# Your wish for today



## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

What do you wish for today or for the future? What would you like to change or you ''ask God to grant you strength or a helping hand in some situation''?
Mine is to be better and stronger man when falling to fall like a cat ''on both four'' not clumsy like a dog and to have the will to stand up, pick up the pieces and go on enriched with that experience...Also to settle down in work and love affairs to find someone i could really trust and not end my soul ripped apart...Sometimes i feel i have waited too much and my efforts not being awarded...


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## Cheyenne (Aug 6, 2012)

Well sir, I can't help you with your soul-searching, but I can say that today what I wish for is a good night's sleep :tiphat: :lol:


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

The trouble with 'wishes' is that they are too big & idealistic. I remember a public speaker we once coached and she, an eighteen-year-old student, told the story of a British ambassador who when asked what he wanted for Christmas said, 'A little box of mints!' This was in reaction to the other ambassadors who'd all said big things like 'world peace'. Our student thought this was culpably unidealistic, but Taggart & I could see the Brit's point. You can reasonably expect to be given the mints, but who's going to find World Peace gift-wrapped in their stocking? :lol:

I'd like to be a brilliant violinist, but failing that, if I could only get the bowing right in my grade 3 piece, 'Putting on the Ritz'!


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

I have a rather urgent wish that I be given the mental fuel and whatever it takes to finish this random 10 page paper that is due tomorrow. And to comfortably enjoy reading this book while I procrastinate.


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

Before I lay me down to sleep...

"Dear God, grant me the strength to pick up my big lottery win."


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

Ingélou said:


> *The trouble with 'wishes' is that they are too big & idealistic.* I remember a public speaker we once coached and she, an eighteen-year-old student, told the story of a British ambassador who when asked what he wanted for Christmas said, 'A little box of mints!' This was in reaction to the other ambassadors who'd all said big things like 'world peace'. Our student thought this was culpably unidealistic, but Taggart & I could see the Brit's point. You can reasonably expect to be given the mints, but who's going to find World Peace gift-wrapped in their stocking? :lol:
> 
> I'd like to be a brilliant violinist, but failing that, if I could only get the bowing right in my grade 3 piece, 'Putting on the Ritz'!


Now you tell me!

Note to edit my previous post with, "Reasonable lottery win."


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## mstar (Aug 14, 2013)

Perhaps it is better not to wish.


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## Gilberto (Sep 12, 2013)

mstar said:


> Perhaps it is better not to wish.


unless it upon a star


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## mstar (Aug 14, 2013)

Gilberto said:


> unless it upon a star


unless that star is mstar.


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## Wandering (Feb 27, 2012)

Flamme said:


> What do you wish for today or for the future? What would you like to change or you ''ask God to grant you strength or a helping hand in some situation''?
> Mine is to be better and stronger man when falling to fall like a cat ''on both four'' not clumsy like a dog and to have the will to stand up, pick up the pieces and go on enriched with that experience...Also to settle down in work and love affairs to find someone i could really trust and not end my soul ripped apart...Sometimes i feel i have waited too much and my efforts not being awarded...


But I like dogs. 

My cats are both 100% percent jerks, even though they're cute. Everyday I have to remind them anew that it is all their fault, every bit of it. But they just ignore me and continue being cats.

I think few are taking this thread seriously at all, it is a shame. Nothing wrong with something felt. I might realize so many years from now that I completely chuckled my life away.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

I wish for a little more *willpower*. I know perfectly well what I should do - not sit around on TC for hours, go for a walk, clean the house, practise techniques not just fun-tunes, be more patient with my trying aged parent, don't eat junk food - but do I do it? Do I heckers!


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## Sophi (Nov 23, 2013)

For me, wish means something that I can only dream about. Thus I rather have aims which I know I can reach in the near future. Now I'm busy in studying for exams and looking forward to pass all of them with good results. But anyways, I wish it was Christmas now  I fairly miss the feeling of tranquility and endless love.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

Not exactly a wish, more like a resolution: to live my life so as not to waste any time unproductively. To let even my entertainments be quality ones: something that would educate the mind and uplift the spirit (like classical music). 

The WWII discussion in the thread about Stockhausen has reminded me, how I used to be a huge fan of WWII-based video games like "Call of Duty" about 6-8 years ago. Now I regret not only taking part in "entertainment" like that at all, but also the countless hours I have wasted on it. Heck, I could have been educating myself on that same history during all that time! 
I only wish that, when I look back at my life years later, I will not regret mindlessly wasting any part of it.


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## Cheyenne (Aug 6, 2012)

SiegendesLicht said:


> The WWII discussion in the thread about Stockhausen has reminded me, how I used to be a huge fan of WWII-based video games like "Call of Duty" about 6-8 years ago. Now I regret not only taking part in "entertainment" like that at all, but also the countless hours I have wasted on it. Heck, I could have been educating myself on that same history during all that time!


Repetitive playing is the greatest danger the video-game player can succumb to. Many are made nowadays to make you actively waste time, doing little that is of any use beyond the game itself. I had friends who had played similar games for nearly 600 hours - what a profound waste of time! Luckily I thirst for narrative experiences, so I play from beginning to end and then quit - thus I rarely spent more than 8 hours on a game. It's pitiful to see how many people play single games for hundreds of hours, and it happens often too.

