With Time...comes wisdom...

The knowledge paradox, presented aptly by Aristotle ,“The more you know, the more you realize you don’t know.”, come to mind when I prospect the reasons for finally getting down to thumb down my thoughts in this format again. 

 Being the reservoir that I've established, and over the years sipped from every now and then, I felt obliged to again materialise my thought on this canvas. I try to be profound, only to realise that at some point, a spelling error will creep in to keep me honest and humble, akin to my thoughts as noted in earlier posts. 

 As time goes by, my thoughts have evolved, or rather updated themselves after many cycles of belief, review, reflection and reconfiguration. This is what brought me to the thought of the topic at hand, which is with time, we get wiser, brought on by our numerous experiences and lifetime of living. We choose our priorities more effectively, we settle with bad choices and deal with them differently than the knee jerk, off the cuff living we were prone to when we were younger. 

 I constantly find myself having thoughts, and looking for contradictions and re-evaluating, and thinking more... The burden I bear for being an overthinker, which I must admit really isn't a burden, but it's my normal, so I'm happy with it. 

With wisdom, I've realised that there is so much we can do, and are capable of doing, and have the bravery to let go of things we once could never, and to be happy for others to have their happiness as well. This I've specifically noticed with my kids. Parents sacrifice and truly learn that it's not really a sacrifice when you support and prioritise other people's goals over your own, especially those of your own family. With wisdom, I feel that sometimes it's easier to doubt oneself because of understanding the chances of being wrong are much higher, but then again, to have confidence in your opinions are much more valuable depending on the audience.

• Wisdom is a byproduct of living. 

think, think, think again

Just a thought, to think on. When I hear, I listen, I consider, I retaliate, I justify, I look at the angle, I look at the potential blind spots, that which ii don't know and that which I do, I look for the response and the timing and the effect thereof, and all this, within the recess of my mind. Impulsiveness isn't a strong suit of my mind, as I feel I'm like a procrastinator and spend too much time thinking on things. At the same time, I've learnt to detach myself from things that help me differentiate between concerns and stress. Just been thinking on this this morning as I consistently am trying to figure out a way to get people to use reasoning and "clear-mindedness" rather than assuming things unconsciously and going along with that opinion. In the pursuit of understanding, I have come to find myself many times just thinking and pondering as described in the opening sentence, and very rarely take to an actual response. Is this a way to help people use rationalizing and self-reflection techniques to put aside emotions and bring meaningful decisions/opinions. anyway, my thoughts are what I value most and that why I write so that I can recall and capture some of those. What im scared of is that indirectly these thoughts come out as just selfish and prejudiced to another way of thinking... Think think think think think think...

Humble pie

Firstly, its been a while since i wrote here, over a year ago i suppose, though the time does fly by and i always think about writing, but get so caught up with life that i rarely find time to sit and write down my thoughts. That said, i read a lot of my older posts when i want to remember what i think and the way i came to those thoughts... so here i was thinking about something that i feel like i spoke about though not specifically. Being humble in my opinion is likened to what we call a wise person. Why i say that, is because being humble, means that you care less for something that will profit your thoughts or opinions as opposed to others. Its broader than that too, though I'm not trying to define the word, but what i feel with it. I feel that Ive realised that Ive been selfish and self conscious for a lot of my youth, since i felt that i was better than people when i got thoughts first, and further i felt that i could really do a lot more than i was. I felt that i was where i was because of other people holding me back in a way. These, however were totally innocent feelings, as i really feel that i was ignorant then and know a bit better now. Why did i feel like that or expect that air of superiority. I know that the way we are brought up, are being the center of our parents lives since we are from them and they care and love us. They of-course want the best for us and make us feel special and the best thing to them since ever. Now, in all these good intentions and us feeling great about ourselves, how does a person transcend into being someone that looks down on others and feel superior. Where's the turning point, and how do we rein it back? I always aspired to be the best person my parents wanted me to be, not because i felt obliged, but because they believed in me to have the potential i put my mind to. This brings me to the realisation and where humbleness comes into the solution. From the first experience of failing at something (eg. walking and falling down)we realise the pain in falling and the freedom of walking. We are humbled by the fact that we will fall if we loose balance, and as a small child, instinctively we would try our best not to fall. Even without realising it, we find a sort of "fear" from falling or getting hurt, and this is like the building blocks of what being humble is. Progressing, if we think of moving from the physical aspect, to the more psychological aspect of being humble, like towards a persons feelings or towards taking advantage of a person, the same principles apply. We grow up expecting things from our parents who most of the time let us get away with, and thus without knowing it, we learn to take advantage of them and their moods/attitudes etc. We then take this way of dealing with people to people around us. When someone breaks your heart in school, you feel devastated and realise you would never want to do that to someone else, which makes you a better person for your next relationship, and thus we progress in life learning about numerous things that we could come out humble and wise to in the future. How many people out there haven't had the opportunity to learn in life these thing to treat people properly before hurting them? What do so many people that are humble to our exploitations make it easier to handle? What my point is, to skip a few steps, is the realisation that we could be taking advantage of someone or a situation. We can be better people by just knowing that the way we act could be unfair, and proper thought be put into something before actually carrying it out. i always think in my mind .... "what if i was in his/her shoes, what would it look like"

