Afterthought: Simple Truth By Kent Nerburn
Now, a really short book that shares wisdom is always worth. We don't necessarily need to listen to what he says, but in a world where too little of us listen to what our grandpa and grandma had to say, it's always worth learning from the elderly.
Instead of trying to nit-pick in this article, one would rather summarize what he had said that one found interesting, rephrased or not. Sometimes, one may make some tweak so they contain one's opinions also; so always refer back to the original book for what he said, and here will be what he said plus my tweak. Ready?
Education doesn't stop in school. After high school, after university, we should continue learning by cultivating an endless sense of curiosity and wonder. School taught the modern paradigm accepted in its disciplines, called knowledge. As for learning outside of school, from books usually its knowledge, but sometimes, there are wisdom; though most wisdom can be learn with experience only.
The true measure of one's education isn't what one know, but how one share what one know with others.
Work is a vocation, a calling. We could treat it as a means to an end, to earn money. Yet, whatever we do, whatever we invest our time into, it'll make us us. The affirmation and security an employee's job gives, we have to pay back with our freedom and dreams.
And a person without dreams is only half alive.
Money cannot be remove from our life, but they don't make us happy either. Really, being satisfied with something doesn't depend on the amount of money you have, but how you think about your circumstances, hence how you think about money. If our desire is to earn more money, we can never earn enough. If we earn enough to fulfill our needs, we don't need to earn more money. Don't be too stingy with money; keep only what you need to survive. And, avoid being in debt; for debt means spending more now in expense of spending less in the future.
Knowing how to be poor means developing an unerring instinct for the difference between what's essential and what's only desirable. It means not getting caught up in what's lacking, but finding meaning in what one have.
Possessions started out as something we believe will make us happy. Alas, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky had mentioned about "Regression to the Mean" before, which is applicable here (while not exactly what they try to mean): you cannot stay in constant elation nor constant depression all the time without putting in effort to maintain it; we tend to regress to baseline. What makes us happy a moment ago, or hours ago, or days ago, will feel nothing soon. When possessions mean nothing to us anymore, they became a burden, for we humans felt hurt more by losing an equivalent amount of item than the elation we gain by earning an equivalent amount of item. If we have less possessions, we'll value each of them more. Appreciate!
Remember, possessions have no inherent value. If they increase our capacity to give, they become something good. If they increase our focus on ourselves and become standards by which we measure other people, they become something bad.
Giving is what Seneca called "benefits" in the English Translation of "De Beneficiis" (On Benefits). We don't need anything in return of a benefit, including the cameras and recognitions and headline of a news.
You'll start to feel what's common among us. Once you become a giver, you'll never be alone.
Traveling doesn't have to be far, neither it needs to be in another country. A tourist visit a country for many reasons, the food, the places, the museums, the history, the language, the scenery; a traveler practices wanderlust: the urge for adventure, and the desire to know what's over the next hill. Someone said, a traveler is just someone whom tried to escape the burden of life; but if the solid routines had dull our senses and our dreams and our curiosity, (perhaps not even) comforting and limiting; the unwillingness to get out of our comfort zone not because the comfort zone is comfortable, but because we fear what's new more than what we currently experience, even if that means going home and getting into cold war with your partners every day, if applicable.
Your own world, which was so large as to consume your whole life, becomes smaller and smaller. To be a real traveler, one must be willing to give oneself over to the moment, and take oneself out of the center of one's universe.
All the risk and hardship will seem like nothing compared to the knowledge and wisdom one will have gained.
Loneliness is an epidemic that swept the whole world in the 21st century; the ease of mobile devices had dealt its irreversible damage. Solitude is forgetting our "self" to calm one's mind and heart, to find the meaning of life, to allow wisdom to accumulate, and to allow ourselves to deal with lingering problems that we buried with the activities in our life, just because we felt so scared of doing nothing.
Silence becomes a symphony. Time changes from a series of moments strung together into a seamless motion riding on the rhythms of the stars.
When we have a part of ourselves that's firm, confident, and alone, we don't need another person to fill us.
Love is a mystery we can't seek out; it happens when it happens. When it comes, appreciate; when it goes, let it go. Love creates dependency, and losing something hurts so much we're not willing to let it go; but we have no choice, it's not controllable. Not that it won't come again; it may rekindle with the same person in a a different way; but when it go, we can't force it to stay. Appreciate that the person had come to your life and paint a picture, complete or not, and remember there are so much more person out there that don't experience what you felt. ("much" because uncountable no. of humans hehe).
Don't take advantage; don't cause pain. How you deal with love is how love will deal with you. You don't choose love. Love chooses you.
