Silence the violence

Just now I saw a video, titled, Silence the Violence
How many women still today suffer in silence?

There is no need.
Please let us intervene.
Intervene on behalf of the women suffering.
Not only for particular cases.
Let us tackle violence at a scale, sooo big,
that every single human even thinking about any form of violence
gets so thoroughly disgusted, that there is no place any longer for violence at all.

The main thing is education.
Education, not as in going to school and memorizing a lot of things,
solving a lot math problems and understanding physics in order to score ‘A’s.
No, we have had enough of this kind of education.
Our children need to be educated differently now

The high-tech of the future will harbor so many opportunities for wicked minds to
viciously destroy the whole world, that is it HIGH time to start sharing wisdom
The simple wisdom of kindness, of love. It has become urgent.

There is no other thing more important than teaching this to all children.
We have to stop the violence at schools, stop the violence at houses,
stop the violence in the streets, stop the violence between nations.

The teachings of non-violence, even when under attack,
have been proven to be the most effective ways to achieve whatever you want.
I keep referring to Ghandi and M. Luther  King Jr in this blog, but it is so true.

Let us truly understand how it works:

I am kind to you. You are happy. I am pleased with myself.
We were made that way. We are so pleased, so happy
if we manage to make someone else happy.
We get so much peace of mind,
if we manage to make someone happy.
We experience so much ease,
if  we manage to make someone happy.

Kindness is truly THE path to happiness.

And yet,
Today it seems more than ever true,
that people are again allowing themselves to become victims of Hitler-like figures,
who like to vilify, demonize certain groups, based on ethnicity and religion.
Today it seems more than ever true,
that demagogues manage to pump fear in gullible people, so the demagogues get power.
that these same demagogues get support for their violent approach,
causing only suffering and destruction, but then people laud them as heroes.
History has shown again and again the absolute absurdity of war.
And yet ,
And yet,...

Let us today as people with a certain wisdom
not endorse any of the demagogues instilling fear
not support ANY use of violence
Let us today as people with a certain wisdom
spread the message of peace
spread the message of kindness
of love, and honesty and all the good things of the world.
Let us today find 3 positive message and share them with everyone we know,
perhaps on Facebook, but also in our conversations.
Let us look for the good, be kind and create world full of peace.

Let us start today to
silence the violence
Domestic violence and ANY other kind of violence

At the end of the video, I mention in the beginning of this essay,
the teacher says to the victim: the shame is not on you.
That is so true: Shame on the violent people.
Shame on anyone supporting any type of violence!!!

Before I end this small essay on silencing violence,

I want to invite you to read also Tolstoy's masterpiece,

The kingdom of God is within

Clicking on the link will bring you straight to chapter one of the book

How do we make it better?

Many times you read in the news about these
desperate people who in their final act of their life,
want to shout out a message and kill as many innocents
just before killing themselves.

They are called terrorists and without thinking
a group of nationalist often extreme right wing people
want retaliation; resulting in more violence, more destruction

We have seen a few of these stupid retaliation efforts in the past one month.
Assad went on to use bombs on his own people, killing so many Syrians.
Leadership of the USA was moved by the images and went on to
cause some more destruction and more death among the Syrians
by using 59 missiles. This is just one of these events.

Let us think for a short while why people commit these crimes, these acts of terror.
How important is the huge distortion in the distribution of wealth
in all the violence directed to the western world?
How important is poverty, hunger in the creation of anger and extremism?
Does causing more destruction (by retaliations) and causing more poverty
help in reducing the violence in the world?

Please my friends, my readers,
before voicing out any support for revenge or retaliations
remember the success of people like Ghandi,
who effectively decided to practice: turn the other cheek.

Let us all together make things better in the world,
not worse!

Let us not spread anger and hatred
Let us spread education, goodness, wisdom!

