Horse or car?

(idea read in a book by Jonathan Haidt: The happiness hypothesis)
< Riding a horse.
If we ride a horse in a group it is not so difficult. 
One day while riding horse in a group of ten
He was riding on a small mountain path.
The horses were walking two by two
and he was on the outside of the path.
Suddenly the path made a very sharp bent to the left 
He could not go to the left because the other horse was there 
with his friend on it. 
He panicked, he froze.
He felt so powerless in the seconds before going over the edge.
But he did not go over the edge!
The horse knew how to take the bent
The horse had walked this path many times 
and it knew what to do 

Riding a horse, so different from driving a car.
If we drive a car, we have to control it completely.
If we do not steer it away from the cliff it will go over it.
And we may die. >

In our life, we are so used to drive a car
that we extrapolate it to so many other situations.
If we ride a horse, horses know

Worse if at work we drive the people working under us
as if we drive a car.
We tend to want to control everything,
taking away all creativity
But people working with us or under us
know, better still than horses,
what they have to do to steer safe.
Car driving type of leadership takes away
creativity, motivation and enthusiasm
The biggest assets from any organization

So let us lead without interfering.
Good leadership means guidance,
even in such a subtle way  that the followers feel they did
what they did and what they achieved, all by themselves.

A bit, not a bit any longer

In our heart

there sits a bit of love.

It is that bit of love 

that moves us, makes us rove

Part of us wants to keep it with all our might

Part of us wants to share it with anyone we meet

It is that last part of us that knows

about the wonderful piece of magic:

By giving away a bit of that bit of love,

that bit will grow so fast and furious

that it won't be a bit anymore.

Looking back

Looking back, at my life,
searching for the most happy moments,
somehow they were all moments of love.

Whenever love is strongly present in our life,
we tend to be happy.
We have so many examples of very famous,
very rich people who felt isolated, did not find love
and took their own life.
A life without love may be not worth living (?)

Love seems so important and very few of the 8+ billion people on this world
would disagree with that. Yet love seems so scarce, so scanty in this world.
Why is that?
I am not sure but I think I know at least part of the answer.
Maybe love is so scarce because we all get focused on receiving love
and appreciation without feeling the need to give love and appreciation.
I think there is much more happiness and peace of mind in giving love
that in receiving love. That may seem like a bit idealistic but it is true.

Looking back, the times I managed to give genuine and selfless love,
were really the best moments of my life.
Looking back, I remember times when I just went the extra mile to
do something loving and it brought such big peace of mind
Looking back, even the small gestures of love or kindness on the road,
giving way, gave me a peace of mind far greater than winning a small
battle with another driver to move into a narrow lane first.
Looking back, I think that perhaps people like Mother Teresa are
among the happiest people on earth. Simply giving love and service
without any expectation of getting something back. It fills so much our hearts
and minds with feelings of peace and love.
Looking back, many times when I chose to give love, I received love back
in great multiples. But even the times I did not experience this return of love,
these moments of giving love were still rewarding in big ways.

Looking back at my own life,
I got so much convinced that peace of mind and true happiness
lies in giving, not in taking, not in winning fights, ...
I pray and ask our Creator to help me to focus more on giving
and less on taking, less on winning.

If you have read this to the end,
I love you and let us give some love to others today.
Our heart is full of love and it seems like the more we give away,
the more our heart seems to be refilled with it.

Spark, flame or fire

We are not our thoughts; we can decide to stop thinking about something.
We are not our mind; we can use our mind in this or that way.
We are not our heart; we can to a certain extend control our emotions.
We are not our body; after the above it must be obvious.

But then, who is that "we" who is in control of mind body and heart?
That is the self, the soul, so closely connected to the conscience.
That conscience that is quite unchangeable.
We may decide not to listen to the conscience,
or reason our conscience into silence but our conscience
will always feel what is right and what is not right.

The soul, the self, the conscience sits inside of us
and is the spark that is able to communicate with
that highly creative Power in the universe, we tend to call our God.