I'd rather be listening to the Ring cycle :tiphat:

As Bacon wrote in his essays: "A Man that is young in years, may be old in hours, if he have lost no time."


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Maybe in youth you have to 'waste' a certain number of hours to learn the value of time? It seems to be a common experience, anyway. I think I spent most of my teen years watching TV, and having a very good memory, at one time I could have told you about specific episodes of sit-coms, and could certainly recite the scripts from the old films that were shown again & again on the BBC, such as 'The Big Sky', 'She Couldn't Say No', and 'Good Sam' - epics that sank without trace! 

It reminds me of 'The Animals' song (British 60s pop group, lead singer Eric Burden):

'When I think of all the good times that I wasted - having 'good times'!
All of my drinking - I could been thinking!
All of my boozing - I was merely losing!
*Good* times!'


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## Yardrax (Apr 29, 2013)

Cheyenne said:


> Luckily I thirst for narrative experiences, so I play from beginning to end and then quit


That's seems like a pointless way to play to me, if you just hammer through the story mode you might as well have read a book or watched a movie, it's not like video game plots are usually great story telling anyway. The thing that makes video games unique as a medium is the immersion in the world, the chance to explore a bit and do things your own way rather than going at a pace set for you by the author.

You all have such a horribly negative and self-destructive view of wasting time anyway. Leonardo Da' Vinci was one of histories greatest procrastinators, his output compared to other artists of the period is tiny. And look how that turned out for him.

My wish for today is that I never regret slacking off.

Sincerely,

A proud and unrepentant procrastinator.


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

To let myself go and stop being a stiff


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Yardrax said:


> My wish for today is that I never regret slacking off.
> 
> Sincerely,
> 
> A proud and unrepentant procrastinator.


Why put off today, what can be put off tomorrow?

Reminds one of the Spaniard trying to teach an Irishman the meaning of mañana - after a while, the Irishman remarked that he didn't have a word with quite that degree of urgency.


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## Cheyenne (Aug 6, 2012)

Yardrax said:


> That's seems like a pointless way to play to me, if you just hammer through the story mode you might as well have read a book or watched a movie, it's not like video game plots are usually great story telling anyway. The thing that makes video games unique as a medium is the immersion in the world, the chance to explore a bit and do things your own way rather than going at a pace set for you by the author.


You are entirely correct. I indulge in exploration and so forth in the context of the 'story', but after I have seen the 'ending' I don't continue on collecting, and I never play online. My comment was a generalization to get the point across, especially for those not experienced with video games, not an actually detailed description of how I play. I may grind in a strategy RPG, read every document scattered in a Thief level and search for heart containers in a Legend of Zelda game - I just keep it reasonable, and once the game is finished, so am I. The 'extra content' that nearly every game provides for nowadays, including post-game material and an online mode, is invariably just a way to steal time. It's fun while you do it but so useless afterwards that it's not unreasonable to keep it at a minimum. I too prefer somewhat lengthy games with ample freedom, compared to the streamlined, Hollywood experiences often seen today - and indeed the storytelling is generally awful. Interactivity is the key, and for that it's a fun pastime, especially with other people.

However, spending nearly 600 hours centering a screen on a person you want to digitally murder and then pulling a trigger, is a worthless addiction. The friend I mentioned earlier has quit and he is now almost pathologically unable to play video games because he feels stupid for wasting so much time playing Battlefield and Call of Duty. Naturally that's a shame, because there's much more out there, but this experience quite literally traumatized him.



Ingélou said:


> Maybe in youth you have to 'waste' a certain number of hours to learn the value of time? It seems to be a common experience, anyway. I think I spent most of my teen years watching TV, and having a very good memory, at one time I could have told you about specific episodes of sit-coms, and could certainly recite the scripts from the old films that were shown again & again on the BBC, such as 'The Big Sky', 'She Couldn't Say No', and 'Good Sam' - epics that sank without trace!


If you watched a great many shows and remember them distinctly, at least you got satisfaction out of it. The phenomenon observed nowadays, however, is that of 'zapping', and 'just watching some TV': mindlessly watching what's on, with little recollection afterwards and not much value beyond the burning of hours. Harmless once in a while, but dangerous when done on a nearly daily basis. Coupled with the commercial breaks, which may not have been as prevalent when you were young, a lot of time is lost that way. Luckily, many people now watch shows on themselves through Netflix and the likes, skipping commercials and immediately getting to what they were looking for.

Of course, I'm not here to tell others what to do with their free time, so perhaps I should get back to myself. I'm a born procrastinator with little discipline, and in my worst moods relatively lazy. As long as I keep myself occupied I'll get inspired suddenly to certain projects and the results are often amiable. when I first read the Maxims of de la Rochefoucauld, the ones about laziness stung me most:

398. Of all our shortcomings, the one with which we most easily live in agreement is laziness; we persuade ourselves that it pertains to all of the peaceful virtues, and that, without entirely destroying the others, it only suspends their functions.

It's a very interesting topic, to be sure.


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