Treasure

"There is no greater misfortune
than the feeling: I have an enemy"

Words of Lao Tzu, written more than 2500 years ago.
Over 2500 years, we have not been able as humanity
to fully assimilate, understand and put these words in practice.

It is my hope, no my belief, even my certainty
that sooner rather than later now,
humanity will embrace this giant wisdom.

Even though we will never be able to please all,
we do not need to feel enmity to anyone.

Lao Tzu went on, " when there is I and the enemy,
there is no place for my treasure"

And my treasure, I think, is meant the tremendous amount of love,
sitting right there in our heart since birth, ready to be given away
and in the process being refilled with a much bigger love still.

I want you to close your eyes for a short while;
vividly imagine a heart, your heart being full of love.
You give it all away and more and more love keeps coming
straight from the universe into your heart.
Imagine then what happens to the world around you.
What a treasure !

Ghandi

When I read all the nonsense coming out of the USA in recent months, applauding violence, encouraging hatred and at the same time calling themselves staunch Christians, my stomach turns.

Love your neighbor as you love yourself
Turn the other cheek
Love your enemies

Were not the three lines in the above paragraph key teaching of Christ?

Did great leaders as Ghandi not prove how effective the principles of non-violence could be applied in the politics of one of the most populated nations of the world that was occupied by one of the most powerful colonial powers and get them to retreat and give independence to India without a major war?

Did great leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. not prove that with a non-violence-approach to even the most wicked white supremacists, one can achieve the abolition of segregation policies and decades later even in America electing a black president?

Oh, my friends, we do not need violence.
Love is what the world needs.

We need a visionary approach to world politics.
Let us give enough power to UNICEF to make no children hungry
Let us give enough power to people to give all children equal educational chances.
We do not need more borders, stupid brexiters, stupid trumpists
We need less borders.

We are in need of a anti-hitler.
A demagogue who can convince us all to live in peace
A person with superb authority who can influence the thinking of all for the better
not for the worst
Perhaps what we see now happening in the US and other parts of the world, will be a last
lesson for humanity to learn forever about the enormous stupidity of violence.

Somehow we were made in a way to enjoy peace. NO ONE enjoys war
Somehow we were made in a way to enjoy kindness. NO ONE enjoys violence
Somehow we were made to enjoy love. NO ONE enjoys hatred.

Only wicked politicians try to benefit from war violence and hatred through mindless fear mongering. "The world is a dangerous place" Does it sound familiar? Nonsense to make gullible people believe they need these wicked politicians to protect them. Nonsense! Even though gullible immature people are still around in big numbers, slowly they get outnumbered by the more mature thinkers who see through this nonsense of fear mongering.

Let us all look again at the movie, Ghandi, let us read about him, let us be mature enough NOT to fall for the nonsense politicians rhetoric!

Naivety

The naivety of idealists of today
will be the reality of tomorrow.

The next revolution will be
one of kindness
one of wisdom

the naivety of today
the reality of tomorrow!

https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/naivete-2/

The above small poem written in support of idealism
Let us all keep our ideals from our youth throughout our life.

In our society it is alright for teenagers to have ideals,
but as we reach our twenties, we tend to give them up
because if we keep them very much alive,
we tend to be labelled as dreamers, as naive.

If everyone would have kept ideals alive for much longer,
the world would now already be soooo different

Let us not wait any longer and
either rekindle our ideals of old,
keep our current ideals
or create some new ones.

The world needs a change
and we can do it!

Beauty, everywhere

I met one unhappy person
He was dwelling on the ugly things of the past
The ugly things people had done to him,
the ugly things he had done himself.

Surely we are all only human,
on and off we do ugly things,
on and off ugly things come our way.

But what is done, is done,
we cannot change the past.
We can remember the lessons of the past,
but sitting on ugly memories, allowing them to make us unhappy,
does not help us or anyone else in any way.

So let us try to remember the lessons we have learned,
enjoy the forgiveness we have obtained from others
or try to obtain from others,
then forgive ourselves
and start a new day with a new mindset.