By making it silent every day for a few minutes or even half an hour,
we give oxygen to that spark for it to become a flame.
By thinking, reflecting, praying thoughtfully, we allow the breeze
of the universe to make that light bigger.

All too often we allow the buzz and worries of every day to
deprive us of these few minutes of self reflection, to douse the flame.
But the spark never goes out and whenever we take time to make
it silent, think and reflect and allow some positive thoughts,
that sparks lights up.

Let us all make it silent today, long enough
to make that spark a flame and who knows,
perhaps a superb guiding fire,
a fire of soul that enthuses
us in whatever we do.

If more people would carry their soul
as a fire within, the world would change so fast :)

Unsafe but beautiful!

The world is not safe!

The terror is horrible and incredibly disgusting. 

That being said, if we put the things in perspective, 

in 2015 there were over 15 thousand murders in the USA alone. 

That is three times the death toll of 9.11 and 

about 7 hundred times more than the latest world-news-famous London bridge event. 

And that 15 K  is just in the USA. 

Murders do and did happen everywhere in big numbers, 

sometimes much bigger than we can imagine. 

Then let's talk about the chances of accidents killing us. 

Completely unsafe! 

Right, the world is not safe. 
It never has been safe.

Perhaps never any safer than now

But it is so beautiful. 

Millions of people have said today: "I love you"

(not to me :) , at least not a million :)) to one another, 

millions have given a small charity. 

Billions have greeted each other warmly this morning, 

millions have enjoyed an amazing sunrise, 

millions have uttered words of kindness and 

millions have enjoyed peace of mind 

because they made another one happy. 
 

So, let us be aware of the non-safety in our big world, 

but do not let the media and the politicians make 

our lives filled with fear and worries. 

Certainly I feel for the victims. The victims of London bridge, the victims of the other 15 K murders in the USA, the victims of hunger in Africa, the victims of traffic. I think we have a lot work to do, each of us, to make this world a bit better. And we can do that by being kind to more and more people every day. Let us spread kindness and love and it will slowly evolve as an epidemic, first slowly, then less slowly then a little fast until it becomes an avalanche of love and kindness, unstoppable, enveloping the whole world. 

Note: Wishing you a wonderful day filled with goodness and kindness,  I think it's a good time, now, to read  "in the air"  (clickable) 

Law and Ethics

Last night I was called to the hospital. It was 1 AM.

Whenever that happens,
I feel a bit of an ambiguity about
what I should do at the traffic lights
on my way to the hospital.

The first light was red.
There was another car going the same direction as me.
The car stopped in front of me on the right lane
I went next to him on the left lane.
Both of us standing there.
No other cars visible near or far.
I was a bit in a hurry to the hospital
and I decided to drive on even though the light was still red.
I disobeyed the law.
Was it wrong?

From a legal point of view it was wrong.
But from an ethical or moral point it did no feel wrong to me.

I think that there is a very big difference between law and ethics.
Whereas it is generally accepted that not following the law is not ethical,
the above example may be (or may not be, perhaps, I may be wrong on this ?)
an exception to this. The driver of the other car in the above example,
surely felt compelled to wait until it was green and perhaps thought 
I was just a reckless driver (??)

It is much easier t find examples
 where people do perfectly legal things
 but morally or ethically it is wrong.
There are legal channels for tax evasion
There are only so many laws while our consciousness and our ethics are so complex.
It is not illegal to let patients wait unnecessarily long in the clinic.
It is not illegal to lie to your wife.
It is not illegal to be nasty up to a certain extent,
....

Let us not confuse the two.
Legally doing things that do feel wrong,
deprives us of our peace of mind.
Missing our peace of mind may be a much bigger burden
than getting a ticket for a minor traffic offense.

What do you all think?
Do you stop for red traffic lights on completely deserted roads at night?

