Recipes for life: Wisdom from here and there in a long list

 Listen you, enjoy your time, you really don’t have very long.

           Wang Fanzhi (7th century)


These are 61 lines of wisdom from many sources. They are rewritten in my words. Enjoy them if you like lists. 
  1. Life is short - why waste it? 
  2. Lost time is lost forever. 
  3. Be in the present. 
  4. Enjoy what you choose to live. 
  5. See life from death. 
  6. We are here to live - be the world good or bad. 
  7. Keep all simple.
  8. Details fritter our lives.  
  9. Understand nature.
  10. Suffering is part of life. 
  11. There is no healthy aging - aging is destruction. 
  12. Happiness comes from actions. 
  13. Keep in sight what is important. 
  14. Get knowledge through reason.
  15. Learn doing. 
  16. Things become interesting if you look at them long enough. 
  17. Always question yourself. 
  18. Don’t allow thoughts to become the thinker. 
  19. A person thinking is always alone. 
  20. If you don’t know something, it doesn’t exist in your world. 
  21. Life is like a puzzle; the pieces can be rearranged for different outcomes. 
  22. Difficulties help to grow. 
  23. Be strong and self-controlled. 
  24. Embrace fear and pain.
  25. Stress if a fact of life. It only ends with death. 
  26. Take risks. 
  27. Lack of determination brings failure. 
  28. Irresolution is worse than rashness.
  29. Quitting is not always losing. 
  30. Unknowing creates the worst fears.
  31. Mind wandering and worries dissipate energy.
  32. Keep the focus in success. 
  33. See adversities like gifts of life. 
  34. Question the gifts from your past. 
  35. Don’t “play chess” with what you don’t control. 
  36. Life dreams are like a kite in the wind. Keep the string tight. 
  37. Sometimes go from “doing” to “being”. 
  38. Habits are automatic, rituals are conscious.
  39. See humanity as a network.
  40. Humans can’t talk about themselves without embellishing.
  41. You’re connected with everything.
  42. Never get caught in the social madness.
  43. Spend less than you earn and invest the difference. 
  44. Frugality doesn’t mean deprivation.
  45. Spend on things important to you. 
  46. Control desire.
  47. Accept what you have.
  48. You are your worst enemy. 
  49. Avoid anger and envy.
  50. Bitterness brings bitterness. 
  51. Expectations and beliefs bring unintended consequences. 
  52. Everybody thinks, “my way is great”. 
  53. We run modern technology in old hardware. 
  54. History is a monumental work of fiction. 
  55. Don’t venerate ancient masters. 
  56. Antiquity doesn’t mean authenticity.
  57. Sweat more in practice to bleed less in battle. 
  58. Want to fight? Use a gun.
  59. The armor doesn’t make the warrior.
  60. Only takes a Molotov cocktail to force you out of your house.
  61. Go out with a bang. 
"The Way" is a guide, not a fixed path.

It is the ship of risk and of adventure, belonging by right to him who goes far and travels light, who is careless of his home coming.
Emerson Hough, The Way to the West (1903).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chekika: Forgotten spot of Everglades National Park close to Miami

Image
During our last visit to Chekika ( map ), we found closed roads and dilapidated buildings. This was our fourth time here. Little by little, nature is coming back. Wilderness taking over what was always its property.            The closed entrance to the Grossman Hammock -  License our images here .   Everglades National Park closed indefinitely the Chekika Day Use Area in 2013. They claimed budget constraints. One year later, Chekika was on the news when a juvenile Nile crocodile was removed from the area - the animal was captured in a canal north from the Grossman Hammock. Two others were caught in 2009 and 2012 further to the east. You know the script with invasive species: they escaped, or someone released them.  The Everglades already have the mighty Pythons running wild. I don’t want to imagine the River of Grass ruled by “man-eaters” crocodiles that can reach up to 17 feet. That would be madness. 
More »

Google search and the little blog

Image
Many small websites are going dark like the sands of the desert at nightfall -  License our images here .   Little blogs are dying. They are jailed in a dark and remote dungeon of Google organic search, the non-index dungeon. The mighty gatekeeper, like Saturn , is devouring its children. Betrayed for money, the good old-fashioned blogs are the collateral damage of their "helpful" content update. Long gone is that 2004 when Loren Baker wrote: Google likes Blogs. Blogs do well in Search Results Listings on Google. This is because Blogs contain fresh content and are richly interlinked, despite their relatively small audiences. Some would go so far as to say that Google over-represents Blogs. (Source:  What if Google didn't like blogs? ") That's ancient history. A jump to 2022 shows a different picture. According to Sandy Maguire: The Internet is dominated by a few big websites. Out of social, the amateur opinion is vanished. (Source: " Why Is the Web So Monoto
More »

Ernest Hemingway's "Oklahoma": "All of the Indians are dead (a good Indian is a dead Indian)"

Image
Page of an edition of "Three Stories & Ten Poems" from Ernest Hemingway.  Here we go with Hemingway poetry. Harsh. But we know what to expect from his sharp journalistic prose and  iceberg theory .  "Oklahoma" was published in 1923 in Three Stories & Ten Poems   - affiliate link to Amazon . The name says it all: the "Oklahoma" of the Choctaw language - means "red people" -, and Oklahoma the state seen through its genesis, the Indian Territory .  American Indians or Native American - whatever suits you, but many of them prefer the first name - in their new way of life.   Now to the poem.  All of the Indians are dead (a good Indian is a dead Indian) Or riding in motor cars— (the oil lands, you know, they’re all rich) Smoke smarts my eyes, Cottonwood twigs and buffalo dung Smoke grey in the teepee— (or is it myopic trachoma) The prairies are long, The moon rises, Ponies Drag at their pickets. The grass has gone brown in the summer— (or is it
More »