My favorite saying:
Life is not easy,
but so beautiful

There is always beauty we can see, hear or feel
if we just look or listen for it.

So, no matter what has happened in the recent or distant past,
let us look and listen for beauty today and enjoy with all our heart.
let us go out and share the beauty we saw, heard or felt
and make others feel and see the beauty too.

Every day is a new day.
Every moment is a new moment

No matter how difficult our life may be,
let us stop now look outside or just within our soul,
and find the beauty sitting there
waiting to be discovered

Different aspects

Yesterday had a small discussion with my son during a ride in the car.
These moments are perhaps among the moments I cherish most.

Somehow the topic was about being happy
and we discussed the four aspects of our being:
body, mind, heart and soul or
the physical world,      our thoughts/knowledge,
our emotions and         our spirituality.

I am not an expert in any of these fields,
but it feels like a balance between these four
may contribute to a certain harmony in our life,
while neglecting some in favor of other fields
may lead to problems.

Many years ago, (I think this was inspired by a book of Stephen Covey)
I used to draw a circle for my son with four quadrants
Then I asked him to think what were his ambitions,
his goals, his purpose in each of the four above fields.

For a long time now, many years, I have not even thought
about life, divided in these four areas and as we quite often do,
lived on without too much thought about goals and purpose.

When I came home after the ride with my son,
I gave it a try to fill in the quadrants of the circle for myself.
It reminded me of goals and purposes of old,
some of which seemed to have been "magically" achieved,
some of which had still quite a bit of work to be done.

Below is an example of the circle I used to draw
In the outer circle go the long term goals/purposes
In the second inner circle go the short term goals.
It is fun to give these things some thoughts
I enjoyed. Hope you enjoy it too.

 

Fly away or stay?

When I was 18 (35y ago), I read in a book from Guido Gezelle,
a famous Belgian poet, the following bit of wisdom:
Verba volent, scripta manent, Latin for:
{the spoken} words {tend to} fly away
{while} the written {words} are here to stay

It was Emerson, an American philosopher of the 19th century, who said:  
Man is only half himself, the other half is his expression.
I can understand Emerson there, and sometimes I feel like that too.

Once we express ourselves in the written language, we do add something to our life:
We do add like another dimension, we leave behind a treasure more permanent.
Each life is a treasure cove filled with rich thoughts, feelings and experiences.
The good things we do, live on through our children who tend to multiply our virtues.
The good things we do, live on through each of the men and women who were inspired
by whatever we said or did.
The good things we do, live on through all the things we write and what we write may have a much more permanent influence on the world than what we just did or said!


With this I really want to encourage you all, my friends,
to express your thoughts and feelings and share them with the world.

I want to challenge each of my readers: 
Please write simple four liner on 
what makes you happy at your work.
Post them in the comments section of this entry.
Post them anywhere you can, in cyberspace.
Surely, it will make the world a bit better!
 

Democracy

Politicians, do we need them?

They rule us, instead of we them!

Demo is the people of a land

Cracy is power, the ruling hand.

My dear friends, I dream of a world full of love

And that soon all of humankind will get wise enough

to let rule kindness, helpfulness and affability

Come, my friends, dare to dream with me.

Imagine a providing, super nurturing society

Soaked in compassion, grace and sympathy

Few psychopaths, bad dudes, may always be there

But they will be the subject of tender loving care.

True power for each, the power that sits in the heart

Everyone living a life of love, playing their part.

The only rule is be kind, no need for bureaucracy

No need for politicians, just pure true democracy

Who will need power, if each of us just love

Who will need politicians, abusing power, so though,

Real power to people, inherently sweet and kind

no army, no jails, just ever lasting peace of mind.

Few wicked humans are loud and make us believe

The world is bad, a messy place full of thieves

It is high time that the loving majority makes some noise

Let this blog be the beginning of their loudest voice!