Paulo Seabra

I'm something of an art casual, so I don't really know much about it, but I do know I always liked Vincent Van Gogh. I'm also something of an MMA casual, so I don't really know much about it, but I do know I always liked Conor McGregor, and I especially always liked his famous quote about the aforementioned painter. In many ways to follow MMA, or perhaps any individual sport, is quite an interesting thing in that you find it is much more dynamic than any team sport. Following entire teams all throughout the years or even decades is starkly different than following individual fighters throughout what is often a rocky career in a rocky sport, in which time alone stands undefeated. Thus, in many ways to follow a fighter's career is more like following an artist – sometimes you like him a lot, other times less so, sometimes he's in his prime, other times he stumbles a little bit. And then when you look back at the fighter's entire career, from beginning to end, ...

Self-confidence is a very nice thing to have, or so they tell me. In fact, its importance nowadays seems even more sharply pronounced, I'd say largely due to the openness that social media provides, what with people being, or having to be, at least occasionally, more honest about their shortcomings and insecurities. When everything is visible and recorded you might as well call attention to it in order to take the edge off, I suppose. Additionally it seems as though motivational videos and other such content is quite popular. Everyone seems to be gunning after something they aren't entirely sure they'll ever achieve, and so they often turn to sources of motivation to keep on going or to find the strength to get up after getting knocked down. Then again, there are also the cynic pessimists like me who think it's all a bunch of baloney... Or well, not always. I do think there's an important place for self-confidence, as evidenced, for example, by my thoughts on Conor ...

A while back I was taking a class on something or other, and at one point we had to do some presentations about personal character traits. In my presentation I wanted to bring up two or three of them, and subsequently confront them with more or less their respective opposites. One of those traits was humility, and I wanted to confront it with its polar opposite, which I consider to be arrogance. And what I came to realize is that either humility and arrogance can indeed be pretty much the same thing, or alternatively it's just that extreme humility can at times become virtually indistinguishable from plain old arrogance... In order to illustrate this for the presentation I immediately thought of Jon Snow of all people, a fella known for being virtuous and humble, but perhaps to the point of a stubbornness that borders on arrogance or even momentary blindness, as he followed the moral example of his adoptive father who was likewise virtuous and humble, even unto death... Whether or ...