“You can live to 100 if you give up all the things that make you want to live to 100.” – Woody Allen
I really think many people, especially in the USA where I live, are so worried about living a long life that they focus exclusively on how to stay alive instead of WHY to stay alive!
I remember starting to go to the gym in about 2000 or so. I had just got divorced and wanted to get out and do something. I felt fat, paunchy and out of shape.
Going there made me think about what the purpose was behind being fit. What was I being fit for? To live a long life? No. It was, and is, to live a good life. To be good to people, help them, care for them, build them up, teach them, learn from them and give to them. At the root, it was so I could love.
You can’t love if you are dead, you can’t love very well if you are sick or incapacitated. You also can’t love if all you are doing is paying attention to staying alive. So, it is good to stay in shape, but it is more important to know WHY you are staying in shape.
“The most dangerous creation of any society is a man who has nothing to lose.” – James Baldwin
What do you have to lose? Chances are they aren’t that different from most everyone else. Family, love, hope, future, kids, grandkids, pets, happiness, fun, joy, and way down the list, probably some material things as well.
So, how bereft of everything is the person who has nothing to lose? Did they start with nothing? Did they have it taken away? Did they throw it away? Did they have it stolen from them? Did they have it and take it for granted? Did they hate it?
How does a family, neighborhood, community, society or civilization avoid creating this person? How do you, as an individual avoid contributing to creating this person?
“When a person dies the clutch in their hands only that which they have given away during their lifetime.” Jean Rousseau
This dichotomy is seen in so many areas of life, love, wealth, that is almost seems a universal truth that the opposite of what you expect is going to be true.
I think that is why wisdom that you find among well-known spiritual leaders such as Jesus often seems at first to be in such opposition to common sense.
Turn the other cheek, The meek shall inherit the earth, one must be like a child to enter the kingdom…all these and more speak to the idea that what you would logically think is the way to go is actually the thing that is stopping you from progressing.
“Time Is At Once The Most Valuable And The Most Perishable Of All Our Possessions.” John Randolph
Funny to have a young one saying this since they are the ones who usually are unaware that time is so fleeting. Actually, I think there is a gene in humans that basically causes us to ignore the reality of time and eventual death because after all, what are we really going to do about it anyway, right?
Most people, in spite of Randy Rausch and his Last Lecture, in spite of all the repetition of the cliche to live your life as if today is your last day, really don’t and don’t want to, live that way. They want to live as they live for the most part. Of course I am talking about my world of middle class America, not all people everywhere, though it might be true of them as well. I just can’t assume that.