Sources of inspiration

I was thinking who have been my sources of inspiration in my life.
I want to talk about people like Albert Schweitzer, Gandhi and the likes,
but I can not write about them as sources of inspiration without first
talking about the truly biggest sources of inspiration, yes,
of course, like for so many of us: my mother, and my father
Each of them teaching me different things.

I think my mom was the most caring person I have known in my whole life.
She was simply there, knew what we liked, and what we did not like.
While this may sound like a cliche, I mean this with my whole heart:
she was the most lovely person a child could wish as a mom.
Now she is not any longer with us. She passed on in 1995
But her care and her love somehow are still alive in my heart and soul.
I think it is her care that I transfer to my patients.
I think it is her goodness that lives on and multiplies.

My father was a businessman. He owned a printing house.
He had started from scratch and made it, really made in the business world.
He was a man with wisdom
He was a man of persistence and hard work
He was a man of openness
A tough facade with a super-soft heart inside
I do not know which part of him lives on most in me,
but so often I see myself acting like him.

Thanks, my mom and dad, for being such a huge source of inspiration.
The devotion and calmness of my grandfather was another source of inspiration
Quite often I think back about him. He was one of these persons,
whom you wanted really to be proud of you.

Of course, there are my other family members. I love them dearly without them I would not be who I am. Definitely, without my sister, I would have missed so many things in life. We did not quarrel too often; she was 2 years older and was my stronger companion.

This post was actually intended to be about famous people in my life who really made a difference in my thinking.

But before that, one person, I remember, who had a great influence on my thinking was "deken Ryckaert" I am not even sure anymore about the spelling of his name, but he was a bright thinker himself. He was the deacon in our village and came to our small village primary school a few times per year to talk to us about God. I remember him so much saying: 'Is God sitting on a golden or silver throne?' All of us thought of gold. He disagreed: 'God has no Throne'. Then he went on about the clothes of God and the answer again was that God has no clothes. We were really learning the abstract nature of God. But the most important thing he taught us/me was to think during our prayers. He said "So many people are just uttering words they memorized, without giving them any thought. If we do that, our prayer is pretty useless. While we pray, we have to think, about what we say, and what it means to us, to God. At that time I was saying many prayers every night. Thinking slowed me down tremendously. Instead of reciting twenty prayers, I hardly finished one. But I had truly prayed that one with heart and soul rather than merely recited. The impact-on and meaning-for my life of that one prayer with thoughts were like 10,000 times bigger. Ever since, reflection and thoughtful prayer has been my guide, my companion, my light, my 'consoler', my inspiration.

It is a bit strange: I wanted really to write this piece about people like Dr. Albert Schweitzer, Martin Luther King Jr, Gandhi, Ralph Waldo Emerson and of course all prophets and my religion.
But I ended up writing about my truest sources of inspiration and as I wrote more and more people crossed my mind.

I will stop here and enjoy a bit more the memories of all these people who were close to me and truly inspired me. I will write about the more famous ones in a later post. In the mean time, I invite you to think and reflect a bit about the people who truly inspired you. It is a pleasant thing to do 👌😊. I wish you wonderful reflection

Hans is wishing you the very best 

Peace!

-----------------------------------------

PS: most people most likely know Gandhi, ML King Jr and Emerson. If you do not know Albert Schweitzer, here is a link to a website dedicated to him.

Gardening magic

Working a bit in the garden,
cleaning up the beach a bit.
I enjoy this so much.

What a tremendous blessing.
Just come to think of it...

What made these moments of joy,
doing some gardening, possible?

For close to 53 years
I needed to be healthy and have a fresh mind
regular rest and good food, no unexpected harm

I needed a garden with grass and flowers
and trees ans shrubs.

I needed to be born  first
If you think about he likelihood of being born...
Each of my 1 million ancestors in the last 20 generations
have to be conceived exactly at the time they were conceived,
or I would not have been here.
Each must have grown and been healthy at least to allow conception and birth of a healthy next ancestor. If just one of the conceptions, one of the births, one of the healthy growing up to generate the next ancestor did not happen exactly as it happened, I would have not been here.

