to monitor our relationships and to ease the emotional burden we might be placing on loved ones. (p. 154)
   Treatments:
   • Change your perspective
   • Reframe the anger
   • Go easy on your friends
6. Failure – Emotional chest colds become psychological pneumonias
   Description:
   When we fail repeatedly or when we respond to failures in ways that set back our confidence, our self-esteem, and our chances of future success, we run the risk of allowing our emotional chest cold to turn into psychological pneumonia. Because much of the anxiety associated with failures can build upon itself, it is best to be prudent and apply psychological first aid treatment as soon as possible after meaningful or bothersome failures occur. (p. 189)
   Treatments:
   • Get support and get real
   • Focus on factors in your control
   • Take responsibility and own the fear
   • Distract yourself from performance pressure distractions
7. Low Self-Esteem – Weak emotional immune systems
   Description:
   Having low self-esteem weakens our emotional immune systems and inflicts three kinds of psychological wounds: it makes us more vulnerable to psychological injuries, it makes us dismissive of positive feedback and resistant to emotional nutrients, and it makes us feel unassertive and disempowered. (p. 232)
   Treatments:
   • Adopt self-compassion and silence the critical voices in your head
   • Identify your strengths and affirm them
   • Increase your tolerance for compliments
   • Increase your personal empowerment
   • Improve your self-control

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“The most frequent reasons we get turned down as romantic prospects (or as job applicants) are because of a lack of general chemistry, because we don’t match the person’s or company’s specific needs at that time, or because we don’t fit the narrow definition of who they’re looking for—not because of any critical missteps we might have made nor because we have any fatal character flaws.”

― Guy Winch, Emotional First Aid: Practical Strategies for Treating Failure, Rejection, Guilt, and Other Everyday Psychological Injuries

生物毀滅後又出現，跟著演化、繁盛，以致滅絕…… 這樣的戲碼已在火鳥的眼前上演過無數次…… 不管重演幾次，人類卻總是重蹈覆轍。人類不斷使文明進步，結果卻還是自取滅亡。「可是，下次會更好。」火鳥這麼想著，「我相信下次會更好。」「他們終會懂得正確使用生命吧……」

Don’t rainy days make you remember your childhood?