-
The secret of life
Today is my birthday, which I say for two reasons:
1) I love birthdays and feel that every single one is worthy of celebration
2) When wishing me a happy birthday, a (much older than me) friend joked, “So, have you figured out the secret to life?”It made me laugh, but I’ve been thinking… what do you think the secret to life is?
To be honest, I don’t believe that there is one big secret to life, but I firmly believe that there are things we learn and experiences we have that open our minds, help us discover something important, and stick with us as we move forward.
What are your little secrets of life, or what are some tidbits of birthday/life wisdom you can share?
-
2 Replies
-
Happy Birthday Jenny! I had a birthday yesterday, my fellow Virgo.
There are tons of “secrets to life” so I will share one from a man named Charlie Munger, Warren Buffets’ brilliant right-hand man. Sometime after a birthday of his – he is in his nineties – he told the audience in an annual meeting to never put off until you are 93 what you could have done when you were 92. Words to live by!
-
Happy Birthday Jenny!
For me, the secret of life is life itself. It is already complete. It needs nothing. So the best thing is: to let it all happen by itself (it does so anyhow, no matter what we “do”). For persons who are under the spell of thinking we are separate from life, this means there is no hope, unless they stop pretending to be separate, to be some one who needs to go some place, to accomplish some thing, to work towards a goal in the future. Practically this means to starve the origin of all those illusory goals of accomplishment, learning, moving: the mind.
I stopped thinking life, started living it. This means complete surrender and intuition in stead of striving and thinking. It can start with accepting everything that happens as if you have chosen it yourself and it is the best possible thing that could have happened (which is true, although the mind will often arrogantly think otherwise). After that: give up all control, and play along. There is no choice anyway: if I think and resist, this is playing along; if I surrender, this is playing along as well (only without the suffering). Eliminate yourself from the equation. Get out of the way. Get out of your mind. Stop acting as if you were separate from life, and stop even that. Then you will find the heart, which is life itself. And you are That (already).
And laughter. Because it is all soooo funny, totally meaningful and completely futile, rising together out of nothing and disappearing into nothingness, meanwhile being everything simultaneously. What a miracle! But as far as homo sapiens is concerned, God is a comedian playing to an audience that is mostly too afraid to laugh. Stop not laughing immediately!
Log in to reply.