And the garden: think about all the plants and millenia of sunshine and rain
If had not rained for a year, would my garden be possible at all?
 
We can look at the molecular level or atomic level,
how many billions of atoms have to line up correctly to
allow me to enjoy the gardening?
How many neurons have to work together?

Wow, what an enormous blessing!
I think, this afternoon, before dark, I want to garden a bit more.

In the air

We so often pray for love and peace and grace
Imagining it will come to us from a place far away.
If we pray in a truly reflective way
it becomes so clear and easy to see
that all goodness of our Creator is
something we bathe in day by day.
All we have to do is open our mind
open our hearts, open our souls
and let it all in.

I wish you all a day
filled with love, peace and grace
filled with kindness and compassion
filled with compassion

I'm plucking a pluck of compassion

I breathe a breath of tenderness

All just from the surrounding air

It's in the fresh air at the sea.

I stand under a shower of peace

I inhale a breath of happiness

All just from the free air

It's in the air all around me

Kindness swirls down from above

I take in a breath of lovely love

Just from the bluest of skies

It's in the sky everywhere

Come with me and enjoy

all the love, peace

kindness,grace, happiness

Let's pluck a big pluck from the air...

Purpose

"Move from being driven by a goal
to being pulled by a purpose"
(M. Beckwith)

Many of us have become good at goal setting.
When we reach the goal, we are happy
but sometimes we fall into a pit of nothingness.

Goals drive us and getting nearer to them is a thrill.
But once a goal is achieved, it tends to lose some of its glamour.

Purpose is a bit different.
Purpose is the reason for being here.
Something we are passionate about
A superior aim in our life.
It may be something we grow into rather than achieve
It is pulling us to itself.

Through reflection we can discover our purpose
It is perhaps the biggest thing we can do for ourselves
and for the rest of the world...

I hope you enjoy the little poem I wrote end 2015:

It is written in the sand
The purpose of our life
Millions of grains of sand

If the sea‘d have erased it from the shore
The grains will have whispered it to the drops
And waves, the braking waves will sing
The purpose of our life

If the heat of day erased it from the surf
Evaporating mist ‘ll carry it to the clouds
Where they will paint it in amazing skies
The purpose of our life

The clouds will rain and
And diamond beads will ornament the rose
The rose's scent will tell it
The purpose of our life

But if we fail to find it
In the sand or song of waves
In the clouds or scent of roses
The purpose of our life

We may have to make it quiet
And look deep within our heart
Where it will be dancing all around
The purpose of our life.

If we do not find it in our hearts,
We may have to return to sand
It is written in the sand. 

Aufie Zophy

Vastness

Most of us may have seen the videos
depicting the earth, and the other planets
and then the sun and then zooming
to show the size of bigger stars
and give an impression of the galaxies
Impressive, truly impressive!
BUT
No matter how impressive and colorful the images,
taken of our skies with telescopes powerful beyond imagination,
what we see may not be all that is.
A rainbow in the sky is nothing but refraction of light.
How many "rainbows" or "rainbow-like spots"
may be mistaken for material stars or distant planets?
BUT
No matter how nice it is to revel in the vastness of the universe,
to dream of other creatures throughout space who may be more or less intelligent,
more or less advanced than us,
IT IS
our duty to live in harmony on this planet which is ours.
IT IS
our duty to get back in focus on what is most important to you and me
IT IS 
our duty to embrace kindness, love, honesty, integrity, tenderness,
IT IS 
our duty to make life here on earth, what our Creator had intended it to be
Peaceful, easy, helping, accepting,
LOVE

Hans says:
Let us enjoy the dreams of vastness of the universe for awhile
Let us revel at the stars.
But then come back to earth, our lovely planet
and make this life of us
the focus of everything
make this life a life of service, a life of peace. 
a life of purity, a life of kindness
a life of helpfulness, 
Hans wishes you the very best. Peace  

Plasticity

Brain plasticity consists of a wonderful capacity of our brain.

