A simple idea for a complex world

Problem 
Some years ago, I spent some time in Vienna and visited a wonderful park.
I was struck by the many lonely people sitting alone on a bench, or walking,
enjoying the beauty of the park, but visibly lonely.

Just two days ago, I was in Taiwan and went to a wonderful park there too.
Exactly the same scenario was seen

I think there are far too many lonely people.

Idea 
Why not we do something creative that could bring them together,
not for a date, but simply for a talk or walk with a friendly companion.

If we could try to have near the entrance of the park a few benches
which are marked or color coded as benches on which people sit,
who would not mind having a friendly talk with someone else or
have a walk through the park with someone else.

There may be different coded benches in the park for people who
prefer to enjoy the park all by themselves.

Anticipated result
When a new person enters the park and feels like talking or walking
together with a friendly companion, he could pick someone from the bench
or take a seat on one of the benches waiting for a friendly companion to enter.

If a creative approach like this would solve a bit of loneliness for just
a few people every day, it would be worth already the small investment.
😊😉😊😃

Carpe diem

"even as we speak, the envious time is flying away; Carpe diem"
The second last line and the first words of the last line of the famous poem.

Carpe diem has been interpreted in so many ways,
but the one which is the very closest to my heart is:
Pluck the day and cherish it like we would cherish a plucked flower.
Then share its beauty with our loved ones
or give it away to someone more still, in need of beauty than ourselves

Enough, or not?

"When you shift from a compulsion to survive
to a heartfelt commitment to serve
your life will automatically explode in success"
(Quote from Robin Sharma)

We have all been trained to compete
We have been trained to win and rejoice if the other loses
We have been trained to care for ourselves
and hoard as much as we can for the future
which is absolutely uncertain.
We have been trained to live and fear and gather things.

And yet, with this kind of training we want our children
still to live happy lives filled with purpose and peace.

Let us retrain a bit.
Life is not a competition
the universe has enough of everything
Service, selfless service is the way to peace,
the way to success.

I end this small reflection with a poem

Abundance

 Waves of enchanting orange morning light
broke on the shore of sand so white.
The sea, colored by it in pastel, wonderfully,
whispered to the sun, a bit angrily:

'Hey, this is MY shore, to break my waves.
Please, dear sun, take back your wavy rays'.

The sun, smiling a warm, kind smile at once,
explained gently, the principle of abundance:
' Of everything created, God gives more than enough
We can truly share all things on earth with love'. 

Aufie Zophy

(https://aufiezophypoems.blogspot.com/)

Every day

One day at a time,
our age moves, a bit further from the day we were born
One day at a time,
our life moves slowly a bit closer to our final day

Let us become fully aware,
that every one of these days is a precious gift.
I feel a bit bad If I have been squandering time
I feel good if have spent some time, usefully.

The more we are aware of the precious gift of time,
the more we will be grateful for it.
the more we will reflect and try to use it better, day by day.

I think a sincere reflection at the end of the day
and a sincere prayer filled with thanks
can make a huge difference in each of our lives

A thing of beauty

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever"
A famous line from John Keats.

While this sounds so true on first reading,
most things of beauty do not last forever.
We may remember and cherish the joy the things of beauty gave us
and they may live on in our mind, heart and soul as a sweet dream.
But all too often we tend to weep over the demise or destruction
of the things of beauty in our life.
 
John Keats, a poet who died at age 26.
He may have not lived long enough to reach the wisdom
of William Blake, a poet who lived up to the age of seventy:

"He who binds himself to a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sun rise."

When I had first heard and read this poem, I wrote in the comments
below the poem the following reflection (in 2010).

 Upon reading this wonderful poem I was immediately carried along the thought path, to one experience. I am living near the sea and one day I noticed a wonderful branch of a casuarina tree hanging almost horizontally, framing an astonishing view of the blue South China Sea.

A thing of beauty that moved my soul. Almost every day I took a long look and swallowed the beauty. But not long after I had first noticed it, the wonderful branch had come down in a storm. A thing of beauty is not a joy forever. I realized that many of the wonderful things in our lives are only temporary. They are ours to enjoy, to kiss it while it passes by. At the same time it is good to realize that it is flying and not permanent. And after it is gone, it is our duty to go and find more and other things of beauty, sometimes looking alike but never the same, sometimes more beautiful, sometimes a little less.

Since the above mentioned branch came down, other branches have grown giving me similar delights.

This piece of wisdom is easy to apply to amazingly beautiful branches of trees. It makes me a bit nervous if we start to apply it to the babyhood of our children, than the toddlerhood and so on until they will be out of the house. It makes me shiver to think in these terms if it comes to our intensest of human relationships. I hope so much to be the first to die in my own small cluster family.

I can detach with quite some ease from beautiful things, and find others in their place, but I cannot get detached from my family members. I am not so sure whether at all this would be desirable. Even though some Buddhists believe we should be detached from everything and everyone? ? ?

I remember when my mother died I was heartbroken, completely. And 15 years later, the sadness of the loss is still with me. It is however not a bitter sadness, but one filled with grace and thankfulness, a sadness that somehow gave me meaning; a motivation to live according to the beautiful values that were so dear to her. If I had managed not to be attached to her, I think I would miss this dimension of my life.

What do you all feel?

Sounds phony or not?

Appreciation

We don't want to be phony
That's OK
We don't want to sound phony
We don't want to look phony
That's not OK
Well quite often it is not OK

Why?
Because there are so many good things coming straight from our heart, that we refuse to say or do because we are too afraid that we may sound or look phony.

One example: appreciation.
There are many things we appreciate very much in our family, in our friends, in nature, in our life. Things that we truly appreciate. But how often do we express that appreciation? We are so afraid to sound or look phony.

Real phony people use flattery and quite often get their way. Flattery is actually quite easy to differentiate from heartfelt appreciation. But since we express so rarely heartfelt appreciation to each other we tend to lose the skills to see straight through phony flattery.

Let us reverse this pattern. Stop worrying about sounding or looking phony, and express your heartfelt appreciation to at least 5 people every day. The more we become familiar with heartfelt appreciation, the easier the phony flatterers will be noticed and the world of complimenting each other will be one of pleasure instead of one of fear to sound or look phony