On Humanity And Idiosyncrasies

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(My ideal place to be now!)

“Man surprised me most about humanity. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money.
Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.” Dalai Lama

If we continually observe the world, it’s really filled with sad news, war, war, and war! Yet in the midst of the seemingly absurd, grotesque, insane, and obscene, we have to carry on living.

My husband and I were having one of our ‘philosophical chats’ when he quoted Dalai Lama, it hit me like a sledgehammer; am I working too hard?

However, after a brief soul-searching I came to this verdict: I love life, I really enjoy living even when I’m working hard and juggling multiple responsibilities with kids screaming for my attention, countless office deadlines and uncooperative plots ( my novels and several other manuscripts I’m working on).

I am absolutely certain that I enjoy my idiosyncratic attitude to living because life has no part two, there are no dress rehearsals or a delete button. We take what we have, use it wisely and hope for the best, and I think we ought to strive to find joy in life in any way we can.

December is a month of frenzy cum feverish spending, planning, office parties. Why not pause for a while, enjoy the snow-capped mountains, (if there’s one in your vicinity), the fake reindeer, and annoying Christmas jingles that normally grated on your nerves.

I intend to, I hope you’ll all enjoy everyday living.

Have a fantastic weekend friends!

Much love, always. 🙂

Contentment!

Dec4

My husband is like my reservoir of inspiration, a few days ago we were talking about wealth, its distribution and the unfairness of life in general and he said and I quote:

‘You know there are people who live on less than a dollar a day and others live on millions a day!’

I raised my eyebrows in disbelief and he continued,

‘Lakshmin Mittal (UK’s richest Asian) bought a property (around 2008) worth £117 million pound for his son and got a £70 million property for his daughter. The guy is rich but that’s not where I’m going… Is he contented with his life?’

‘I bet I’ll be if I have that kind of money!’ I quipped in with a smile.

My husband grin then continued,

‘In a remote village in Nigeria, a farmer could be living on less than a dollar a day, take care of his wife and children. Eat and breathe on his farm, and believe me, this farmer could be more contented with his life than our rich Mittal.’

I nodded in agreement and he continued but I’m not going to write everything we talked about that night. When we went to sleep, I couldn’t remove the image of the farmer from my mind – such a simple, uncomplicated life… and I wonder how many of us can live without our iPads, iPhones, Apple laptops etc.

Don’t get me wrong, wealth is good but when we attach the success of our lives to material wealth, it’s a tragedy. And this brings me to this wonderful quote from Dalai Lama:

‘When you are discontent, you always want more, more, more. Your desire can never be satisfied. But when you practice contentment, you can say to yourself, ‘Oh yes – I already have everything that I really need.’

I hope you’ll all enjoy the rest of this week. I’m almost through with packing (we recently moved house) and If you look on the sidebar of my website, you’ll see the image of my new book, Cydonia, you can pre-order before it’s official launching date on the 16th of this month.

Keep smiling and keep loving my friends!

Much love, always!

🙂