Many
people who were noted for their ability to think have pondered the question:
what is truth? The truth is out there, and it’s stranger than fiction. Like the
sun and the moon, it cannot be hidden for long. There are only two mistakes to
be made on the road to truth: not going all the way, and not starting. The
truth changes ever so slightly from person to person, from day to day - and yet
we as individuals have very little power to change the truth of our lives. It
is quite elusive, and yet when it hits us it is hard to miss.
Happiness comes from within. The environment we live in shapes the way we view the world in ways we don’t yet fully understand, but the way we react to those views can change at any time we like, given the internal will to shape your perception of the world in a positive way. As a prime example, we can look to the very idea of knowledge. We all have felt at times that the world is simply too disorderly for people to leave a beneficial impact. The more we learn about our criminally mismanaged earth, the less likely it seems that we can do anything to change it. If we flip this perception on its head, we arrive at the conclusion that many famed philosophers have expressed: knowledge is power, and the more you know the more you can do. The process of flipping this perception has little to do with anything besides your own mindset.
Knowing
the truth requires a balance of humility and confidence. We must be humble
enough to realize we may be wrong, and confident enough to know when we are
right. Finding this balance is easier said than done. It takes a conscious
effort in every waking moment of every day to make sure we are neither putting
ourselves down nor inflating our egos beyond ourselves. In every activity we
do, we can train ourselves to forgive and learn from our failures while
praising our accomplishments.
The
world is a frightening place, and the more we learn the more dreadful it
becomes. We can either fear what we don’t comprehend or cautiously wade into the
chaos and learn all we can. We know from personal experience that fear has its
place, and indeed we developed a sense of fear for our own safety. As a
consequence, when we allow fear to dictate our lives we become stagnant – we
trust what we are told and we rob ourselves of the opportunity to discover what
life means to us.
*I paraphrased several quotes in the first paragraph.
