[Vettezuki]

Recently I traded my Jeep, which I had since I was 16, my senior year in HS with enkeivette for legal services, including first right of refusal of he wants to sell it on. If it weren't for that I wouldn't have done it, but even so, watching him drive it away was like watching myself drive away. It was a very peculiar feeling.

[fiveohwblow]

Pretty much what this car was to me. Father and son, tons of hours, more memories than I can count. It wasn't the worlds perceive value, more my personal value and to see it gone so quickly because of financial burdens makes it much much worse.

[Shaolin Crane]

Originally Posted by fiveohwblow

Pretty much what this car was to me. Father and son, tons of hours, more memories than I can count. It wasn't the worlds perceive value, more my personal value and to see it gone so quickly because of financial burdens makes it much much worse.

I get it, I look at everything done to my car, every piece, cause I did the work on it and I remember all the troubles and hardships I was going through when working on whatever part, how I felt at the time, people who were in my life that aren't anymore. Generally how much I've grown as a man during the time i've had it. Money can replace the items but nothing can replace that. As I said before, I truly am depressed for you.

[fiveohwblow]

Originally Posted by Shaolin Crane

I get it, I look at everything done to my car, every piece, cause I did the work on it and I remember all the troubles and hardships I was going through when working on whatever part, how I felt at the time, people who were in my life that aren't anymore. Generally how much I've grown as a man during the time i've had it. Money can replace the items but nothing can replace that. As I said before, I truly am depressed for you.

Couldn't have said it better. Truly.

[Vettezuki]

The memories are yours, you still have them. You have not lost the things which are most valuable because they are not things. The object is a memory trigger, but itself contains nothing. I understand the feeling, the attachments that can form, but what we focus on creates how we feel. We have some, if not total, control over that.

You've done what you had to do to survive. The car served you well up to the end, and now will go onto to be something valuable to another. When the sun comes out for you, you can begin again and create new memories, never having lost the old ones.

Just sharing how I tend to look at experiences. I've found it to be helpful to me. I hope it can be to you too.

[Shaolin Crane]

Originally Posted by Vettezuki

The memories are yours, you still have them. You have not lost the things which are most valuable because they are not things. The object is a memory trigger, but itself contains nothing. I understand the feeling, the attachments that can form, but what we focus on creates how we feel. We have some, if not total, control over that.

You've done what you had to do to survive. The car served you well up to the end, and now will go onto to be something valuable to another. When the sun comes out for you, you can begin again and create new memories, never having lost the old ones.

Just sharing how I tend to look at experiences. I've found it to be helpful to me. I hope it can be to you too.

I get it, rarely does it make it easier in the beginning. When I sell the blue car it's going to ease some memories and make others harder, we hold onto things for those memory triggers. Whether we like it or not, once those triggers are gone, the memories start to slip as well.

[Vettezuki]

Originally Posted by Shaolin Crane

I get it, rarely does it make it easier in the beginning. When I sell the blue car it's going to ease some memories and make others harder, we hold onto things for those memory triggers. Whether we like it or not, once those triggers are gone, the memories start to slip as well.

I think it's important to have peace with the impermanence of all things in order to be truly happy. This is harder for us in the modern western world for a lot of reasons I'll punt on here, but just say that literally everything that physically exists are always "slipping away". Literally. Everything. We've all known people close to us we've lost, one day our time will come. In enough time even the sun, earth, entire galaxies as we know them, will be gone. Not conceptually, physically. My sloppy point is that understanding the passing nature of all things helps to reduce suffering and increase happiness as we live. If someone has a better idea about how to spend their time than reducing suffering and increasing happiness, I'm all ears.

fiveohblow, I do not mean to trivialize your experience in the least. Only suggesting/reminding that how we look at experiences plays a huge role into how they affect us emotionally. We can go a very long way to being happy, or at least less negatively affected, in even shitty circumstances with practice.

