By: Melissa Wyckoff
As Humans we have to realize that our bodies are not immortal beings. We were born on this earth and we will die on this earth. I never really thought of myself as dying someday. I seem to just live for now, not taking into account that one day life will cease for me. I do not mean to be morbid, but we should live knowing that one day we are going to die. With the understanding that our life on this earth is limited it should urge us to be sensitive of time.
The average lifespan of a human is about 76 years. Now stop thinking of years and think about your favorite season. My favorite season is summer. That means I will only enjoy 76 summers in this lifetime. When I put death in a concept that is more tangible it does not seem like much time.
Since life is short I must pursue the desires of my heart and find out the meaning of my life. When I die my body will not remain but the essence of my actions will.
A Habit
What is a Habit? A habit is something so engraved in our being that it is difficult to get rid of. Even when we think we get rid of our habits, are we really free from them our whole entire lives? Take the phrase "A Habit Remains" and letter by letter from left to right start erasing them one by one. When we erase the A we still have "Habit Remains." Next we go on to elliminating the H and we have "A Bit Remains." The following letter A gets erased and we have "Bit Remains." We remain optomistic that little by little we are getting rid of our habit just like we are erasing these letters. The next letter we erase is the B and we are left with "It Remains." No matter how hard we try to get rid of the habit it will always be with us.
Take for example the habit of drinking. Little by little you are trying to ween yourself off the bottle. Before you know it, it has been a year since you have taken a sip. You go to a party and the taste of your favorite drink comes to mind. You can actually taste it on your tongue without even drinking it. The action of the habit may not actually remain but you know what the habit feels or tastes like and that will never go away.
So what is the solution? Do not start any bad habits. Habits no matter how you look at them always remain in one form or another and we can never actually get rid of them.
Bordom
On the issue of boredom I think it is because to much is given to us too easily and that is why we are always bored. In order to get rid of boredom we have to make the ordinary part of our life extraordinary by living life to the fullest.
BK Generation
Americans are looking for a quick fix for the emptiness they feel within. They are accustomed to working hard at their jobs but have no patience in dealing with the real problems of life. They believe that everything can be bought through money and that is their biggest problem. Money can not buy love, happiness, or any other emotion that would make us feel whole. Nothing can not be bought or solved by a drive up window. Myself as an American I need to learn the art of patience. I am so use to having everything at the convienance of my fingertips that when something does not go my way I get angry or frustrated. A quick fix is exactly that something quick and lasts for a moment. We can not live by the Burger King slogan "Have it your way." Everything in our lives does not go our way nor can we expect it to all the time. When something does not go our way we need to not get angry but be patient and everything will work itself out.
A sign that much work is needed in in the area of personal spiritual growth is when a person dislikes being alone, especially in silence. Many people use the television, computer, music, adn the such to fill the silence so that they do not have to experience themselves as they really are.
When we face ourselves in silence, we can gain strength in who we are. When we know ourselves we have confidence in the identity of our soul and spirit.From this strength no one can pull us down and no one can lead us to be anything else bit what we know we must do or be.
Silence, is also a tool in order to work out the problems they have encountered. It is when we are quiet that we can reflect on yesterday, or what other people are going through, or to even hear the chatterings of nature. When we calm our spirit and reflect like so, we can understand all the situations that went sour. Once this is accomplished just realize the problems and move on, learn from it and try not to repeat the same situation. Silence makes us shake off the rest of the world. When the silence has then passed I then move on to a greater noise.
Excellence only comes from getting up when you fall down and not falling down more than once because of the same reason.
Some people say that the truth might hurt. Is this really a valid claim? If truth was evidently universal for every living being why would it hurt one person and not another? Truth is plain truth. It is neither hard nor soft, gentle, loving, offensive, or any other ideal.
It just depends on the ground upon which it lands. The ground being us, it depends if we are hard, offensive, jelous, and the such, and if we are willing to receive what another person tells us. The truth might be hard for a person to hear if they know that they are doing wrong. Furthermore, the truth would be offensive to one if we had an issue with the person bringing it to us. It is not the truth that is hard to deal with, but in fact it is ourselves which is hard to deal with.