Another name for the future..perhaps

Take a step back, close your eyes, and clear your mind. Now focus only on yourself. Where you are, how you got there, the things that define you, the things that have an effect on you. Was this all predetermined, or was this just a spate of coincidence?
A word or an idea we know from stories and tales of hero's and saviours. They had what could be seen as great detinies. what is this destiny?
Is it a predetermined planned path for our lives and choices?Is it just an excuse, scape goat for blame, meaningless alternative? Perhaps it is just a way we describe where we are, because in essence, we dont really have any idea.
For an athlete who worked hard at accomplishment, would it be right to say it was their destiny to succeed? Would it be different if he never worked as hard? YES! Then, building on that, why can we all not feel that we can have a hand in our destiny to work hard and get results that fit?
"What is meant for you, will come to you" This is not concise to say if whats meant for you being dependant on what effort you make for it , and I feel, that though we get whats meant for us, we cannot understand it fully. Somethings are unfair, what do we know truly of the hearts of others?
As ive stated previously, i feel that we are beings who have understanding and free will, but there is a finite limit to outr understanding. Maybe destiny exists, maybe it doesnt in our understanding of it, but i dont think we have the capacity for all of that comprehension.
By acting on what we do know, if we want something, we should work for it. If we get it or not, we could say it is destiny to our understanding. But what should matter is how we deal with it thereafter. Appreciation of who we are and where we are in our lives is as much of a realisation of destiny that i can think of.
"Your Destiny is to DIE, but it's what you do inbetween in LIFE that matters."

what we hold on to, what we let go off

As the seconds flutter by, the minutes stroll past, the hours melt away and so on, we find ourselves living our lives and being who we are with the type of lifestyles we have come to accept, whether by choice or by circumstance, we are there. We are all looking for our perfect way of living life and the right way to do things, but we rarely would know as we only get one shot realistically at living life. With this in mind i feel that we really are born with a basic instinct as to how we live life. Sure our ancestors didn't live the same way as us because of what we call knowledge and learning. Our ancestors learnt from their ancestors as we do from them, and in essence, we understand more things than they did, only because we have access to what they didn't. We could call that learning from experience on a macro scale. In life as humans, we have the ability to learn and then progress. Because we have learned how to efficiently stay alive with minimal effort, we then started learning to develop with things that caught out curiosities, and hence we know a wide variety of things because of experiments and research. With this learning and developing, i can come to my point which is that we still however have one life to live and we aspire to the best we can. With this realization, i went down a road of further thought on the things that affect us and the weight of it on our lives. We find that we can be emotionally affected by people who have a place in our lives. Even though we may have previously lived perfectly fine with our dreams and aspirations, when we find a person that we become friends with and subsequently more, we connect on a certain level, and then we feel that we cannot live our lives again without that person after that. Our ability to learn is directly effected by our emotions, since we shall learn and progress when we really want to. The reason i feel that we hold onto people and things that bring about some change in our lives is that they appeal to our emotional side of living the perfect life, and hence we feel that henceforth without those special things or people, we shall never have the same quality of life. I understand that as human we cannot simply let go, because that is what we define as someone that cares, but i also think that because we care, we should have the ability to let go of everything. A bit cryptic perhaps, but a bit more significant for me as i feel that when we can control our emotions to allow us to learn that a perfect life isn't one that really obtained, but rather a realistic life is what we get, then we would actually be closer to live a life which is more fulfilling. It maybe quite subjective, but i know that it makes a whole lot of sense, as people change, and people are different. We may not know what someone is truly about, or we may when its a bit too late. To close, id just like to share "In the process of letting go you will lose many things from the past, but you will find yourself." – Deepak Chopra

