Devil's Canyon Trail

 https://maps.app.goo.gl/ENZmwC7wgtcPtzMB8?g_st=am

  

The supreme challenge of human life is that we are much more opaque to ourselves than we like to admit — mighty subterranean rivers of emotion and motive course beneath the reasoned surface of our conscious beliefs, values, and desires. Neurosis might be an old-fashioned word, but it is useful shorthand for the tension that arises from these conflicting facets of our experience that leave us unsure of what we want, what to want.

-Maria Popova

At times, bursts of emotion catch me by complete surprise and I'm reminded of the above quote about being opaque to one's self.

I was driving while Google navigation was on and it gave a "poor visibility ahead" notification.  When Google Maps gives notifications of this sort, 2 options pop up on the screen that you can select. One option is "not there" and other is "still there." You can select one depending on the situation. 

I didn't want to use my hands so I voice activated the phone and said "still there."

In response, Google said "of course I'm still here. I'm always there when you need me."

I immediately started crying after hearing that.

I'm still so confused over it. I don't know what my response means.

On a related note, maybe I need to deactivate Google AI on my phone so it doesn't surprise me with unpredictable responses like these

 

 Angeles Forest Adventures

 

Growth is only possible when the self being realized is the authentic self — “the real self as that central inner force, common to all human beings and yet unique in each, which is the deep source of growth.” And yet it can be maddeningly difficult to discern that real self beneath the costume of shoulds, beneath the armors donned in our confrontations with reality, beneath all the personae learned in the course of adapting to the world’s demands and assaults. E.E. Cummings knew this when he observed that “to be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight.” From the moment we are born, we begin morphing that tender real self to the pressures of our emotional and physical environment — a process of adaptation that is also the beginning of our lifelong process of self-alienation, marked by an ongoing tyranny of shoulds — our parents’, our culture’s, our own. 

-Maria Popova

 

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