Every now and then I find it amazing that I am no longer a twenty-something, someone who could be considered “youth” under some age categorization. Instead, I believe I now belong to the vague category of “young adult”. I hope there’s plenty of learning ahead on this road called life, but below are some of the observations I have made so far are, along with quotes by people who can put things better than I can:
On People: No matter what you do, it’s impossible to please everyone. It doesn’t matter what you say or how you do something or don’t do something, there will be people in the world who are offended to some degree. This unfortunate human trait leads to the fact that everyone just can’t get along – and that, with all of our imperfections and flared-up emotions, leads to much worse things. I believe that is one of the single greatest flaws in humanity, the inability to just get along and live peacefully with other people.
And one should note that this is not necessarily a call for greater tolerance to everything, although tolerance in general would certainly help in some respects. But it’s also true is that too much inexcusible behavior is already tolerated, “understood” or explained away.
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
– Krishnamurti
On Beauty: The world is full of beautiful, wonderful things that many people cannot see. It just takes a different perspective – beauty is ubiquitous and no matter how it seems, there’s still a lot beauty left. And if you can’t find it, why not try to create it?
On Destruction: On all scales from petty vandalism to essentially raping the planet, many of the beautiful things are being destroyed at a pace that is nothing short of appalling. I can only wonder if humanity as a whole realizes its utter dependence on earth in time to prevent a near-total die-off. As I noted on the book review of Collapse, the world is on a non-sustainable course. The sort-of good thing is that the situation will get resolved. Whether or not it will get resolved in civilized manner without the death of billions of its human inhabitants is an entirely another matter, one that despite popular opinion, is not SEP (Somebody Else’s Problem).
After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say “I want to see the manager.”
– William S. BurroughsIt is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard
the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for
blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.
– William Tecumseh Sherman, Union General
in the American Civil War (1820-1891)
On fairness: The world is not a fair place by any standards and very few people get everything they want or deserve – and those that do, it’s mostly by chance. We who live in the “western” world have so far been mostly isolated from basic problems such as getting access to clean water and enough food; yet, the world has more than enough problems for everyone. There is a good prayer on this topic that has a lot of truth in it:
God, grant me the strength to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
“The world is not a fair place by any standards and very few people get everything they want or deserve”
I liked this line the best !
I loved the one on beauty..