MONDAY, 13 DECEMBER 2004
11:26
The point is to live for something, so that when we die, we will know our lives were not in vain.
11:36
The question then is, what do you live for?
Many people will say, “We live for our children.”
I ask: What does that mean? You live for your children, they live for their children … at some or other point someone will have to live for something else, whether they have children of their own or not!
I think it’s ill-considered, even dangerous to say you live for your children. It feels right. You truly love your children, and you will literally take someone’s face off to save your children, so … it can only be right to declare: “I live for my children! And for my wife … (or my husband).” Isn’t that true?
No! It’s something that feels noble and right – and it looks noble and right on paper, but in actual fact one generation simply replaces the next with no proper understanding of the value or possible purpose of their lives, other than, “I need to have children.”
Does anybody else hear alarm bells going off?
THURSDAY, 16 DECEMBER 2004
CONFRONT (yourself)
… Accept (what you cannot change)
… Change (what is within your abilities to change)
DEFINE (who you want to be)
BECOME (who you have defined you want to be)
Naturally the three steps do not neatly follow on each other. You are trying to BECOME something or someone. You realise it is not what or who you want to be. You CONFRONT yourself … although you already did that when you realised you did not want to become what or who you were BECOMING. You were also already subconsciously DEFINING yourself when you realised you did not want to be who you were in the process of BECOMING. You continue with DEFINING while you CONFRONT yourself. And because your life does not stand still for a second, you are busy BECOMING throughout this process of CONFRONTING and DEFINING.
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