The effect of consistency

There seems to always come a time when we are drawn into our lives and have a monotonous lifestyle doing things the same way everyday. Sometimes, this may seem as a good thing as doing good continuously adds up and shows good progress, though how do we know that what we are doing is actually improving our lives or doing the opposite? The reason i have this on my mind is that a few weeks ago, i decided that what i was doing wasn't enough, and to be more productive and have a better quality of life, i will need to work harder for longer now. During this beginning phase i ask myself a whole lot of questions which helps me understand if i am doing too much and heading for a burnout, or am i actually doing what i was supposed to be doing in the first place. The idea of making the most of ones time comes up a lot in everyone's life when they take the time to reflect and put things into perspective. I get amazed quite often at what kind of goals i set myself when after a while i try to take the route where i do much more than i think i can handle and it actually goes along well without any problems. Let me give you an example. Ive been trying to go to gym from the time i was in school to keep fit and lead a healthy lifestyle, and part of going to gym, is the consistency as well as intensity. Generally we should go to gym 3-4 time a week to lead a fruitful healthy lifestyle with moderate intensity. Ive been doing this generally on and off and see minimal results, and a couple months ago i decided to up the ante and try and go to gym on average 5 times a week, and not only that but with a high intensity. The difference is that when working consistently you will find a more fruitful outcome than working hard for a short while. Our only draw back would be our minds since we have a limited amount of concentration to give. so, to me, i feel that if i can increase my concentration, i can earn a better quality of life getting the most i can get done!

a determined mind

The feeling of waking up in the morning, realizing the state you are in and making a promise to yourself to change everything that you do to change and get to a happier place in life. I'm sure that many of us can agree to this kind of scenario since we all have goals in life although at times it may seem to be in the furthest recesses of our minds just kept away so we don't realize what we are doing or what we are allowing ourselves to be put through. The realization that we have other choices and the determination of following through with those decisions are what make us determined. This can be seen mainly with people who are over weight and wake up one day realizing that they are indeed much fatter and unhealthy than they need to be, and thus make up their minds to change. This change in the way people treat themselves are triggered by a motivation to attain a better quality of life. Not everyone can find this determination in their lives , but from the few success stories that we do fine, we can see that it is possible to change. For me, this shows that although as humans we get beaten down, trod on in terms of literal and superficial issues, even issues of the mind and our beliefs, we can find a motivation to make ourselves determined to find the truth or to find a better way to live in essence. For a person to appreciate the value of living a "normal" life, they have to be subjected to living a life off those more unfortunate. in many ways, a hungry person find more satisfaction from a cup of water than a spoilt rich person who only drinks designer beverages. However, we don't have to put ourselves through every agony to acquire the humbleness and the appreciating of what we have and where we are. I feel that although i may not have lived in the slums or fought against an army, i still appreciate what it would be like and take choices in my life to be better than that and not go down the same path. To know the limits of your mind, you do need to push it however, but you will be surprised for how much you can do with it when you really try.

time for reflection

The last day of this year and I'm here at work in my office not being as productive as i should be, looking for every excuse as not to do so as well, i remembered my blog which i have been away from for way too long. Perhaps no new thoughts that came to mind, or really nothing to share, but i guess there are times when one finds themselves sitting and thinking about things. Just sitting here, i am wondering about the year that has passed and what progress i made in my life. I have spoken previously about making the most of our time, yet i feel that that has been easier said than done. I feel that although sometimes we feel that we do not progress in life and find ourselves in the same place we were when we left, there are things about a person that changes and things a person realizes and feels differently about. Looking back specifically on this year 2012, so much has happen and so many things change. We see things differently as we did last year this time, though sometimes we feel stuck and in the same place. I know that personally i felt as if the year just flew by, though i also know that i have done quite a bit in this time as well. What this leads me onto thinking about is that although we spend the time and do the things, we do to really appreciate the passage of time. I could have a full weekend from Friday evening all the way to Sunday afternoon, and still get up on Monday morning and complain to everyone at work that the weekend was too short! A person has the capacity to deal with a specific amount of things at any point in their life. There are some people who like to do so much more and are always looking for different things to occupy themselves with. I feel i am one of these kind of people and hence i also feel like there are so many things that are interesting and that i do not do. Listening to a CD on the Life of Prophet Mohammed (SAW), i came upon a section where they mention that as Muslims we should not busy ourselves in things which have no value to add. The type of of activities that he proposed from that time are activities such as swimming (as they were Arabs from the desert, they didn't know how to swim, so learning how to swim would be advantageous to them), marksmanship and even horse riding. To me, these kind of activities are only some of the thing we can do in the times we live in today to make our selves better people, and although i know i wouldn't be able to do everything, i will endeavor to learn a few and do my best to be good at it. A happy new year to everyone, and may 2013 bring plenty happiness and joy to your life!

