Hello and welcome to my blog this is my second post and I hope you can take something beneficial away from this.
First thoughts, I love the library I recently started going to my local library and the amount of services they offer is profound! I would highly encourage you to check out the library. No, books are not dead, the library even has e-books and audiobooks for you to check out (most likely).
Anyways, I find the library to be one of the greatest inventions of mankind. A summation of knowledge and experience in one place. This is cool for a couple of reasons. One, it means that people can collectively learn from other’s experience, but it has to be shared and distributed. Thus books are capable of great things, because for all intents and purposes it is one person’s entire summation of a subject, experience, person, place, thing, etc… The summation of something. And we as humans are capable of learning from that, but we must allow ourselves to be open and responsive to this. Secondly, the knowledge is given to you at an on-demand pace. Sure you can go and check out a ton of books, but time is valuable and will you really read all of those books? probably not, but the beauty is that you are able to recheck the books, refer to it later, or make copies/scans of pages that you found had profound meaning.
The library is also amazing, because it allows you to search for anything you want to know about. If there is something you want to learn or know. Chances are there is a book about it.
One of the first books I checked out was a book on Basic Buddhist Teachings, and regardless of your actual religion. Please understand that you can learn from anyone’s experience even if it does not exactly align with your belief. On this principle we can become strong Christians, Atheists, Hindus, and whatever else your religion may be.
This book is awesome, because it presents the ideas of Buddhism on a very succinct level, and I wanted to share a thought I had that emerged following my daily reading.
Within the first few pages it talks about how people are mostly “self-pitying” and believe that everything happens to them, but really what happens to them is a consequence of choice. For every choice; consequence. For every consequence, another choice. It is a cycle of life, because we are reactive beings. Our environment changes and we react accordingly. However, if we are not aware of our thoughts and choices, largely, a reactive attitude will cause us to suffer. Suffering is an inevitable with life. From the moment we desire, we suffer. We can desire to suffer less and live more, and that’s the beauty of understanding that everything in life is a choice, besides what you absolutely can control.
Anyways, taking this and understanding that if it is all indeed a choice. Then can I not choose to be happy? Of course you can, and that’s key. It’s key to a better day, a better relationship, a better attitude, and above all a better connection to your true self.
You must allow yourself to be happy, you must tell yourself that you are deserving of happiness, because it is true, you are. Often as humans we get stuck and our wheels spin, because we are unaware of the opportunities that surround us. But if we keep an open mind and practice patience with ourselves and loved ones. We can let the energies of life flow that much more easily.
I like to tell myself daily that I get to do stuff. I DO NOT HAVE TO DO ANYTHING, but I choose to do everything that I want to. Make it clear to yourself if you wake up in this morning you choose to do your hair and makeup and put on clothes. You choose to go to your job, you chose to leave that mess on the kitchen counter for “morning-self”. The good news is we can choose ourselves and our happiness. Keeping in mind this is not selfishness, we must allow ourselves to be happy before we can lend a hand to others.
This of course is a practice, choice, and one that you get better at over time.
I will write about practice in the future, because I have found for myself that it is key to thoroughly enjoying the minutia that has to get done, and the things I truly want to do.
With Patience,
Kyle Castor