Should one take life seriously or not? Now I’ve got it, at last. Sometimes one has to be very serious about things, sometimes one must not be serious at all. Only crashing bores are always serious, and only complete idiots are never serious about anything. How can one laugh and have some fun if one is dead serious, and how can one discuss a serious problem that has to be solved with someone who feels that life is but a joke?
*
Yesterday I was very, very tired. I felt like lead, worn out and burned out. I’ve been working too much and I haven’t had enough sleep for weeks now. But, as I walked through the park on my way home from work, I suddenly felt very happy, for absolutely no reason at all. It was a wonderful summer afternoon. The air was fresh after a rain shower, the sky was blue with a few white clouds and the trees where luxuriant green. I took a photo of a puddle. Isn’t it silly for a man in his fifties, to take photos of puddles? A boy was playing with his German shepherd pup on the big lawn and I was thinking about how strange life is. “I have absolutely no reason for being this happy now. Isn't this unconditional love? I love everything for no reason at all.”
Today, as I write this, I’m back in a more normal state of mind. I have a day off from work and I plan to do as little as possible.
Just before I begun to write this I was watching Elisabeth Lesser being interviewed by Oprah Winfry on her soul series. I was thinking: Life is not necessarily a school. It is a good way to look at life. It makes life worth living, it makes life easier to digest, but it is not necessary how life really is. It is a world view. “Life is not a school. The deathbed is not a braking-up. Life is not a meditation practice, not a rehearsal. All this is just thoughts.” This is also just thoughts. How is life really, if one doesn’t have any thoughts at all about it? Isn’t thinking what makes us human? Is life about finding a good world view?
1 comment:
Isn't Love what makes us human? If a person has a brain injury like a stroke, for example, which impairs their thinking "ability" they are still human. Do you give them up for dead because their brain is impaired? We are also animals like other animals, but they "think" as well. Their thoughts exist only in the Now. In many ways, the animals have something to teach us about their way of thinking/living in the Now. And Loving...think of a dog!
Actually, what does it matter WHAT separates us from other creatures? It is "human" nature to live in harmony with EVERYTHING but we have gone far, far away from our true natures. Now we begin the return. I am not superior to a bird like I am not superior to a child. I am not inferior to someone who has been educated at Harvard or Yale.
When their is Love "problems," actually, are solved with the heart, not the "brain." If you really want to get technical I suppose you could say this heart-function is coming from the brain but it is an evolved brain where the left and right sides compliment each other in their play/work.
Post a Comment