Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we dont need.
Tyler Durden, Fight Club

Irony

The problem with society is that fools and fanatics are too sure of themselves while the wise are plagued by self doubt.- Bertrand Russel

It's actually bleedin complicated

These transformations cannot be gained without cost. They required my learning to live the rest of my days in the ambiguity of knowing that of all that I am, I am also the opposite. I cannot rid myself of my demons, without risking that all my angels will flee along with them”

Sheldon Koff

Be yourself

We camouflage our true being before others to protect against criticism or rejection. This protection comes at a steep price. When we are not truly known by the other people in our lives, we are misunderstood. When we are misunderstood, especially by family and friends, we join the 'lonely crowd.' Worse, when we succeed in hiding our being from others, we lose touch with our real selves. This loss of self contributes to illness in its myriad forms.
   
Sidney Jourard

Could it be more complicated?

The course of our life is determined by an array of selves that live within each of us. These selves call out to us constantly - in our dreams and fantasies, in our moods and maladies and in a multitude of unpredictable and inexplicable reactions to the world around us”

Hal Stone & Sidra Winkelman

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing
inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

Naomi Shihab Nye

Leo Buscaglia on a Zen Buddhism philosophy

Life is now. Yesterday is past and gone, and only real in its effect on the moment. The future is not real, and may never be more than a dream. Only this moment now is real. Yet, so many people live under the shadow of successes or mistakes past, or the possibilities and hopes of the future. They don't realize that when they deal with the unreal worlds, they are missing the moments, the accumulation of which make a life. Life becomes a series of moments, either lived or lost. Since moments pass, as time, there is soon nothing left and life is over, leaving some poor unfortunate souls having never lived at all.