The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong, is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.
Today is my son's birthday.
Fourteen years ago I gave birth to him. So it is also my day that reminds me of how it happened that he was accepted as another human being into the human community. In this context I greet all mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, grandparents, aunts and uncles. So all of you. Which place you take in the life of your nearest one is your special place. You can't do everything. You have certain abilities and others you miss. If you want to be everything for your parents, your siblings or your child, you will inevitably feel inadequate. If you only see what your relatives can't do and haven't done for you, you will become ignorant of how you are integrated into the network.
Every form of closeness also includes distance.
In this interplay, you should take good care to keep your willingness or refusal to be near and far in balance. If you have done too much and feel responsible for everything, you will consequently experience a moment when you want to throw everything away and turn your back on your obligations because they have become too big for you. Then you will do too little in time and neglect your responsibility. It is much too thrilling in this field. There - between too much and too little - are only doubts, tension and suffering.
In all of us there is a deep need to give something of ourselves to our fellow human beings. There are many possibilities. What are the gifts you have to distribute?
When I cleaned the apartment this morning because we were expecting visitors, I thought:
everyone should keep his space in order.
Take care of the things that don't belong to him. I looked at the wooden floor and thought: this floor is only rented. I did not treat it well because the apartment is not my property. The wood is scratched and brittle. I should have oiled it and given it better care. If I only treat the things that are in my possession well, I must ask myself: Why is that? Is the possession of someone else of so little value to me? How do I decorate my balcony, which points outwards and on which passers-by look up? What do they see? An unkempt box or may they rejoice to see plants blooming there and to suspect a cherishing hand. Everything is only borrowed, nothing really belongs to me alone in this world. My balcony now goes into hibernation. In this winter time everything lies down and the beauty of the colours fades. Until it awakens again.
And what if I treat the things in my possession badly myself?
How do I handle my clothes, my shoes? Are they worth nothing to me except how they look from the outside and suit me pretty? But then I throw away what I have worn and want to appear in new splendour? What for? I possess innumerable things. How important are these things to me?
If my house burned down, what would I miss? Would my identity then be gone? It would probably hurt a lot. And anyone who has ever been robbed knows how much it violates their privacy that someone else grabbed something in a moment of coarseness and lack.
Something like that must not happen? But it does. If the principles that have to do with omissions weren't set out separately, then we wouldn't need them.
Have you ever noticed? Anybody going slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac.
George Carlen
Where you stand, there is no other.
When you yourself were a thief, you didn't think of the stolen one. Now you may have become wiser, but you haven't always been. Other people have yet to find out what you have perhaps already seen. You cannot carry anyone to what you already know. If you try, you always fail. Then you get angry about the stupidity of others, because you yourself think you have a bright moment.
What if you have a dark moment? That presses you down and where you feel vulnerable and weak. Then how do you feel when you perceive the constant hostility between people? What would you wish for then? That others will finally stop violating the universal principles?
Let us assume that this wish would come true.
There is peace on earth, all people are happy, nourished, animated by permanent need fulfilment. From tomorrow every conflict will come to an end, the killing and lying and cheating would be finally over. Nobody would be afraid anymore. The fear would be completely dissolved. The human suffering ends. What are the conditions for this to happen?
I think such an existence might be the end of mankind. For the prerequisite would be that no one would die any more and no one would be born any more.
Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification.
Sir Karl Raymund Popper
If the ham no longer has a slice of bread at the top and bottom, it will remain a ham forever.
But there is no ham at all. The ham was a pig before, which grew before in another pig, which was begotten before by other pigs. Our ancestors - the small mammals - survived when the dinosaurs died out because a meteor devastated the earth. Everything that has happened since sixty-five million years ago has led you and I to blog here today.
Being born is a painful and yet liberating process.
Dying is a painful and yet liberating process.
How do you know it hurts and is liberating? Because you experienced it already. By witnessing. When someone is hurt by being born or by dying. It hurts. It's painful. Yet it gives you a sense of relief when it's over.