I am working quite often with children who are born with severe brain damage and it is amazing how many of these children can function quite well provided they get the right exercises and the right stimulation! Every second the cells in our brain make new connections and somehow structurally change our brain.

When I was talking a friend, occupational therapist, he told me the story of the tree. If we look at a tree, we cannot see it growing. But if it gets enough light and water and nutrients from the soil, after one year the tree will look very different from the tree we see today. So is it with the exercise we give to children with brain damage. If we give exercise for a day or even a week, we may see no changes. But if we persist giving the exercises for a year, we may see a huge difference.

We can do a lot for damaged brains. That is true. But, then, imagine what we can do with our normal brains! Keeping in mind brain plasticity, positive thinking and positive actions get a whole new dimension. The same goes for thoughts of kindness and love and feelings of happiness. The thoughts and actions we choose, affect the structure of our brains.

You may be interested to read my previous  post  on learning (can click on the word, 'post') too.

Bosons and quarks

Just now I made a small intention to learn at least for half an hour a day something new
I hope I can do it and I have the enthusiasm and motivation to follow through with it,
because today, my first day, has been really interesting.

Instead of 30 minutes, I spent 75 minutes trying to learn something new.
I do have a bit of a fascination with physics; so I looked for some videos on that.

A good way of understanding things we are not familiar with is to watch TedX videos.
I started watching one on physics and was quite intrigued by the guy talking about the Higgs boson.
I tried to understand, at least a bit, what a Higgs boson might be: I want to know something about quantum physics. So I watched three 15 min videos about that. Each speaker explained in his own way something about the quantum physics. They say electrons can assume wave or particle forms interchangeably, they can spin in left and right at the same time, they can break through barriers quite easily (tunneling) and they can be at different place at the same time (superposition) and somehow they have an amazing completely unimaginable way of communicating with each other. Based on these hypotheses, physicists can predict the probability of the location of a particle (or wave for that sake). Based on these hypotheses they can do mathematics and create machines that effectively work (laser and computer, telephone chips are examples). Whatever the quantum physics say, I think I am super far away from understanding it, but watching these videos can increase our own curiosity and somehow gives small bits of insight that may be helpful in our life.

Thus far I have only described 4 videos of each 15 minutes. the last video was on brain plasticity.
I am writing about in the next post; you can see it by clicking this link.

Knowing ourselves

 Not very long ago, I wrote the poem at the bottom of this page. 

It was a bit like a deep search for who and where I am. No, I am not demented, it is not about where I am physically but I am talking about the I, the one that sits inside, that makes the decisions on what to do, on what to think about, that has the choice to focus on something and ignore other things. That piece of myself has every day so many choices. And how do I make these choices. 

 

The easy answer is to say I make my choices based on my values and principles. And I think my principles of doing good and my values of honesty, integrity, love and kindness are strong and should guide all my choices in a major way. Yet I catch myself so often making different choices, not in harmony with the principles of loving kindness I claim to be my own.

 

If I connect the values and principles to a word, named soul, and my decisions not in harmony with it I connect to a word, named ego, I sometimes feel that my ego is too loud and my soul too quiet. 

 

But then, at other times, I seem to reach a certain understanding, that love and kindness and all the values seated in the soul are inherently soft and tender. They are to be discovered in silence and if my soul would be as loud as my ego, the qualities of my soul would be very much like the qualities of my ego. The necessity to calm down, sit down in silence and reflect in awe for our Creator and our Creation, makes soul so very special. Silence becomes a way to connect and going through it seems such a blessing. In these moments of a bit of a deeper insight, I do not wish my soul to be loud.

 

And yet we are so human...