why live to die

Ever wish you werer in a place where time seemed to not change anything around you, where you could do what you felt like till your heart's content. An everness for your dreams and desires. When you find yourself doing just the right thing at the time without anyone to disturb or distract you.

The world as i see it now is full of distractions and things that change. The places we stay, the things we do, the way we choose to live are always changing to circumstance and desire. As i did mention in my previous posts about the way we always have desires which change when we get closer to our goals, in the same way we cannot sit around doing the same thing day in and day out! Sometimes we feel that we are doing the best thing and we wouldn't want to change it for anything in the world, but there does come a time when this too has to stop, for we are all slaves to the same time.

I haven't really written a post for a while, since i haven't found the combination of motivation and drive as i did when i start, and this can be seen as a classical example. There are always thoughts that i find myself pondering about, though most seem to have been covered in my previous posts and the newer ones never seem to have an adequate amount of substance to write it out.

Most people live their lives from a conservative perspective to be safe and secure, while there are some who are more out there and have a greater chance of being distinguished and recognized for the way they live their lives. We all can achieve different things, though we choose not to as we find the things we understand and know to be satisfying. Can this really be enough reason to justify our lives? doing the same thing in and out, knowing in a ball park where we are going to be in 10, 20 and 30 years time. What kind of retirement we want to have and other stuff as such.

If we lived in a place where we didnt have to concern ourselves about getting old and planning for stuff that may not happen, would we live happier lives which are more significant and gratifying? Perhaps it can be done by changing the way we view ourselves. We make the priorities and goals for ourselves. A change of mind would certainly make us better at living in a time where time is money, and our timing with the world would determine where we are headed.

Why live to die, when we can change the way we look at living and live to make a difference.

fears that make us who we are

One of the most primal instincts we have is the feeling of fear. We all feel it and understand that there are things in this world which we fear. Some things we fear more than others depending on its possible effect on us.

Personally i fear time as one of the things that will catch up and take its toll. We all age as it is our nature to, and yet i feel that i may not be able to do everything i wanted or accomplish as much as i wanted to. Perhaps i procrastinate too much, perhaps i aim too high, but the end result cannot be avoided.

Coming into contact with things around us, we learn to fear things such as falling and hot surfaces, but this we learn usually after experiencing it first hand. We also learn of other fears of things that don't exist, but are rather made up by our imaginations such as monsters under the bed of in all the dark places. We do however learn to overcome some of our fears as well.

The more we understand about things around us, the more we loose our fear of things which we know cannot harm or hurt us in anyway, and we develop fears which are more realistic such as things which cause grievous harm physically and emotionally. From being in an accident to loosing the love of our life's, we get hurt and fear the same situation happening again. People sometimes don't recover from these for their entire lives and others learn to deal with it and get over it.

Fear makes us mortal and helps us understand our boundaries to a level. We do however get quite caught up when we tend to be extra cautious and as a result we loose site of taking any risks that may be for the better. We become conservative and never do anything out of the box. Our fears can make us into boring and strange people.

Taking a step back and looking at our fears and our lives on the whole, we may see that death is inevitable to everyone. In the same way, do we fear death or do we rather fear the amount of pain it may take to kill us?
As we know the certanities, we cannot stop them and hence we cannot postpone when is meant to happen. We shouldn't take risks that are not worth it, but on the same breath, we shouldn't bury ourselves in a hole fearing everything that may go wrong.

Myself, i feel i have made many mistakes in my life and i don't want to go through them again, but without certain things that happen to us which are out of our control, how would we ever develop our characters to be with those who have fought wars and became renowned for their strengths.

"fear cuts deeper than swords" - Arya Stark, A Song of Ice and Fire,George R.R. Martin

what we really need to survive?

A break to discover, find out more about oneself. To learn about new things we didn't know previously. To discover the truth about how we feel and what we really think about stuff.

