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.