Tag: action

  • When sincerity is tested

    When sincerity is tested

    Like the old saying goes, talk is cheap, and actions speak louder than words.

    It’s easy to say the right thing, especially when times are good and what we’re committing to is convenient.

    However, when our commitments pull us between what we want for ourselves versus what we committed to doing for someone else, that’s when our sincerity is tested.

    But what defines our sincerity?

    Is it how we want to appear to others or how we live by the values that we stand for?

    The moment we’re focused on what others think of us, we play to the responses that we want from them, even when we’re doing something good.

    The problem with this is that without realising it, our motivation slowly shifts from living by our values to how we are perceived by others.

    That’s the beginning of how we lose ourselves to the attention that we get from others.

    More than this, the lower our self-respect, the more inclined we’ll be to say the right thing while finding it difficult to do the right thing.

    That’s when making excuses for our behaviour becomes easy when others challenge us about the commitments that we haven’t honoured.

    This is an indication of a low level of self-respect.

    Self-respect is tainted when we lack gratitude for who we are.

    The more we dismiss the value of who we are, the more we’ll need validation from others. Hence the unhealthy cycle of focusing on what others think of us, versus being true to who we are.

    We’ll only be true to who we are if we truly value who we are.

    For this reason, don’t expect sincerity or consistency from one who is self-loathing. And realise that you are self-loathing when you struggle to be consistent or to follow through on the commitments that you make to others.

    It always starts with you.

  • Fate and Free Will

    I often see posts of people questioning why the Almighty does not answer their prayers. Then there are atheists that believe that if God existed, we would not have so much evil and cruelty in this world because a benevolent god would never allow that to happen. All that this proves is that we have a power of choice and reason that we are able to apply in our lives to inform our choices, because it is this same power of choice and reason informed by our intellect that confirms that we are free thinking beings. By extension, this confirms the indisputable fact that we have a limited free will. Limited because anyone that has lived a single day of conscious being knows that we cannot control everything around us, hence our need to determine the difference between that which we can change, and that which we can’t. So we pursue the acquisition of wisdom that would help us identify the difference. At least that’s what we should be doing if we’re self-aware.

    Bearing the above in mind, why then would it be reasonable to expect the Almighty’s intervention in every unsavoury experience of our lives where we may lack the courage or resources to set aright that which is wrong? Are not the bad choices of some the test of character of others? Or do we believe that everyone should be good and wholesome and no one should slight anyone else, because then we’ll finally have peace on earth and all will be right with the world? But then, again, I ask you, what would be the purpose of our existence? 

    If not to exercise our power of reason and choice towards acquiring good in our lives, then what? If there was no bad, what would we need to strive for? Something that I’ve been more aware of recently is that anything bad requires no restraint at all. If you want to damage, destroy or eliminate something, it’s not restraint that is needed, but in fact a healthy dose of indulgence. But anything good that we wish to achieve or acquire requires restraint in ways that we rarely imagine when committing to a noble goal. 

    So it seems that sitting back and feeling like a victim waiting for the world to treat you right is a fool’s endeavour that will never come to pass. We need to be conscious in our efforts to oppress the oppressors. If not, if we cower in the face of a challenge and believe that we’re not worthy, we lose any right to claim fulfilment in a life fraught with suffering and challenges. Evil is not an incarnation of its own. It simply manifests itself in the absence of good. Therefore, it’s not evil that exists, but rather good that ceases to. And given that effort is required to uphold good, there can be no overcoming of evil unless we apply ourselves to a course that is destined to realise that which we seek in our own lives. 

  • It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.

    Theodore Roosevelt