I haven't written a post for a little while now as I took a long time over due break, even though it was just a week! The change of scenery is always welcome for the light it brings to your eyes to see things from other perspectives. We look for motivation to do things we don't really feel like doing, like the reason a lot of people work. Like, really , who enjoys getting up on a cold Monday morning to go to an office and work. The reason behind that is really as we understand it to be that we need to earn a living.

Earning a living can be defined as being able to earn money to be able to at-least live with the most basic needs such as food, clothes, shelter. We can extend these needs in orders of priority such as lighting, privacy, etc. In the day and age that we exist and to be able to live in a medium standard of living, we would have to have so many things above our basic needs. We would need fast transport, easy nutritious meals, clean clothes and that's just a few.

Looking back, we can still remember how we were content in our younger days without having any money at all, but going out into the world and still having fun and productive day. We cannot however say the same looking forward. The things we would need to live a normal life in the days of current and looking forward require so much more.

We can however accept that most of what we do is better advanced that what we may have been used to in the past, but sometimes we seem to get lost on a tangent trying to keep up with the world and what really makes a positive difference in our lives. We cannot walk barefoot anymore without our feet getting sore since the shoes we use always are always comfortable and soft. We cannot stand the cold or heat as we are so used to climate controlled environments.

We adapt to our surroundings as it is in our nature, but i feel that we shouldn't make ourselves too complaisant as to expect everything to be perfect all the time. We are made to be able to withstand and endure certain things that we are exposed too, but how would we ever be able to deal when we have to if we don't let ourselves be exposed to some kind of hardships at-least?

To be a strong person, i think we need to look for the rocky road rather than the easier one sometimes.

communication, huh?

I can relate to the frustration of talking to a person about something but seem to not get through. The feeling can be described as when two people talk with each other, but they are having two totally different conversations. The reason for this can possibly be attribute to a misalignment in communication between the two.

Communicating is one of the ways we interact with people around us. The mode of communication we use most is that of speaking a language. We talk and communicate with the people around us easily by this mode which we take alot of the time for granted. We feel that we have an adequate hold onto a language so that we may communicate clearly with another person. This is true when we talk with people around us and the type of people we grew up with as they learnt the same expressions and meanings of most of the same words we know, but this may not be true everywhere.

In many countries we find there are a multitude of languages spoken. From this many languages, we all learn to speak one of the many common languages from our teachers and communities and as such, we learn the understanding of the language from them.

It is widely known that there are many variations of languages all around the world, and thus the interpretation of it as well. Let's use English, since thats the language i understand and communicate in. There are many ways people use the English they know and tie it up with their understanding of things around them. Eg, a person who learns English in America, may be able to adequately communicate in general terms with another from South Africa, though the same understanding might not be appreciated when a South African would make an English reference to something specific to him.

This can be extended in general to all people and when we try to communicate assuming that the next person understands us clearly. This can be a grave mistake since we may say something which should mean good, though it can be interpreted wrongly.

We all know that in all out relationships, we can say things and they get misinterpreted. This is common and can happen to anyone. What we need to exercise and realize is that we are susceptible to it and make ourselves aware. This will help us communicate more clearly and understand people better.

when you are down

When you are down, sadness covers you like a blanket. Looking for all the possible reasons you are in this situation, all the possible reasons you may have missed and overlooked. The first of the many that come up may comprise of feelings of feeling bad for yourself, thinking you are the center of everything that has gone wrong. The feelings of everyone against you, or perhaps that the universe is acting opposing you in all forms and ways.

In life, scientifically or religiously, people feel sad and depressed a lot of the time as a reaction to the way things around them proceed and develop. It is a fact in life and we each deal with these thing in our own ways. I do feel that different people can handle different thing in their own ways and has a capacity of how much they can manage with.

Being sad and depressed may feel like you heart in sinking, drowning in some kind of darkness and may also be associated with hurt and pain emotionally. We spend a lot of time during these feelings lost in thought and memories, trying to recall our steps and make sense of the reason things happen to be as they are. People who have gentle hearts may cry and try to get away from everything, while there are also some people who are almost not phased by it at all, though they may keep to themselves.

The way we react to situations and the place we allows ourselves to be put in is the cause for most of our sadness. We do not necessarily know before hand how situations would turn out and the effect it would have on us, but what we can learn to do is learn to deal with it.