Marriage can be disappointing, marriage can be tolerating, marriage can be for social reasons, and marriage can be love. Author said, the central secret seems to be choosing well; to look past the initial fascination (a.k.a. the first 2-3 years of romantic blindness to each other's flaws); and marriage needs to have sex, or sexual desire will occupy one's attention, preventing one from giving one's whole to one's partner. All relationships, not just marriage, requires laughter. Even a relationship with colleague based on seriousness deteriorates without laughter. And, couples don't live in a control world; they interacts with the environment too; so don't be blind to your environment. And, one need to respect and accept how one's partner confronts the mysteries of life; if one can't respect what they did/behave, perhaps consider reconsidering the relationship.
Truly fortunate partners manage to become longtime friends before they realize they're attracted to each other. If you can make each other laugh, you can always surprise each other.
Parents may surprise their children, but their children certainly is a gift to them. To get things right for them, parents would be willing to sacrifice their dear face to get what's best for their child. We can't remember how we grow up, nor can we remember what we'd seen when we first open our eyes; but we can see someone growing up, and we can invest time with them, and they will influence our life with mysteries and awe. Don't fear the loss of freedom; neither seek it to fill one's void. Parenthood requires wholeness. If one don't have wholeness, one should wait.
It opens one's world into a new sunlight, and is a gift greater than a dream.
Strength isn't muscle, at least not only muscle. Courage, conviction: they causes us to act. Sometimes, grit. Perhaps we wanted to do something else more interesting than taking care of one's parents or grandparents; neither are more muscular. Do what you must do without needing the praise nor recognition. True strength doesn't mangify others' weaknesses; it makes others stronger.
True strength isn't about force, but about conviction. Its opposite isn't cowardice and fear, but confusion, lack of clarity, and lack of sound intention.
Strength based on force is a strength people fear. Strength based in love is a strength people crave.
Tragedy is unavoidable. We can only emerge from tragedy stronger. Tragedy tell us what's our responsibility, gain us knowledge (and wisdom); it gives us a chance to think life afresh. One shouldn't fear tragedy and suffering. Ask yourself, how could you heal from the pain and suffering tragedy had caused?
How one respond to tragedy and suffering is one true measure of one's strength.
Spiritual Journey is God; whether we believe it or not, in whatever form: the modern monotheism, dual-theism, or the older Greek polytheism; or even Taoism which believes nature is God (and God is Mother Nature, as far as one understood). If people reject you with meaning, don't argue with them; it's no use convincing one who can't be convince. Just take one's journey outside the walls; and leave the others argue within the confine of the walls. Begin by accepting where one is. Then, practice, walk the talk -- prayer, meditation, worship, good works -- however it be. In one's mind: you can reject to be religious, but you must have a philosophy; a philosophy acts as an anchor to your life, so you could see philosophy as spirituality, as they're both anchor of life.
Have faith in one's path. Follow it as one can; change it if one must; but don't give up the search for the sea.
Don't refuse to seek God because one can't find the one truth.
Elders are who we would be in years, decades, or a century if you believe you could live that long. Or, you're already an elderly. The losing of one's muscle means one no longer capable of doing what one could when young (though this isn't always true if you retain a hunter gatherer's life -- grandpa or grandma, they remained helpful until the end of life, and they die quickly than stay in bed sick for long). The degradation of one's brain, especially if you don't use it actively enough (or learning new things often), means you're not as capable mindfully as you did. Yet, we don't think that far; we treat them as children, we forget our younger generation would treat us as children in years or decades. Don't pity them! You won't want to be pitied, do you? They offer us the knowledge of their past, and the wisdom of our future.
Caring and respect, listen, laugh, and even challenge. The words and actions of the elders are to be taken seriously.
Death is a common mystery. We fear death because we fear we lose our "self". But fear is something too great to celebrate, too great to fear.
Embrace the process of dying as a passage into an harmony; perhaps it's a vastness of empty silence, or maybe it's a presence. Even in the greatest place, the silence has a sound.
And finally, here are some more interesting sentences from the epilogue:
We are prisoners of time, victims of biology, hostages of our own capacity to dream.
A life well lived must somehow celebrate the promise that life provides.
There's in each of us, no matter how humble, a capacity for love.
It'll be these small touches that'll become our legacy to the universe.
(The small touches are the small acts and moments that perhaps will make a difference.)
If we have played our part well, offering love where it was needed, strength and caring where it was lacking; if we have tended the earth and its creatures with a sense of humble stewardship, we'll have done enough.
It's a small legacy, perhaps, but a legacy nonetheless.
We don't know what the people of the past, whether they wanted to leave their legacy. Some may just live life on, confined within whatever they care about. Others may set out to change the world. Whatever that is, one'd leave a legacy, even if one's not aware of it. What legacy do you want to leave to your friends, your families, your relationships, or if you're world bound, the world?
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This article/blog is first written in wabinab.github.io.