Day 0315

Drove my sister to Cambridge, which was a big deal for me. A small victory.

Read Man's Search For Meaning, which was far less gruelling than I feared, despite giving me a glimpse into the horrors of Auschwitz. The message is that when you can't change your circumstances you can at least control your reaction to them. Life demands meaning from you, not the other way around. Meaning can be found in every moment, even in suffering.

This may be a highly adaptive strategy, and a recipe for wellbeing and resilience, but it is not thereby true. But given its effectiveness it might be best to swallow it whole and live for a greater meaning as the alternative is the existential vacuum.

Don't aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run—in the long-run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it
Viktor E. Frankl -Man's Search for Meaning

Enjoying doing my nightly little selfies, some of which show an improvement and are beginning to be recognisably me. Wondered about computational art and the minimum possible amount of information needed to create a portrait that is reliably identifiable. Just a few pixels merely hinting at key features will be sufficient.