Here comes the little poem:

 

Knowing Ourselves 

Whenever I think I know myself
Something happens that makes me doubt
I do know a bit about myself
I set out my own principles
Principles I love, I want to live by
But then so often I fail

Why do I fail?
Which part of us fails?
Which part of us sets the principles?
I think I can experience my soul,
Am I my soul?
Is my soul owning my mind, my heart, my body?

Why does my soul not take charge all the time?
My heart and mind seem to have to search
To search so intensely for my soul
to put my big ego aside
Is my ego competing with my soul?
It seems to be never quiet
Why my soul does not compete harder?

And then my thoughts, flying coming in, going out
I have written them down.
If I read my thoughts from the past
I feel I get to know myself a bit better
'cause thoughts come from the mind
They come from the soul, from the heart
And yes, also from the ego.

Aufie Zophy

Perspective

All of us make mistakes.
All of us have some ups and downs.

But whatever happens around us,
the big order of the Universe is still standing.
No matter how much racism is coming our way,
how loud some wicked politicians shout,
the big order of the Universe is still standing.

The big order of the Universe
underlines the value of compassion,
gives instant peace of mind for good work,
gives happiness in return for service,
has planted love in our hearts,
has planted kindness in our soul,
has given each of enough reason to see the nonsense of violence.

A large number of people seem to refuse the gifts of love,
compassion, kindness, peace of mind,
A large number of people turn a blind eye to the wisdom of the universe.
It looks like extreme right politicians are giving nowadays  more voice to these people.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. Now we know that half of Americans
had suppressed for so long their white supremacy feelings.
Now we know how strong racism and egotism is still present in such countries.
Now we know that half of the Brits are still living in their grandiose illusion of colonialism.

The big order of the Universe has not changed
It still favors love, compassion, unity.
To have these people, refusing love, expose their true feelings
serves as a nudge for all "good" citizens of the world.
By "good", I mean those who are bit more evolved,
those who are a bit higher on the ladder of evolution,
those who understand the big order of the universe a bit better,
those who put service first, and understand the great peace of mind it brings.
It serves as nudge to work harder,
to become more vocal,
to not take it as a given that racism has died,
to not take it as a given that violence is not desired.

Let us all become more vocal
more active in spreading kindness.
We need leaders who spread kindness, not fear
Fear is the weapon of politicians.
It is high time that large majorities become clever enough to see through them
It is high time.

Good people on this planet,
let us all start a kindness revolution.
Let us start it now.
Be vocal about it, be as loud as wicked politicians.
If we are as loud as them, no way they will have followers.

Purple

:I took a walk this morning
On the beach
I could see so many flowers
Growing in the wild

All of them were coloured purple
So beautiful
Perhaps God’s favourite colour
Is purple

Looking at the bright white sand
So delightful
God's favourite colour could also
Be white

A bush with small yellow flowers
So exquisite
Perhaps God's favourite colour
Is yellow

The sea so blue, the grass so green
So soothing and lovely
Gods favorite colour might as well be
blue or green.

But then on my way back I see again
all the purple flowersIt must be purple ) 

 Our creator is such a fantastic Artist.
There are so many superb views, so colourful
When we see them, we are totally in awe.

All of us know our Creator has no favorites among the colours
But some things are made so exquisite, so beautiful
that we cannot but think, that must be our God's favorite.

Thoughts of Love

Thoughts of love are so much involved in the process, whenever I pray, . It is almost impossible to think about our God and not think about love, or Love (with the capital L). And yet for so many people in this world, prayer is more of mechanically repeating a few phrases they memorized a long time ago without giving it a lot of thought. Once we start to think, and think deeply while we pray, our prayers tend to get so much more meaningful. 

Many people see prayer a sacrifice of their time, that they make for God.
Once we pray with mind and heart and soul, it does not longer feel like that.
It starts to feel like prayer is something we do from within,  for ourselves.
The deep thinking somehow brings us a bit closer to the highest spiritual level

and this experience is so important, so good, that prayer becomes a joy.

Respect

On my way back to Malaysia from Indonesia.
I was surveyor for an ethics research committee.

