(no subject)
Excerpts from Tuesdays With Morrie
So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.
Now that I'm suffering, I feel closer to people who suffer than I ever did before. The other night, on TV, I saw people in Bosnia running across the street, getting fired upon, killed, innocent victims … and I just started to cry. I feel their anguish as if it were my own. I don't know any of these people. But - how can I put this? - I'm almost … drawn to them.
The culture doesn't encourage you to think about such things until you're about to die. We're so wrapped up with egotistical things, career, family, having enough money, meeting the mortgage, getting a new car, fixing the radiator when it breaks - we're involved in trillions of little acts just to keep going. So we don't get into the habit of standing back and looking at our lives and saying, Is this all? Is this all I want? Is something missing?
Everybody knows they're going to die, but nobody believes it. If we did, we would do things differently. You strip away all that stuff and you focus on the essentials. When you realize you are going to die, you see everything much differently. If you accept that you can die at any time - then you might not be as ambitious as you are.
***********************************************************************
He expresses in words so well what I'm feeling these days.
So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.
Now that I'm suffering, I feel closer to people who suffer than I ever did before. The other night, on TV, I saw people in Bosnia running across the street, getting fired upon, killed, innocent victims … and I just started to cry. I feel their anguish as if it were my own. I don't know any of these people. But - how can I put this? - I'm almost … drawn to them.
The culture doesn't encourage you to think about such things until you're about to die. We're so wrapped up with egotistical things, career, family, having enough money, meeting the mortgage, getting a new car, fixing the radiator when it breaks - we're involved in trillions of little acts just to keep going. So we don't get into the habit of standing back and looking at our lives and saying, Is this all? Is this all I want? Is something missing?
Everybody knows they're going to die, but nobody believes it. If we did, we would do things differently. You strip away all that stuff and you focus on the essentials. When you realize you are going to die, you see everything much differently. If you accept that you can die at any time - then you might not be as ambitious as you are.
***********************************************************************
He expresses in words so well what I'm feeling these days.