And so the wheels of the world turn

... as Chilean Ambassador in 1972, Neruda spent most of a three-hour meeting with President Georges Pompidou designed to negotiate Chile’s foreign debt discussing Baudelaire instead.

--d'ici

Expand your comfort zone

You're comfortable in your solitude. There's nothing wrong with that. If anything that's a strength, not a weakness. But you should also learn to be comfortable around people. 

Finely-tuned apathy

Does it strike you that there is a slight resemblance between (a) what you regard as your parents' mildly unhealthy attachment to you, (b) what your students might regard as your being too demanding / micromanaging in your concern for their grades, and (c) what you perceive as someone caring too much about what his class thinks about him?
In all of these cases, there's one party which holds itself responsible for some aspect of the other, expects that to be reciprocated to some extent by some form of appreciation, and is duly nonplussed (and a little upset) when that appreciation does not quite materialise---but have they taken into account how the counter-party feels about this whole rather paternalistic setup?

Real wealth consists in things of utility and beauty,

in things that help to create strong, beautiful bodies and surroundings inspiring to live in. But if man is doomed to wind cotton around a spool, or dig coal, or build roads for thirty years of his life, there can be no talk of wealth. What he gives to the world is only gray and hideous things, reflecting a dull and hideous existence---too weak to live, too cowardly to die.

(Emma Goldman, Anarchism: What it really stands for)

Part of a conversation I'm having with 2012 me

I believe that nation-states are legal fictions and artificial constructs, whose current shapes and peculiarities are but accidents of history. Lots of people---most people---would disagree, perhaps vehemently so. But that is only because of a lack of clear thought, often encouraged by politicians and regimes for reasons of their convenience.
Certainly there should be some sort of apparatus to give a coherent organization to society, and the modern nation-state, where it works, does this very well. But also we should recognize that nation-states, as such, are nothing more than conventions of convenience. Why should we get so worked up and excited about mere conventions? I don't understand.

Well as you quite rightly point out there is no one natural way of organising human society; what we have is, perhaps, not as good a solution as could ever exist, but it is what it is. Accidents of history and mere conventions by agreement they may well be, but the fact of their existence, the miracle, minor or less minor, that they have been conjured, willed, brought into existence, is surely worth something,
So, perhaps, these things are worth celebrating and worrying about. Though, also, it behooves us not to take them too seriously, for there are, ultimately, higher and more important things in this world than country. 

Hier gaan over het tij,

de wind, de maan en wij

(the Dutch, at Neeltje-Jans on the Oosterscheldekering)

Now I really want to see that plaque. It is a little bit out of the way though ...