Does it really take any considerable time or effort just to understand that you depend on enemies and outsiders to define yourself, and that without … - Alan Watts

Does it really take any considerable time or effort just to understand that you depend on enemies and outsiders to define yourself, and that without some opposition you would be lost? To see this is to acquire, almost instantly, the virtue of humor, and humor and self-righteousness are mutually exclusive. Humor is the twinkle in the eye of a just judge, who knows that he is also the felon in the dock.

This kind of living in the fantasy of expectation rather than the reality of the present is the special trouble of those business men who live entirely to make money. So many people of wealth understand much more about making and saving money than about using and enjoying it. They fail to live because they are always preparing to live. Instead of earning a living they are mostly earning an earning, and thus when the time comes to relax they are unable to do so. Many a “successful” man is bored and miserable when he retires, and returns to his work only to prevent a younger man from taking his place.

Instant coffee is a punishment for people who are in too much of a hurry.

[T]he creations of man, his art, his literature, his buildings, differ only in quality, not in kind, from such creations of nature as birds, nests and honeycombs.