Munene, the journey...

We need to cut other people some slack. I need to.  Everyone's struggling in their own way. They are. To judge others, is to miss out on who they are. It is. To refuse to be empathetic is to disregard our humanity. It is. Especially when they are loud, obnoxious and annoying. They are. That's when they need our love the most. They do. And by loving them, and being kind, we render our hearts open. We do. And when our hearts open, we love more fully. We do. And when we love more fully, we truly live. We do. Where love abounds, joy follows too. It does. And where joy is, contentment and peace is there too. It is.

It is that time of the semester when all the decisions of the last 3 months come to bear on a graduate student. 4 papers are due, exams are in 3 weeks, there's internships and jobs to find. It seems as if everything decided to become due at the same time. But that's not quite the case. For me, even getting to write this blog post took a lot of, well, procrastinating. Being in graduate school requires a great deal of what I call sensible procrastination. I am not advocating for leaving only 30 minutes to complete an assignment that requires 10hours, that's stupid. In fact there are things that we cannot procrastinate for too long without seeing some negative side effects. Doctors and other personnel who deal with matters of life and death also, may not have the luxury of procrastination in saving lives. However, even in these extreme scenarios, I think that we might have more leeway on some other matters than we let on. Another thing to consider is that eventually all ...

Philosophy comes from the two Greek words philo meaning love and sophia meaning wisdom, ergo a love of wisdom. The famous Greek and Roman philosophers were therefore, in search of the wisdom to all sorts of questions, big and small. This is a good book for a number of reasons. It is a pretty easy and straightforward read. It's free of pompous language that makes people hate philosophy and thinking. De Botton has demystified philosophy to everyday life, making it accessible to us. courtesy of huffingpost.com He presents different philosophical ideas from six of the best thinkers of old: Montaigne, Seneca, Socrates, Nietzsche, Epicurus, and Schopenhauer. Each of these philosophers had unique experiences and different backgrounds that influenced their thought trails. Montaigne inherited an estate from his dead parents; Socrates was poor; Schopenhauer was lonely; Epicurus was full of life; Nietzsche could not find love; Seneca lived during the dangerous times of the murderous E...

Life is a mystery that we must solve with our hands tied at the back, and blindfolded, without sound. We must figure out life from the moment we are born from our own eyes and the eyes of our parents. image courtesy of michaelnewnham.com There will be no good old days that we like to reminisce about. Those days, are gone, forever. They will not come back, and we need to get over them. Yes, recognize that they happened; appreciate the lessons learned from them, and then look ahead, because that's where we are headed. A life lived in order to bring back the good old days is delusional. A government that brings out policies of the good old days will fail; coal jobs are gone from America (at least the vast majority); manufacturing of cars is cheaper in Mexico than in the United States. No amount of pouting will change these things. Things will get worse until we die. We start dying the moment we are conceived. Our days are numbered, literally, and begin to count down, unti...