[BRUTAL64]

Originally Posted by Vettezuki

I think it's important to have peace with the impermanence of all things in order to be truly happy. This is harder for us in the modern western world for a lot of reasons I'll punt on here, but just say that literally everything that physically exists are always "slipping away". Literally. Everything. We've all known people close to us we've lost, one day our time will come. In enough time even the sun, earth, entire galaxies as we know them, will be gone. Not conceptually, physically. My sloppy point is that understanding the passing nature of all things helps to reduce suffering and increase happiness as we live. If someone has a better idea about how to spend their time than reducing suffering and increasing happiness, I'm all ears.

fiveohblow, I do not mean to trivialize your experience in the least. Only suggesting/reminding that how we look at experiences plays a huge role into how they affect us emotionally. We can go a very long way to being happy, or at least less negatively affected, in even shitty circumstances with practice.

Actually well put there

[enkeivette]

Originally Posted by Vettezuki

The memories are yours, you still have them. You have not lost the things which are most valuable because they are not things. The object is a memory trigger, but itself contains nothing. I understand the feeling, the attachments that can form, but what we focus on creates how we feel. We have some, if not total, control over that.

You've done what you had to do to survive. The car served you well up to the end, and now will go onto to be something valuable to another. When the sun comes out for you, you can begin again and create new memories, never having lost the old ones.

Just sharing how I tend to look at experiences. I've found it to be helpful to me. I hope it can be to you too.

Sounds like youve lost someone before. Thats how I look at life too, its a collection of memories, and no one can take that from you.

The YJ, she is well, spent 6 hours detailing the pine needles out of it, ha. Epoxied the door skins back on, and repainted the hood. With a bit of reducer in the clear to match the fade. Flushed the cooling system, and in the middle of putting redline in the transfer case, and dana diffs.

OP, I feel for you, that blows. Life can have sucky qualities, but the great thing about it, LIFE has qualities. It can always be worse. Dont let possessions, drama, and confrontations ruin it for ya.

[Vettezuki]

Originally Posted by enkeivette

Sounds like youve lost someone before. Thats how I look at life too, its a collection of memories, and no one can take that from you.

The YJ, she is well, spent 6 hours detailing the pine needles out of it, ha. Epoxied the door skins back on, and repainted the hood. With a bit of reducer in the clear to match the fade. Flushed the cooling system, and in the middle of putting redline in the transfer case, and dana diffs.

OP, I feel for you, that blows. Life can have sucky qualities, but the great thing about it, LIFE has qualities. It can always be worse. Dont let possessions, drama, and confrontations ruin it for ya.

Amen. Happy you're enjoying the Jeep. I have a huge number of memories from adolescence into adulthood lived . . . literally in that thing.

On a crazy curious (to me anyway) tangent, Oprah was on in the background today, and she was revisiting some past interviews. One was a kid, now a man, who survived Columbine. He lost a couple friends and his sister, with whom he had fought bitterly that morning; his last memory of her alive. For years he was extremely angry and fantasized about what he'd do if he ran into the shooters somehow, but they too were dead. What helped him to break into a better place was when he was on a trip in South Africa and talked with an African buss driver. He was from Rwanda . After sharing his story about Columbine, the buss driver talked about how one day when he came home his entire family, wife, parents, siblings, and children had been killed. (They didn't specify, but this probably meant something closer to butchered with machetes given the nature of that episode of hell on earth.) Seventeen of them. Yet somehow, this guy found a way to be happy in life, even joyful with life, driving a bus in South Africa. This Columbine survivor moved from a position of anger and desire for revenge to even a feeling sorry Matt and Dillon. I suppose the final, highest step possible would be one of forgiveness. But that's a whole other difficult subject.

When I experience something unpleasant, I think about things like this, not to diminish or trivialize my own experience, but to realize that suffering and loss are parts of life, and some manage to thrive despite extreme hardship by focusing on "the good". It reduces my own suffering, get's me out of my head, and helps me to be happier.