Octocuss retweeted
The most beautiful aspect of living in alignment with the emotional truths in your heart and the existential truths in your soul is that you are enveloped by synchronicities, to the point that it almost feels a little absurd to still call them such, as though they were occurrences, for it becomes a way of being.
Octocuss retweeted
You will not allow yourself to keep anything you don't feel that you deserve. You could be crowned as god emperor of the universe, the resplendent riches of all existence laid at your feet, and you'd give it up, sabotage it, destroy it all, just to prove to that little simpering voice in your head that it was right. None of this was ever supposed to belong to you.
Octocuss retweeted
If you spend all your time optimizing for not getting punched, you never get good at rolling with the punches
Octocuss retweeted
here’s what I think might be the essential challenge of parenting:
your children are born not as your peers, but as your dependents. if you treat them like your peers when they’re too young, it’s unfair to them. but if you treat them like dependents for too long, that’s unfair to them too. you can try to be scrupulous about being fair, but you can’t make the cost of that scrupulosity their problem.
your task is to raise them to *become* your peers. meaning you have to repeatedly update how you relate to them. this is hard!! 99% of human interactions aren’t like this! Most interactions happen in comparatively stable configurations. It’s rare that your boss today is your employee tomorrow. But in parenting this dynamism is inevitable. The child ages into the adult, the adult ages into the child.
every parent probably has a phase that they’re uniquely In The Zone for. Alice might be great with toddlers. Bob might be great with 7yos. Claire might be great with preteens. Whatever your strength is, you likely have a corresponding weakness. And your kids, if you’re lucky, will grow through all of the ages. So you’ll inevitably find yourself in a context you’re uniquely unsuited for. And it’s your duty to show up and try your best anyway.
it’s a very elaborate, nested series of balancing acts, which requires a level of attunement you likely didn’t have before. every day you encounter the need to balance humility and confidence, or some other bullshit like that, and the next challenge hits you before you have time to process the last one.
It’s great. Knowing what I know now, I wish we had our kids sooner. I have a lot more to say on the topic (particularly why it’s great, both *despite* the challenge, and *because* but I gotta end this here because we’re in the middle of shopping for Deepavali clothes so ttyl)
Octocuss retweeted
it’s worth paying attention to who is able to still think clearly when they’re personally scared. a great many of you listen to people who squeal when they’re squeezed and you really shouldn’t, because you cannot trust their minds when the mindkiller has them.
Octocuss retweeted
Blessed Samhain to you all.
Today is to remember those who came before you, and who without, you would not be.
The Wheel turns onward.
Octocuss retweeted
there are people who inherited secure attachment effortlessly, and there are people who built it by painful step-by-step reconstruction, designing by feeling out the negative space of what was missing
Octocuss retweeted
God loves movement 😌
God loves movement — my favorite excerpt from a recent edition of Bookbear Express, one of my favorite Substacks: open.substack.com/pub/ava/p/… I’ve had to learn this lesson again and again, and imagine I will again in the future.
Octocuss retweeted
wearing your favorite perfume to bed naked and eating steak with your hands is actually very chic
There’s the old adage that goes:
“Treat others as you would have them treat you.”
But I think this can also be flipped around to say:
“Treat yourself as you would have yourself treat others.”
That is, we can aspire to treat ourselves with the same respect and love that we aspire to treat others with.
If we find that in our internal thoughts and feelings we are often essentially shouting at ourselves, harshly criticizing ourselves, insulting ourselves, or speaking to ourselves in a desperate or raging tone of voice, we can ask:
“Would I speak to a friend or someone I love like this?”
If the answer is no, then it usually points to a need for greater self compassion and self respect.
Learning to be a friend to ourself and to treat ourselves like someone we love is a foundational skill for learning to be happy.
And it also tends to make it easier to then treat others the same way.
One of the greatest gifts you can give yourself is to commit - solemnly and sincerely - to *always* loving yourself.
At all times and under all circumstances.
To treat that commitment like a wedding vow, with the same seriousness you’d give to an important promise you’ve made to a lover.
To love yourself when you’re lazy, when you’re weak, and when you fall pray to your most frustrating vices and compulsions.
To love yourself when you are envious, when you are scared, and when you feel like a failure.
To make this promise doesn’t mean that you will never falter or flail in fulfilling it.
This is the paradox of self-love: to be utterly committed to loving yourself and utterly committed to forgiving yourself when you fail to do so.
But just making that commitment in itself is powerful.
Not just to hope to love yourself, or to believe that loving yourself would be a good thing or to love yourself when you behave in ways you deem lovable.
But to commit, to promise, to vow to love yourself, unconditionally at your worst and weakest and most ugly.
I think many people worry that if they give themselves unconditional love, then they will lose the motivation to grow or address behaviours that don’t align with their highest values.
But I don’t find this to be the case at all.
I believe most of our unaligned behaviours are grounded in shame and self-hatred, not love.
Love is an energizing, illuminating and healing force.
My experience is that all our apparent flaws actually contain deep seeds of wisdom in them; this wisdom simply gets lost in the darkness of self-rejection.
In the light of love, these lost parts can see where they’re going again and naturally grow towards that light.
We sometimes think that we have to wait until we feel lovable to love ourselves.
But the truth is that when we love ourselves - truly and unconditionally - our heart reveals its infinitely lovable nature: here, now, already.
Octocuss retweeted
no i didnt subtweet u ur post just reminded me how much i hate the thing u spoke favorably of
Octocuss retweeted
do any of my mutuals in NYC have any leads on housing/sublet for the winter?? pls link me or connect me!
Octocuss retweeted
Some men can't handle tall wives. You can tell skooks is a great guy but he's not ready. He should've said willowy, statuesque. Perhaps regal. Lithe.




























