If someone would have asked me in my initial years, what I would you like to be, I would have said that I wanted to be a good human being first and then everything else ..in fact I didn’t have much of a “goal” as I was too busy in “survival”, and I liked this quote
"I would rather excel others in the knowledge of what is excellent than in the extent of my power and dominion." ---Alexander
I guess same might be the case with many but ..If I ask someone how would you recognize a human being …the answers I guess will be different..
For me the “ABCD” of life (and thus recognizing a human being) means..
A->Activity
B->Behavior
C->Common Sense
D->Discipline
But as everyone knows,
“What a man can be is born with him; what he becomes is a result of his environment.”
So why don’t we change that very environment for everyone’s benefit? I try to do it sometimes through spoken and written words thinking of a better world , a world free of many shortcomings that the golden eras didn’t have ..
After all, "Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better."
So if we can keep purpose of life as :
“To make it a better world for living”…it makes more sense than anything else I believe
Looking for quotable quotes was one my likings and I’ll share some of those in this context I used to like this quote very much in my heart:
"Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody's going to know whether you did it or not" - Oprah Winfrey
But in today’s world I guess “Life is lost in living, wisdom is lost in knowledge and knowledge is lost in information” …
And I guess the reason being too much of information creating chaos and peer pressure decreasing the Emotional Quotient (Which gives us empathy, motivation, compassion and an ability to respond skillfully to pleasure and pain) and Spiritual Quotient(That makes us “soul-conscious” as opposed to being” body/ego-conscious”) of human being …
As Swami Vivekananda has said “Education isn’t how much you committed to memory or how much you know , it is being able to differentiate between what you know and need, and what you don’t know and don’t need”…
As a result of this chaos and confusion I guess the entropy of our system and the surrounding environment increases and the spirituality (which can act as heat-sink) being absent, raises the enthalpy also …The environmentalists these days are saying that the lack of peace and harmony is also increasing the Global temperature and aiding to the cause of Global Warming ..
It’s actually because of the ATTITUDE and DISCIPLINE with which we lead our life that counts so much for a better world …Interestingly if we consider numerology and break up the word ATTITUDE and DISCIPLINE we will get a surprising result ..
A+T+T+I+T+U+D+E = 1+20+20+9+20+21+4+5 = 100
D+I+S+C+I+P+L+I+N+E = 4+9+19+3+9+16+12+9+14+5 = 100
I believe, there are very few words in the dictionary that can make a stronger impact in this world…
Also I would like to present in here some truths I found useful in this world:
Three things to admire: Intellect, Beauty and Music
Three things to cultivate: Cheerfulness, Sympathy & Contentment
Three things to value: Time, Money & Health
Three things to Govern: Tongue, Temper & Action
Three things to avoid: Idleness, Falsehood & Intolerance
Three things to love: Honesty, Purity & Truth
Lastly, I would like to remember the inspiring poem of Rabindranath Tagore with his vision of a better world .
“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake”..
Self-respectfully yours,
-Dev
