Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won’t come in.
—Alan AldaStay curious and open to life. No matter what happens keep learning and growing.
—Cheerful Monk
Bertrand Russell, on the other hand, had a completely different different point of view:
We all live in a dream. The fortunate person never wakes up. Basically he was saying, Ignorance is bliss…if you’re lucky.
I cheerfully admit, I’m not one of the “lucky” ones. I’m more like a bird crashing into a window because she doesn’t even see it’s there. The best I can do when that happens is take a bit of time to recover my wits, then go flying off again, learning as much as I can from the experience.
Isn’t that a bit grim for Cheerful Monk? I think not. Just because life is imperfect doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy it. And “enjoy” is an active verb. It doesn’t mean just taking pleasure in the good fortune that comes our way, although that is important. It also means taking action to create joy in our lives. I try to do that by making a commitment to curiosity, lifelong learning, love and compassion, and humility and humor. What about you? What is your life like? What do you do to create joy in it?
Please share your thoughts and experience in the comments section.
Thanks to bikehikebabe, Ellen, Pauline, Robert and Daz for commenting on last week’s post.
Thanks also to Noa Rose for the Alan Alda quote.
Uh-oh, my life is too hectic. I have curiosity, learning, love & humor, but not enough to let more JOY into my life.
To be honest, I couldn’t agree less with the Bertrand Russell sentiment. Its easy to live in the unconscious flow of life, but true joy and fulfilment can only be found through awakening.
There is an early to rise hummingbird that flits past my patio door most mornings while I’m having breakfast–that’s one of my unexpected joys of the day. Brief in duration but long in lasting joy!
bikehikebabe,
Presumably it’s easier to continue to be too busy than to eliminate some things from your life? remember Edward Bear in Looking, Learning, Opening Up to Life.
Todd,
I clearly agree with you. I do think Russell’s opinion makes great contrast…it makes it easier to see what we believe.
Thank you both for coming by!
Noa,
Thank you for sharing! I really appreciate it.
I agree with 5 of the 6 commitments. Humility has become far too overrated in this modern world and is probably the reason we sometimes feel like the bird crashing into the window.
Love yourself, put yourself first and then you aren’t so bothered by the world and less likely to let a window get the better of you.
We are infinite potential, we are far more than this meat shell that scratches out an existance caught between the obfuscations of religion where ‘experts’ tell you that they know what God wants and the guesswork of science where ‘experts’ tell you that you’re just a random chance glob of chemicals.
We are brilliant and with the new science, like quantum physics, combined with the 100% on record proof that psychics have a power that old science doesn’t want to address –
there is an answer, heck now we know how evolution really works, it’s not a slow gradual process they still teach in schools (old science says birds evolved from dinosaurs but there are no evolutionary fossils of the transition, one day it’s dinosaurs the next (geological record speaking) it’s birds), it’s dna being instantly rewritten once the earth reaches a certain position in the galaxy where energy (the energy that is heating up most of our local planets, even Pluto which is moving away from the sun yet warming up) will transmute our dna into a new evolutionary step.
Stop being so humble! the answers are out there and the facts, cold hard provable facts, not the wishful thinking of religion and old science, say that we are far far more important and far far more connected to each other than ever before.
The new age people say that love and compassion are the keys to getting yourself ready to accept the energetic changes that will happen as we cross into 2012!!
Daz,
🙂 Thanks for joining the conversation! I’ll still stick to a bit of humility…to me it’s connected with a sense of humor and also a sense of wonder and openness to new experiences. In my mind it has nothing to do with being self-effacing. You mention quantum physics. If that’s not something that inspires wonder and awe, I don’t know what will.
Again, thanks!