what makes reading different from any other activity?it makes one think. thinking at its peak.(note: the reading material should be mentally stimulating. not all books make people think.) when we say thinking, it means not just accepting facts as they come. if we look at the present scenario, it's all about tv and internet. instant information. what one sees, one accepts without thinking much. reading teaches an individual to ask questions. the right questions. this has become a generation of 'wiki brains'. making us far from intelligence. i remember an instructor relating his experience when he taught at a certain university. he gave his students a research project. about 90% submitted 'copy and paste' paper, complete with the links and ads on each page. what did the students learn? sometimes so much convenience could make learning difficult. there's a big difference between being intelligent and being an intellectual. intelligence is something innate. it doesn't stop with facts. it is more than acquiring knowledge. wiki does a lot of help though, but intelligence does not stop with it, it goes further. intelligence could sometimes be equated with wisdom itself.intellectual people know the answers, but they delve more on trivial matters, information which wouldn't really matter if we knew them or not. they appear to be wise because they know something. but talk about depth and they would not know what to say. these trivial information just eat up our memory storage. mental trash as we call it. reading should rather make us want more. it should make us realize that there is something more than these facts and figures. it deepens knowledge and gradually leads the individual to wisdom. reading should help us become intelligent.when we stop reading, we are choosing the road to mental stagnation. here is something which could help us improve and appreciate reading. something which could make us avoid mental stagnation.
05 September 2008
04 September 2008
ennui ii
it takes a good friend to tell you that your eyes has become like that of a dead fish.
enthusiasm lost. the will to live is slowly dying.
when day to day living is seen as a burden. waking up means another day of suffering.
routine and the inability to get something new out of the old.boredom.
the eyes of a dead fish is just dark. it doesn't glisten anymore. it simply lack the signs of life. simply dead.
a dead fish in the market. before seeing it there, must have enjoyed swimming in the sea before it was caught and before it slowly died in the absence of water. but it did its purpose. simply swam, ate and even reproduced. lived the life of a fish. did the fish know what its purpose was?
can this also happen to human beings? is this also possible with the way we live? eat, sleep and procreate. yes. probably in the absence of our thinking brains. in the absence of our rational minds. maybe if we didn't have any notion of what boredom is and what it is all about, we wouldn't be suffering this much.
the dead fish didn't have reason, this also applies to live ones. it did not have the mind to tell us that it was as bored as man. or that it wasn't enjoying life.
logically a lower being. maybe.
'maybe' is a thought. an answer to an inquiry of uncertainty. the mind is driven by 'maybes'or 'maybe ifs', if not the two, it would be the great 'what if'.
signs of anxiety.
and this life, as pascal would say it, is full of boredom, inconstancy and anxiety. how can we be happy if we are bound by these three states?
how can one be happy if one finds himself waking up at 3am and makes a dialogue with death? difficult. the person is not sick, he is just asking death. the mind finds death as something senseless, but causes so much anxiety.
diversion is continuously evolving. escapism has become an essential part of existence .can we not see that time is fleeting? everything, temporary. man tends to cling on something or on someone, and it's all because he clings to himself. not wanting to see the real reality. diversion ultimately makes man's life miserable.
i cannot stay in just one place. it is like the randomness of man's thoughts, doesn't follow a certain pattern or order. just goes where it wants to go. just free to wander.
the problem i see here is we tend to savor pain and choose to wallow in it even when we have the choice to be simply happy. and we never get tired, or should i say get bored of boredom itself. we paradoxically enjoy it's company. pascal must be right when he said 'all man's miseries derive from not being able to sit still in a room'. the question now is, who makes life complicated? who causes so much anxiety? sit still in a room. alone. and you'll see that it's mainly the self clinging to the false self.
enthusiasm lost. the will to live is slowly dying.
when day to day living is seen as a burden. waking up means another day of suffering.
routine and the inability to get something new out of the old.boredom.
the eyes of a dead fish is just dark. it doesn't glisten anymore. it simply lack the signs of life. simply dead.
a dead fish in the market. before seeing it there, must have enjoyed swimming in the sea before it was caught and before it slowly died in the absence of water. but it did its purpose. simply swam, ate and even reproduced. lived the life of a fish. did the fish know what its purpose was?
can this also happen to human beings? is this also possible with the way we live? eat, sleep and procreate. yes. probably in the absence of our thinking brains. in the absence of our rational minds. maybe if we didn't have any notion of what boredom is and what it is all about, we wouldn't be suffering this much.
the dead fish didn't have reason, this also applies to live ones. it did not have the mind to tell us that it was as bored as man. or that it wasn't enjoying life.
logically a lower being. maybe.
'maybe' is a thought. an answer to an inquiry of uncertainty. the mind is driven by 'maybes'or 'maybe ifs', if not the two, it would be the great 'what if'.
signs of anxiety.
and this life, as pascal would say it, is full of boredom, inconstancy and anxiety. how can we be happy if we are bound by these three states?
how can one be happy if one finds himself waking up at 3am and makes a dialogue with death? difficult. the person is not sick, he is just asking death. the mind finds death as something senseless, but causes so much anxiety.
diversion is continuously evolving. escapism has become an essential part of existence .can we not see that time is fleeting? everything, temporary. man tends to cling on something or on someone, and it's all because he clings to himself. not wanting to see the real reality. diversion ultimately makes man's life miserable.
i cannot stay in just one place. it is like the randomness of man's thoughts, doesn't follow a certain pattern or order. just goes where it wants to go. just free to wander.
the problem i see here is we tend to savor pain and choose to wallow in it even when we have the choice to be simply happy. and we never get tired, or should i say get bored of boredom itself. we paradoxically enjoy it's company. pascal must be right when he said 'all man's miseries derive from not being able to sit still in a room'. the question now is, who makes life complicated? who causes so much anxiety? sit still in a room. alone. and you'll see that it's mainly the self clinging to the false self.
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