The child forces itself through the narrow birth canal, it is compressed and leaves the womb by surrendering to the pressure exerted on it by the mother's body. Only when the narrowness is overcome can mother and child breathe a sigh of relief. The eye of the needle of birth released you into a life in which you learned to walk on your own feet. Until you finally return to the womb of the earth. And everything that you once were enters the earth and the ether of the world.
Ageing isn't that bad if you consider the alternatives.
Maurice Chevalier
As a sandwich layer you face your own existence
and that of many others from your birth. The separation that your mind is fooling you into, according to which you differentiate between good and evil, is merely a framework for you to have a capacity for judgment. Presumably only existent for the reason that we can distinguish hot from cold (fire burns, ice freezes), round from pointed, dangerous from harmless (cat of prey or shrew), silence from noise. But not to destroy each other according to our mental ideas. They are just illusions.
After all, words are not weapons.
A knife can be a weapon.
A baton.
A hand that becomes a fist.
But words are sounds
that come out of your mouth and can't hurt you. Death is death. Nothing can understand it nor fathom it. Just like life is a mysterious thing. But these are just words. Death means: a living being that no longer breathes. It begins to decompose. Life means: a living being that breathes and has effect in the world as the world affects it.
In life you cannot expect joy to remain joy and pain to remain pain.
You can laugh for a minute about a really funny joke. But then your laughter stops. Would you be able to laugh about a joke for two hours? Probably not. You eat a chocolate with pleasure for five minutes. Your enjoyment would inevitably turn into disgust if you had satisfied your desires and had to go on eating.
Sadness cannot go on forever. You cry and you eventually stop. Some thing happens and you quit on it. Have you ever forced yourself to cry on purpose? What do you have to do in order to be able to? What if you would try it out now? Reading my words: do I make you feel something? Or is it you who is doing that? Where can you make a distinction? And why is it even necessary to distinguish? Because, when you feel good you can give me credit for it and if not you can be upset with me?
However. I'm not good at cleaning shoes and oiling floors. I can't repair computers and I have no idea how to treat teeth or build motors. I cannot save the world. Nor can I put an end to your joy or suffering. You can. If that is your will.
There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
What matters is now.
you take this mattering and place it from hand to the other hand. Or you could do so. While you read what I write. Not the events which take place elsewhere out of your reach.
Do things wisely. Note the pauses between the vibrations. If there were no pauses, everything would be a single perpetual sound. If there was no space between us, we would fall into each other and probably end up in a singularity. The space in between is our connection, the silence between the tones the liaison for the rhythm.
I can't keep getting involved,
I can't keep writing stories that are finished. In the meantime, I have to distance myself from it in order to be able to approach it again later. I get inspiration from what my day brings me. People I meet, experiences I make. Without them I could write nothing here. If everything is just fantasy and nothing is reality, the fantasy would be eaten up at some point. The artist wants to feel something to express himself. He takes the events of life and forms a work out of them. But let's not kid ourselves. The work of art is no more valuable than the person who experiences it. Art for the sake of art is meaningless.
Stuff is meaningless. Life is meaningless. It will be lived.
We are going to unite us through the seasons. Now Christmas is going to take place for many of us.
For others, this time of the year means nothing.
I am making myself aware that what I don't know or don't like, what I do want to have and don't want to have is not the most important thing. Thinking of alien habits and traditions makes me feel interested. The variety and abundance of human cultures, of natures creatures is what life is. It's neither good nor bad. It's strangeness and miracle is what makes it interesting.
It's on and off nature.
A Zen master once said to me, "Do the opposite of whatever I tell you."
So I didn't.
Actually, my new year starts up from tomorrow. It's winter solstice and the shortest day on this side of the earth. Tomorrow the days will start to become longer. The birth of my son gives the initiation for me to think that way. Born is the day out of the night. The night out of the day.
