There are 4 posts tagged Life (this is page 1 of 1).
Treading along in this dreamlike, illusory realm,
Without looking for the traces I may have left;
A cuckoo’s song beckons me to return home;
Hearing this, I tilt my head to see
Who has told me to turn back;
But do not ask me where I am going,
As I travel in this limitless world,
Where every step I take is my home.
– Lao Tzu
Always we hope
someone else has the answer,
some other place will be better,
some other time,
it will turn out.This is it.
No one else has the answer,
no other place will be better,
and it has already turned out.At the center of your being,
you have the answer:
you know who you are and
you know what you want.There is no need to run outside
for better seeing,
nor to peer from a window.
Rather abide at the center of your being:
for the more you leave it,
the less you learn.Search your heart and see
the way to do is to be.– Lao Tzu
I love selfies. It is my chance to focus on myself for a moment and take a picture.
But “selfie” is also a hallmark of the culture we are seeing increasingly – people excessively focusing only on their selves. When we start putting ourselves before others all the time, it impairs our ability to serve others which is so vital in the collaborative and networked world we now live in.
I am reminded of a wonderful quote in Huffington Post article titled “Selfie World” by Michael Rosenblum quite aptly sums up what we really need to focus on:
As the sage Maimonides wrote, “If I am not for me, who will be?” But he also followed with “If I am only for me, what am I?”
We sure have the first part down.
Maybe it’s time to focus on the second?
What do you think?
Listening to the “On Being” episode with one of the greatest living poets Mary Oliver truly made my day, especially the following poem.
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Swan and black bear represent the good and the bad. Grasshopper represents us, the indecisive human beings.
Life seems to be fleeting by and being present and mindful in the moment is perhaps the best gift we can give to ourselves.