While we were making suggestions for the committee to improve,
the coordinator was, multiple times, helping us to rephrase our suggestions
so that the committee would feel utmost respected while the suggestions
for improvement would still be transmitted clearly.

That is really something I learned in the past few days.
Especially if we make suggestions for improvement to anyone,
let us weigh the wording, let us give it lots of thought,
to do it as respectful as possible...

Good men

I always tell my son:

"We are good men. You and me are good men.
If someone does nasty things to us,
this does not change us from good to nasty.
We just choose to remain good men.
In case we would respond to nastiness
with our own nastiness,
then we would allow the nasty men
to turn us, who are good men,
into nasty men.
We are good and have chosen to be good
We do not give the power to anyone
to take away our goodness."

So if someone treats us good,
we treat them good.
If someone treats us in a nasty way,
we treat them good.
If someone ignores us
we treat them good

No one can take away our goodness :)

PS: of course we are not perfect, we do lose our temper sometimes,
we are not "always" good. But if we stray, we will choose not to do so for long.
We will try to quickly come back to be just...... good men

The rose

Overnight, in the garden I own,
a little red rose, named Love, had grown

Seeing its beauty, I knew from the start
I had to pluck it, place it in my heart

From this exquisite rose, I am giving away
to my friends, a petal or two, every day

And of magical petals, I have no lack
'cause for each petal I give, two grow back

A big rose named Love will as long as I live
Reside in my heart: lots of petals to give

Now quick, I am sure that in your garden too,
there will be a rose, named Love, for you 

Aufie Zophy

I think...

Je pense, donc je suis!
A famous phrase, perhaps never intended to carry the importance, it has been given through the years.
But standing there, isolated from the rest of the story, it is an impressive phrase: I think, thus I exist.

Thinking is such a fantastic, fascinating, fabulous skill we were born with, or if we did not have it fully at birth, something we developed over our youthful years.It makes us human, it makes us special and yet so often I have lived for days and days or even weeks, without stopping the daily activities and not taking some specific to think, to think about myself, to think about the world, to think about my beliefs and faith, to think about important things. But I count my self lucky that quite often I manage to think, to reflect on a regular basis. 

If we make it silent around us and silent within, this wonderful train of thoughts seem to come, some thoughts from within, but some seem to come from we do not know where. If I walk in nature and think about difficult questions, complex problems, sometimes answers do appear in my mind. I assume they come from our God, because I believe in a God, but I often wonder where do people not believing in a God, think these thoughts come from, or do they not have experiences as such?

There are periods where thinking is not as easy and these are the times that books and wisdom from our ancestors becomes so useful. Sometimes reading a few verses from scriptures or from philosophers or psychologists or simply a touching story can start a thinking process. I feel that we can learn all from each other. We think spontaneous thoughts. If there seems to be a period of lack of thoughts we look at books, at nature or anywhere from without and we can build up our own wisdom. 

I love to reflect.

Acceptance

Just a few moments ago, I received the shocking news that one of our young colleagues, trainee pediatrician, tragically died in a car accident.

She was brilliant, goodhearted, humble.
So true!

When things like that happen, we are struggling with the question of why.
Why this has to happen? A mother of 3 young children, a wife, a sister, a daughter!
A wonderful doc with a huge potential to do so much good and to make a wonderful difference for the children she would treat.

We will all miss her very much.
And this feeling of missing makes us really sad.
Not only sad, struggling to accept that it happened.

But young people do die.
and we cannot but accept
Faith can help in these situations but the explanations given, even though softening the sharpness of all the deep pain and sadness of those closest to the person who is no longer with us, tend not to be easily understood. The question of why a loving almighty God would want such a thing to happen remains.

As a doctor myself, and as a son of my late mom and dad, I have asked these questions again and again and thought about them for so long. The only answer that makes sense to me is that we as simple humans cannot understand. Surely we have a superb and unbelievably complex mind, but it is really to small to understand all things that happen.

