Wat moeilijk is in het leven
Je lichaam is altijd in een bepaalde staat. Vanuit die staat kijk je met een andere bril naar de werkelijkheid.
Bijvoorbeeld: je hebt de hele dag gewerkt. Je lichaam is in een ‘zitstaat’. Vanuit die staat is het moeilijk te zien dat je moet gaan sporten. Als je dan toch gaat, kun je bijna niet geloven hoe makkelijk het gaat, omdat je dan weer in een andere staat zit.

Dit geldt ook als je lichaam in een depressieve staat is. Alles is dan dát. Je hebt geen enkel positief gevoel, geen enkele positieve gedachte. Je kunt je niet meer voorstellen dat je ooit in een andere staat bent geweest, en weer in een andere staat zult komen. Houd hoop.

What’s brilliant about religion
That in a given moment, everyone is thinking roughly the same thing. Thinking about more or less the same thing together creates a sense of solidarity. You have to have experienced it to understand it. It brings calm.

That part of you that puts up so much resistance, with all those scary thoughts, is also the thing that kept you in this bad situation.

So it’s going to start sputtering now that you’re doing the opposite. That’s how it works.

It’s not the fault of that “bad” part of you. That part only knows what it knows. It can only give feedback based on familiar thoughts. As soon as you do new things and create new thoughts and feelings, that part panics. That’s exactly how it’s supposed to go.

Children with ADD are not distracted — they’re making new connections. That’s not the same as being distracted.

What religion is to me
It comes closest to:

• A sound. The sound of the beginning of the universe. A reassuring sound.
• The lens through which you look at life. Because you look at life in a certain way, it also becomes that, in a sense. You look at reality with soft eyes. It’s almost impossible to explain to someone who looks through a scientific lens, which is much more focused on “this is how it works” and “being right.” Science is a very hard and binary lens, whereas religion is a soft one — “I don’t know exactly how it works, but at least it’s beautiful,” something like that.

Not all 85 kilos are the same

Measurements alone don’t capture reality, because movement, context, and direction matter

Imagine you weigh 120 kilos. Your ideal weight is 70 kilos.
You train and train, and now you weigh 85 kilos. You’re in a great flow, and you feel good.

Now let’s flip the situation. You used to weigh 70 kilos (your ideal weight), and over the past few years you’ve gradually gained weight. You’re now at the same 85 kilos.

Do you think these situations are the same?
Objectively they are: in both cases you’re 15 kilos overweight. But in real life, of course, they’re not. The same objective measurement is not the same.

As strange as it may be, this is exactly where science often goes wrong. The same objective measurement is not the same as another “same” objective measurement, because literally everything else is different. The movement is different. The flow is different. The mood is different. What you’re doing is different. But the measurement is the same. So if you only look at the scientific measurement, you’re right. But you’re not necessarily right. Or well, only in one dimension.