Having gone past the middle of my probable lifetime I feel that I have some useful advice to give to the younger ones following. Like almost everyone, I had my share of some difficult and disappointing stages in my life. Overall, I feel grateful I was given the chance to live and experience this world. This blog is my attempt to share some of my blessings, lessons and discoveries.
You have to accept that this is a world of opposites. It is the antithesis that gives meaning to everything we value and cherish. There is no good without evil, health without disease, comfort without pain, beauty without ugliness, virtue without vice, bravery without cowardice, love without hate, light without darkness, positive without negative, female without male, richness without poorness, tallness without shortness, yin without yang, happiness without sadness. Unless you are aware of the opposites you cannot fully appreciate the other site. So, if occasionally it happens that you are on the other site of your preference, don't just feel sorry for yourself. Try to learn something out of the bad experience and work some way out of it. Our state of satisfaction with ourselves and our environment depends largely in our state of mind rather than anything else.
To begin with, try to know yourself. This is probably the single most important ancient Greek advice. Know your strengths and weaknesses, know your limitations. There is no point in feeling sorry for attributes of yourself that you cannot change, like your height or other genetic traits, incurable decease or handicaps, your parents or your siblings. While you attempt to know yourself, try to live in harmony and balance. Your balance depends entirely on yourself, since your strengths, weaknesses or limitations are themselves unique. So don’t just be a copycat, try some things your way and learn from your own successes and failures.
Whatever you do, try to enjoy the journey. Set targets and pursue them and try to enjoy the process of achieving them. Kavafis’ Ithaca and Kipling’s If can guide you how to do this. The Ten Commandments can guide you to the sort of things that if you do, or do not, will be the cause of making lots of enemies in this world. So think really hard before you break these rules.
I hope I could be of some help.
"Yianni"
ReplyDeleteVery wise. I think you also would be a good Buddhist; you would find many of the Buddhist principles aligned with your philosophy on how to live one's life. Check out the many sources on the web and let me know what you think.
Namaste
Panos
Thank you Panos,
ReplyDeleteReligions, Buddhism included, are complex philosophies. I have no doubt that they do offer guidance to the faithful on how to live their lives. However, religions are mostly concerned with life after death, and how to live this mortal life preparing for the next. People can live their whole lives trying to understand religious scripts or ceremonies and never actually achieve it. I think that young people can appreciate simpler and shorter advice. I suspect that priests or religious preachers could find Kavafis’ Ithaca and Kipling’s If rather egocentric.
That said, I have to admit that one of my favourite books is H. Esse’s Siddhartha. I also liked Dalai Lama’s How to Practice and I found interest in R.S. Sharma’s The Monk Who Sold his Ferrari. These are three books already that barely scratch the surface of Buddhism. I did not find them as powerful as the three short pieces of literature I mention in this blog. But I also have to admit, that I have no aspiration of becoming a good Buddhist. But if you do “Wish that the road is long, full of adventure, full of knowledge…”.