We deal with sadness if different way such as forgetting it, or ignoring it and hoping it to go away. A lot of psychologists say that we should face our worries to best solve them and move on, but certainly one of the way i found is that 'time heals'. When we are sad, we shouldn't just give in, since there are so many things that we overlook and take for granted. We can spend sometime taking in our situations and also remember all the things for which we are fortunate for.

A person who overcomes despair, i feel after it is overcome, they come out stronger than when they went in. We learn more about ourselves and capacity during these kind of times. We also learn to appreciate our times of need and appreciate it when others are there as well. When we are sad and depressed, we need to stop, think and make a resolve to carry on, since life goes on, willing or not, so should we.

Without facing despair and sadness, we wouldn't be able to really face reality. I think that a person can work harder towards their goals after they are faced with difficulty and appreciate why they are working towards something.

distinct CHANGES

The way i see it, i feel that change happens constantly in small increments which we don't really pay much heed to. We would realize and appreciate better how much change has happened when we reflect back to a point in our lives and compare it to where we are at the present. This can be seen easily when we look at pictures of ourselves from our past and compare them to us now.. some of us perhaps changed little, and some more dramatically, but in the end we don't 'feel' this change as much.

In our lives our bodies change and at the same time so does our minds. We sometimes change our minds as often as we change our clothes or even more frequent than that even! There are somethings for which we choose not to change our minds about and that is because we can be stubborn at times and even when we realize that our understanding may be erroneous.

When we find that we question things in our minds, it does not mean we do not believe in things but it more shows that we are trying to find a better understanding for what we choose to believe. These questions might not always be in our minds as we might take certain things for granted, such as if we believe that we are created and divinity, then when we ask ourselves of the concept of evolution, we might find ourselves questioning things about what we believe. It does not mean it isn't true what we believe, but shows that we are open to think about it and find a better appreciation for what we think about it.

Our understanding and the way we learn to interpret things in our lives are determined by the way we choose to think. We can be rational and figure that things always have answers which only makes sense to us. We can be intuitive and think of situations and how things that don't make sense should fit with us. To carry this out successfully, i feel that we need to realize that we are expected to change all the time. We should be open to think and question the way we do things and the way we carry out ourselves.

Knowing that a person can change might seem as being unstable, but i feel that a person becomes more understandable and can make solid decisions about things. They can be fair in their thoughts as well as being fair to their beliefs.

Change the way you think and try to understand that you would never understand everything. We should do as much as we have capacity for, but lets not criticize when other people have questions, but rather help them (and yourselves) in understanding better. Change for the better.

a virtue called patience

In all the things we learn in life, one of the lessons we keep coming across is patience. Patience is related to time, as we know that not everything can get done instantly. We practice patience when we have to, though at the same time we want certain things to go by faster than they can and this is when we are being hasty or rather impatient.

In all the things we do, we learn and appreciate things. We learn to savor the things we yearn for and rush through the things we find as an annoyance. There are many proverbs which got to do with patience and its mostly about how virtuous it is.

I relate a the value of patience to calmness and the picture with a serene setting. By just thinking of patience,we physically express things slower and spend more time on these thoughts. Our mind works as such, that they work and calculate somethings to understand it and this process needs time. Some more than others.

Methods used from ancient times to think about stuff can be found to be all different types of meditation. The main reasons for carrying out a meditation is to get clarity of mind and thoughts. Meditation always involves a lot of patience to get the required results.

In day to day lives we come across lots of things which test our patience such as selfish people, taxi drivers, incompetent people and even evident lazy people. We get annoyed and act instinctively getting angry and upset. As Ive mentioned before, we can choose how to react when we can clearly decide what matters more to us, example: when a taxi happens to cut you off, instead of upsetting your mood and getting upset (doesn't change the fact that the taxi cut you off) you can choose to concentrate on other things that matter more.

Virtues are qualities which determine the quality of the lives we choose to live. Although there are many people in our world who don't have the same virtuous views in life, it does not mean we shouldn't. I feel that there is always a way and a reason for things that happen and as such, when we choose to be patient about things, we can learn to make the right choices, not only for ourselves but the people around us as well.

Ive read up on of the ways people meditate and found an interesting article on the art on bonsai which talks of how, while doing that, we learn to look at things differently and we would never look at certain things the same way. Eg. when we do bonsai, we learn to look at the details in the trees and look for the qualities in everything around us. We relate this to everything else, and even to the things people usually pay no extra heed to. In this same way we can learn to appreciate and look at things differently.

Practice patience and learn of things you do not know of.