I do believe in a loving almighty God, but over time I have come to accept that things do happen that I cannot understand. Many of the common 'religious' explanations seem to put our Creator in a rather cruel or 'selfish' perspective, which makes me feel worse than simply accepting that we cannot understand :(

As time moves on, the sharp pain and sadness of the feeling of loss, do soften a bit and moments of gratefulness for having known the wonderful person who passed on tend to occur. It seems like nothing is permanent in this world, but while we are alive we meet so many wonderful persons, have so many wonderful experiences, encounter so many wonderful things. When we lose them it makes us sad, it can cause us a huge pain. But the great miracle of life is going on and while not understanding the non-permanence, a sense of forgiveness, love and gratefulness tends to bring us a bit closer to acceptance

Fame and name

I came across the following verses, written more than 2500 years ago by Lao Tzu:

(part of verse 44, Tao Te Ching)

What contributes more to you:

Your self or your fame?

What matters more to you:

Your self or the possessions in your name?

When I read these verses, at first, I was revolting a bit against them.

These were questions and I felt I could answer as I wanted.

I wanted to choose the fame. Somewhere deep inside of us resides this longing to be renowned, to have some fame, to have a name that will be remembered. And I think it is good. If we are living in a corner, in anonymity, what can we possibly do or mean for the world? It was quite clear however that these verses were written and intended to make the reader aware of the opposite. The author intended us to become aware, to come to the conclusion that fame is less important than self.

Is it really? I refuse to put fame and a good name in the category of unimportant things. They are very important. When thinking then about how could I reach to the deeper meaning of these verses, I thought about the meaning of my Self. The I inside of me, my Self, is that part that has the values and the principles, the soul. But I am not only soul. I am also heart and mind and body. It may well be the soul that controls the rest of me in a certain way. When I manage to make it quiet enough to listen to my soul and when I manage to live up to my values of love, kindness, integrity, honesty, compassion and so on, I feel at peace with myself. Whenever I violate some of my inner self-values, I feel a lack of peace, an excess of stress.

While thinking like this, the meaning of the verses became a bit clearer. I think the verses do not condemn fame and possessions, but if in the process of acquiring them, we give up our values, our principles which are basically belonging to our soul, it may be all not worth it. Because without these values, we lose our peace of mind, our own sense of purpose our own happiness. I think the author meant: if you cannot get fame or richness without giving up your soul-values, you may be better off for the future not to have (yet) fame and wealth. And that is a great message for all of us, I think…

The missing link

Is it better to serve

and be happy

or to reign 

and be upset?

I hear your answer:

You want to reign 

and be happy

But life is filled with paradoxes

Somehow we were made in such a way

that if we serve selflessly

we will get peace of mind

and so much happiness

Somehow we were made in such a way

that if we force something on others

there will be always a bitter taste

to the sweet victory

the more we serve 

the more true power we get... 

the link between service and happiness

the link between  force and bitterness

the secret that will bring happiness to the world

The power of love

The power of love,
a wonderful song by Celine Dion.

But come to think of it,
the power of love,
so much more than just a song.

Surely, Celine has her point:
Romantic love
extremely powerful!

But there is so much more to it


Think of it,
What makes mother a mom
a father a dad,
Tremendously powerful stuff!

A brother, a sister,
an auntie, a nephew

A neighbor, a friend,

What would the world be without love?

And yet,
so many days of my life
have passed by without even thinking
without even a grain of gratefulness
for all that love in my life,
love i can give, love I receive.

And yet,
so many opportunities
to take a loving approach
gone by without noticing,
lost .

The power of love,
the power to make this life of me
truly worthwhile
the power to make this life of me
a happy loving life
the power to change my life,
to change your life
to change his life
to change her life
to change our life,
to change all life on earth.

Let us grasp the power!
The power of love!
Give it, receive it, fully enjoy it,
live it, love it, truly do it
be super grateful for it

Let us live the POWER OF LOVE :)