Simplicity sounds almost too easy, it sounds so vague that everyone things that they have achieved it. What is the simple life you ask? Is it to live like a poper and have no material posessions? No, not so. I believe that you can have material wealth, but just don't place your worth in them. For objects do not make the person and happiness isn't so mcuh about what we have and when we realize this, that we have achieved simplicity. If we can't understand simplicity then we can never appreciate nature or animals, for thie whole existance is based on this one concept. And if you can't sit down in the splendor of their simplicity, then how will you ever glory in your own.
I truely believe in the statement withough vision people will perish. I do not mean to be philisophical at the moment. I am taking this statement literally. Without an idea od what you want out of life one will be filled with emotions such as depression, low self esteme, apathy, and perhaphs even anger. These emotions if let permsions to grow, will draw one into thought of suicide, or to perish and end ones life.
How do we get vision, and where does it come from? We gain vision of what our potention is from that of our leseds and from those whose lives we admire or despise. My vision of what I can become is like a strong magnet, and it pulls me to think of the future. Therefore, with vision one's life can be lived to the fullest by attaining ambition to be what we want.
Our vision however, must be a true one, for most people believe themselves to be far less than what they could be.
With power comes less tollerance. For example, if you ahve a mosquito buzzing about your head, you are going to attempt to smack it and kill it because it was annoying you. We humans are a high life form, we have more value, and we have ower so that we are not going to tollerate a lesser creature tormenting us.
This idea gets misconstrued in many ways. It is when we think that we have power over something or someone that we are going to tollerate their actions less. We get irritated and begin to get bossy, speak down at others, and begin to disrespect others who we believe to be less powerful or have less value. The fact of the matter is however, that with power comes responsibility. We as humans are given power so that we may be responsible for the lesser creatures or for those who are unfortunate so that we may nurture them and bring them to a level where they feel appreciated.
However, it has been happening since the dawn of man, the lack of responsibilty that people take upon themselves, especially when we commit a wrong. There are numerous businesses that opporate and have become sucessful just because we fail to be responsible. The police, judges, FBI, and several other agenciesare all functioning because people- most of the time the general public- committed a wrong and are unwilling to admit it. As Dr. Sues says in the book The Lorax, "Unless, unless someone like you who cares an aweful lot, nothing is ever goign to get better, not its just not." So now is the time to take the initiative and change something instead of passing the responsibility on to someone else to deal with.
Potholes, ruts, ditches, and the such. We always like to cover over the mistakes and fill them in, compacting them extremely firm so that it looks like nothing was ever wrong. But somehow, over time, those holes if not patch correctly, will resurface and sometimes be bigger than they were in the first place. If mistakes are delt with properly the first time most likely holes will stop forming in the same place. So next time you are out driving don't get mad at the construction workers for filling in holes, when you do the same thing in your life.
Most of the time we do not know who is on this earth untill they are gone. What perhaphs is the reasoning? It is not supprising that we are so into ourselves that we forget to know others. We either keep to ourselves and do not bother to have relationships or do not know how to aquire a relationship with others.
I wont and I can't really translates into I am too afraid to try. But, if you never try you will never change nor will you have hope that your life might alter somehow. Once we try something that we are afraid to do, it is only then that we realize how insignificant the fear really was. Everyone has fears and everyone deals with them differently. The most important thing however, is that not everyone in this world has the same fear. So because of this we have hope that we can conquer whatever is holding us back, because this fear does not possess everyone, just those that do not push themselves to rid of it.
Everyone at some time is always afraid of change. We are creatures of habit and do not like to experience anything that is unfamilar to us. When having to experience change though, I find that it is much easier to think about the new raher than think about how we are going to go through the change. Second, stay focused. Many times when we have to experience a new situation we get distracted. 99% of all failure occures give up too soon. Distractions make us stray off the path too easily.