Makes life interesting

Who can relate when i say that the internet connection always seems a tad too slow, or that why can our phones not do as much as we want them to do (even though we do not know how to use half the features)?

Although we are in a place where we have many technologies which make our lives simpler and easier to live than previously, we sometimes get caught up and end up looking at small things which we understand to criticize on. mostly we fail to appreciate the difference that it makes to our lives and we seem to not be satisfied. As i mentioned before, this is indeed human nature as we always strive for whats better. Where we fail though is that most of us have a lazy attitude towards things and feel its fine that we know of the shortfalls and that someone else would look at it.

We fail to understand that unless we make a change to doing things or put into action how we feel, then most probably everyone else feels the same. What we discover about things such as small inefficiencies, we can fix and feel better about it. If we keep complaining and decide that it is someone elses problem, we shall never  find a solution and at the same time we would always be annoyed with it until someone does something about it.

What im getting at is the fact that we sometimes feel that we are satisfied with what we know and how much we do. We feel that since we work the entire day (for our company goals) we deserve to do nothing else and that anything that isnt in our scope of work that we get paid for, is some other persons problem. Leading a life like this we can fall into a habit that will last till the day we die.

We can however change this and make a difference in our lives.We can change from leading a boring life full of complaints to one which is rather full of new concepts, ideas and ways of doing things. When we become pro active, we not only make our own lives better but at the same time the lives of those around us.

When we think we have learnt enough or we are satisfied with where we are, there is no reason for us to continue. We all have to make our lives interesting by always looking what we can do to add value and change things we feel are inadequate.

We may start fights and argue with people at times, but the reason for these sort of things may be for us to realize that some things need to change and be changed. We need to accept that nothing remains the same forever, then we shall lead an interesting life!

level of respect

Respect. An aspect we learn of and we look for in many different ways for many different things. Respect of the knowledge we hold, respect of the people we know, respect for the value we add to a company and even respect for the amount of authority we command.

Growing, we learn that we need to respect the people around us, our surroundings as well as the thoughts and feelings of everyone. It is probably learnt by our subconscious to respect our parents from our admiration of them and the fact that they provide for us when we are at our most fragile and vulnerable state. As we learn the way of things however, we constantly push the limits and test our parents by being defiant and rebellious. It forms part of our growing up, which we will learn and appreciate better of later.

Our parents provide for us in so many ways making sacrifices and facing times of hardship, though few of us would remember the hardships as they have during the very same time. When we get older, we take it out on them, and since they are older, they know that we are growing and would also have to learn this. The take all our defiance and rebelliousness, yet they always remain our parents. We learn they are always there for us, through our bad choices and our good ones as well. The respect that they deserve, we usually only realize a bit too late most of the time and live with regret.

When at school, we take the respect we learn at home and give it to our teachers in exchange for the skills and knowledge they pass onto us. We also find friends as well as enemy's of all types. We learn to earn respect, and we learn to take respect. Our methods might not always be the nicest types, but we know what it feels like to have respect.

I feel that while earning respect or imposing it onto other people, there must always be a reason for them to do such. Real respect is found when you can really do something that is impressionable and can be looked up by others. Most people that earn respect from others freely, get it by being humble people who we can relate to. To me, a humble person should earn the most respect as they would have your best interests in consideration as well.

The most humble people in most peoples lives are their parents as they do whats best for their children in their capacities.

To have respect, is to earn it. To earn it, we need to find humility.

between two covers

A place where words become places, history, images of cities and far away isolated places. A place which we know nothing of, places where there exist things we can barely imagine and the things we would never really see with our eyes or experience in our lives.

The text which lie on the pages bound between two covers can have endless possibilities. A book is a medium in which we, as a human race record things such as ideas, events and findings. As we are knowledgeable, we have ideas in our minds and we use this for calculating and computing stuff, though we do not have the capacity to remember everything or experience everything in our lifetimes.

The most efficient way of storing these many things by the human race are in books (eBooks as well). Everything from facts, to ideas, to imaginary things. We documents these things so we are able to record or thoughts and share it with the people around us. Storing and sharing of this knowledge helps us with exposing our ideas to more people over distances as well as time. When we ask questions, nobody alive might know the answers, though thinkers from another generation come across the very same questions at another point in time to solve it, then record it and share this as well.