Quotes from:
http://viewonbuddhism.org/resources/funny_quotes.html
Animated picture sources:
https://giphy.com/gifs/movie-oh-boy-our-gang-PE84d6p5ry3zW/links
https://giphy.com/gifs/little-rascals-the-rascaps-xTiN0iOESJsWSWBuCs
https://giphy.com/gifs/water-paradise-seapunk-IvDNMYRwQQiIM/links
https://giphy.com/gifs/fun-trouble-baking-t8r8Qox0h9WkU/links
Happy birthday to your son, happy Christmas and solstice to you both!
Too much and too little and what to do are a bouncing game for me--ping pong and never seem a static. I could pick any number of activities to do today and any I choose eliminate another. For example, your deciding to write your article rather than polish the floor? Perhaps, because they're your arrangement of words rather than another guys wood floor?
I better consider how I want to spend my next twelve hours!
yes, that is so. Doing one thing is excluding the other. I decided on arranging words as I do have this Christmas feeling and like to share it. The floor hopefully will survive some more weeks.
Setting priorities is an art, no? ;-)
Thank you, Kimberly for visiting.
I'll wait until I come back to you and give you my wishes. Curious what you will tell me about your last twelve hours.
Smacking Kisses!
Mwahh! Yes, definitely an art form :)
Happy birthday to your son, Erica! May he be healthy and grow into a wonderful man! <3
Sincere thanks to you:)) I am already a silly pride mom as he looks so fresh, so young and so beautiful. I can also see the man coming through. What an adventure life is.
Hugs for you and for your little one.
Thank you, Erica! I didn't have enough time to read the whole article, but I will surely do it today or tomorrow. I just wanted to congratulate you both on the special occasion! <3
I imagine that we can really only rent things, death leaves us without property.
Happy birthday to your son and congratulations to you!
McFly! I like to have you here. Whenever I see your avatar, I am sixteen again. :)
Thank you for congratulating me. I wish I would have been more humbled and devoted back then at the day of my sons birth.
Yes, nothing is really ours, we share the whole planet with everyone and everything.
All the best for you & sincere greetings to the UK
Hi erh.germany,
Visit curiesteem.com or join the Curie Discord community to learn more.
Delighted by your visit! Thank you & whoever you are: Merry Christmas to you and yours.
Ho Ho Ho! @erh.germany, one of your Steem friend wished you a Merry Christmas and asked me to give you a new badge!
SteemitBoard wish you a Merry Christmas!
May you have good health, abundance and everlasting joy in your life.
To see who wanted you to receive this special gift, click here!
Click here to view your Board
Do not miss the last post from @steemitboard:
I missed this on the day, but stopped by to check on your blog to see if there was something new. What a wonderful surprise, though nothing you say here surprises me. Perfect message for me today: remain calm and balanced. Appreciate the moment. (At least this is what I take away).
At my age, taking the long view is a natural perspective. That long view informs me that I am exquisitely unique and yet a part of all things. As for taking care of "things"--I'm afraid I fall down on that count. "Things" receive little notice in my life. I'm more likely to take care of someone else's "things" than my own, because there's a sense of responsibility to another.
A very thoughtful essay, one you should keep and share with your son when he is old enough to appreciate its wisdom. Although his birthday is several days past now, I wish him a joyful birthday week and many, many more happy years ahead.
I missed this reply of yours:)
Taking care of things is not so easy, I find. It's almost an art, too. I had to learn that during the course of my life and still am not very good at it. In the recent years I started to get rid of things. They disturb what I want to focus on. I don't know. Maybe also many books must go, too. I will keep you informed, how much progress I make. Now I intend to to the opposite and buy myself a crafting table set of three meters so I don't have to put away my stuff for painting, sowing and origami. Some other things will probably have to leave the house.
HaHa! Makes me laugh that you are better in taking care of other peoples things! I think you are a good care taker of people in your own very special good way.
This one I caught...a crafting table. Send me a picture when you get it. Sounds nice, an investment in your creative self, and a commitment to explore that.
Happy, Happy New Year!