I've been thinking a lot about my life. Like everyone, I sometimes get down, I let silly things bother me sometimes. But I've come to realise just how fortunate I am by comparing my life to those of others less fortunate than me.
If you go back 100 thousand years and look at your ancestors, then compare their life to yours, you'll see my point. They had no TV, no internet, no buildings with central heating, no shops to buy food and drink, no doctors surgery or medicine for when you get sick or injured, no interweb porn for those horny moments, nothing. All they had was their family and an instinct for survival. And they did survive. In my eyes they were legends because despite the hardship of their existence, they survived and procreated and ultimately were responsible for your existence today.
Even today, people are living and dying and enduring terrible lives. So I like to think that even though I get upset by the guy who parks illegally on my driveway at times, or the rude people you come across who say things that annoy you, or your noisy neighbours or those annoying plastic wrappings on new DVD's that are hard to get off, in the end it's all fluff.
I'm not particularly wealthy, I'm not particularly successful, I'm not the best looking specimen of my species. But so what? I now look at what I have and thank god (not really, I'm an atheist
) for what I have going for me.
So the next time you feel down or get annoyed by some trivial thing, just pause and reflect on how lucky you are.
If you go back 100 thousand years and look at your ancestors, then compare their life to yours, you'll see my point. They had no TV, no internet, no buildings with central heating, no shops to buy food and drink, no doctors surgery or medicine for when you get sick or injured, no interweb porn for those horny moments, nothing. All they had was their family and an instinct for survival. And they did survive. In my eyes they were legends because despite the hardship of their existence, they survived and procreated and ultimately were responsible for your existence today.
Even today, people are living and dying and enduring terrible lives. So I like to think that even though I get upset by the guy who parks illegally on my driveway at times, or the rude people you come across who say things that annoy you, or your noisy neighbours or those annoying plastic wrappings on new DVD's that are hard to get off, in the end it's all fluff.
I'm not particularly wealthy, I'm not particularly successful, I'm not the best looking specimen of my species. But so what? I now look at what I have and thank god (not really, I'm an atheist
) for what I have going for me.So the next time you feel down or get annoyed by some trivial thing, just pause and reflect on how lucky you are.
) dealt a lot with suffering. Specifically, how people even in the modern western world let themselves suffer greatly (as in, feel emotional pain) because they do not have self-worth which leads to them not treating themselves with self-respect (and even prioritising their pet’s health over their own). There was quite a lot of discussion (arguably ‘waffle’) dealing with this crisis stemming from historic ideas of ‘the hero’ - the (false) idea that self-sacrifice will lead you to redemption. The book suggests that by helping yourself, and actually treating yourself as someone that YOU are responsible for (like a pet) you will reduce the suffering of yourself and others. This requires embracing of the truly inevitable suffering, stop trying to ‘chase happiness’ (which is utterly pointless because it is typically fleeting and a short term emotional response before self-awareness once again takes dominance) and making a conscious decision to pursue making yourself a better person, even with starting with obvious things like diet and exercise, which most people neglect to the detriment of themselves and loved ones.