I like to read books which are mostly fantasy since they make up things which do not, and would not exist. They are made up in the minds of the authors and and recorded and translated for us to read. We can read these type of books which opens our minds to the possibilities of understanding things which we have not experienced yet or never will. A fantasy is made entirely in our imaginations and the words in these type of books help our minds sculpt images of places and times.

By allowing the mind to think of things differently, i feel that we can leave the monotonous lifestyles that some of us find ourselves caught up in and think about things from different perspectives. The books we read directly affect us as we relate and learn from the different thing we read about. Example, if we read a book based on some Japanese samurai, we will learn about their honor and perhaps since we would then appreciate it and what it means, we may also adapt that to our lives.

With books, we can learn of experiences, cultures, thought processes and the list is endless. We can record, store and share whatever we want with them. Reading also has other effects that i find specifically. When reading, its usually in a quite place with very little distraction from the outside, so we can almost in fact be drawn into another world. Concentration and a calmness is the most distinct types of feelings i find whilst reading.

To read is to learn and as i quoted previously, we need to "seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave". So read a book, learn something and share the knowledge.

 

the future we provide

When we think of things that have passed, they cannot be altered in anyway except in our minds and how we feel about them. As we know, we have the ability to remember things such as numbers, places, people and images. These type of things we store in our minds are reflect on them at other times. They make up our memories.

As humans, we can only remember and make memories of things we come into contact with and are exposed to. If we haven't had any exposure of certain things, we cannot have any understanding of their nature or existence for that matter. Since this is true, and we have a finite amount of time to be alive, we also live by memories stored by others in books, songs, drawings and nowadays all types of digital format.. Memories of sickness, hardship, difficulty, discovery and many other such things.

With this already learnt and proven (over time) memories of how our surroundings act around us, we learn and progress on what we know. Sometimes we still make mistakes even though we know what to expect and we discover again what was learnt previously on a firsthand basis.

Looking further, we can notice distinct patterns with relation to people across our worlds. Some of our technologies were different, but we all progressed in different areas. We can say that the people in Europe were the first to record history and philosophize etc, but that is what we know of what was recorded. However, we do know that the rate of learning increases exponentially over time and where we were previously, we find ourselves in a totally new situation, where we find that we can go anywhere, do what we want and the possibilities are almost endless.

Looking back we notice of the deficiencies of our past generations and the capabilities and we sometimes think what if they had what we have, what would the outcomes be? Well, i feel that is exactly what we can do. We need to make the most of what we got, and use the past as a guideline in terms of how we go ahead in life.

We need to keep searching, keep living for who knows what our future holds except for the past which we will provide them with.

to lead is to follow

A person who takes charge, talks with authority, makes decisions and does what they feel is right for the whole. This person we can refer to as a leader. Someone who people look up to for advice, for guidance, for the ways to do things and make decisions on our behalf. The decisions we are too scared or have no confidence to take for ourselves.

Being a leader is not necessarily a bad thing as i feel that such things come naturally to some people and they can be made out. In a perfect system, we would have leaders who are meant to be there and they would lead us adequately, but the reality isn't so.

We find ourselves in times where there are monarchs, rebels and armies taking over governments, countries and holding people hostage to get their ways. There are many ways in which people are leaders and at the same time we find there as much people who want to be leader since this is a position of power. Power can be both constructive and destructive depending on who wields it, and since the power of our current generations are defined by the amount of money, resources, armies and people a country has, the person who has control over the most of these has the most power. Currently we know one of these super powers are clearly the USA, since they have the biggest economy, the biggest armies & capabilities and they have a multitude of people. The risk of holding this much of power is abuse and making the wrong choices. We all make mistakes and yet with so much power, a small mistake can go the wrong way.

We can also recognize a leader in our houses as the person who is the 'bread winner' and such, has the power to control what happens in the household. There also exist more noble households who base their leader as the elders in the house. The point of a leader should be the one that can successfully lead us down the right path in a way we can understand and grow as people, keep up with the times yet not sit in a backward community afraid of the dark since in the old days a bear would look somewhat like a ghost and would kill people.

We also have religious leaders who attempt to guide us adequately down the divine part, but in a lot of ways, we cannot fully understand these things unless we aspire to be someone in their stead as well. We need leaders who know of our lives, our circumstances and can direct us with meaning. When we don't fully understand something, we do feel as if we are being manipulated.

Not everyone is born a natural leader, but we can all take control and lead our lives. We also have people to look up to and follow, but at the same time learn, since we all need to lead at sometime.