What do you mean?

culinary excesses …

There will always be someone in this life who just doesn’t like you, no matter how hard you try to please them.
There will always be something that you say, or do, which causes offence or division.
Whether you meant to or not.
There will always be someone who finds fault in you, your life or your words.
You may never find out why, please don’t waste your precious time trying to.
You can’t be everyone’s cup of tea.
Then there will be those who like you on impact.
A little fizz of energy that passes between you.
Silently, unseen, bonding.
Those people will not only like you but they will like you fiercely.
They are your people.
Whatever spare time you have, spend it on them.
You can’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but you can be someone’s first sip of a cold drink on a sunny day…
Or a warming hot chocolate when you come in from the rain
or the pop of a long awaited champagne cork
or a stiff shot of tequila when things go awry
Find your people,
love them hard.

Donna Ashworth

(Photo by ArtistHardibudi)

Empathy distorts our moral judgments in pretty much the same way that prejudice does. Do you agree?

Further, spotlights only illuminate what they are pointed at, so empathy reflects our biases. Although we might intellectually believe that the suffering of our neighbor is just as awful as the suffering of someone living in another country, it’s far easier to empathize with those who are close to us, those who are similar to us, and those we see as more attractive or vulnerable and less scary.

Intellectually, we can value the lives of all these individuals; we can give them weight when we make decisions. But what we can’t do is empathize with all of them. Indeed, you cannot empathize with more than one or two people at the same time. Try it. Think about someone you know who’s going through a difficult time and try to feel what she or he is feeling. Feel that person’s pain. Now at the same time do this with someone else who’s in a difficult situation, with different feelings and experiences. Can you simultaneously empathize with two people? If so, good, congratulations. Now add a third person to the mix. Now try 10. And then 100, 1,000, 1,000,0000.

If God exists, maybe He can simultaneously feel the pain and pleasure of every sentient being. But for us mortals, empathy really is a spotlight. It’s a spotlight that has a narrow focus, one that shines most brightly on those we love and gets dim for those who are strange or different or frightening.

“…the mind that is collectively orientated is quite incapable of thinking and feeling in any other way than by projection.”
― C.G. Jung..
And this is 100% true, proof is the almost foolish day-to-day trend with which we feed our inner Troll …. hopping from one social platform to another to drink an overdose of a cocktail of philosophy and triviality, as an antidepressant, … being pleased with the thought that “everyone loves us” ….. and where you can transform into “your ideal ego,” without fault, without a stain, philosopher and bohemian, with all the “oxen” in the stable.

I live waiting on the platform for my destined train. Sometimes I overslept in the waiting room and missed it, but most of the times I was here on the platform when it arrived. I have travelled for a while, I have learned new things but when I got off the train I have realized it has brought me back to this station with a name that I am still trying to decipher.

It’s just a normal train station like all others. With a huge clock, with huge windows, with many people carrying around small and big luggages and baggages stuffed with their own existence. Many run after trains they almost miss, others wait a bit restless for their journey, but the most rare kind of passengers are the ones that radiate happiness when they see their train arriving. Not many smile as they step in their train.

Above my head, on a wall, is scribbled Paler’s Decalogue, for some a blasphemy, for some food for thought:
“1.Wait, no matter how long.
2. Wait, no matter for what.
3. Don’t remember quite anything instead. The only good memories are the ones that allow you to live in the present.
4. Do not count the days.
5. Do not forget that any waiting time is temporary, even if it lasts for a lifetime.
6. Repeat yourself that there is no such thing as a desert. There is only our incapacity to fill the void in which we are living.
7. Do not put in the same pot both the prayer and God. Prayer is sometimes a form of hope of the one that does not dare to hope on his own.
8. If this thought helps, do not seek to admit that you hope because you don’t have something better to do or even in order to prevent the outcomes of doing nothing.
9. Bless the opportunity of completely belonging to yourself. Solitude is a whore that doesn’t blame you for being selfish.
10. Remember that Paradise was , most certainly, in a grotto.”
No days or nights are the same. They are all different and this is a blessing in itself.
Sometimes moths circle around the glowing beauty of a single light in the night, in a dance that fascinates me so much that I forget how much I still have to wait to see my train coming. Their mesmerizing dance takes me out of my world for a while.
Sometimes the dirty light reveals the faces of all the unknown people still waiting by my side, some worried, some cheerful, same frowning, some left with only few more drops of life.
Life goes on on the platform. The days grow, the nights slowly fade, the time sometimes pauses. The most beautiful light of all is the sunrise invading like molten gold the quiet platform, flowing between trains and passengers, flooding the huge waiting room in which some just enter and some still wait for an eternity to finally get born.

In 1946 Hermann Hesse received the Nobel prize in literature for his book: The Glass Bead Game.
The principles of the Glass Bead Game are:”… a new language, a sign and formula of which mathematics and music equally partake, enabling one to combine astronomical and musical formulas, a common denominator for mathematics and music.”
The law of the octave is this principle where mathematics and music equally partake. This law makes it possible to combine astronomical and musical formulas. It is the common denominator of astronomy, mathematics, music and colour. Hermann Hesse writes further on in the Glass Bead Game:

• “I suddenly realised that in the language, or at any rate in the spirit of the Glass Bead Game, everything actually was all-meaningful, every symbol and combination of symbols led not to single examples, experiments and proofs, but into the centre, the mystery and innermost heart of the world, into primal knowledge. Every transition from major to minor in a sonata, every transformation of a myth or a religious cult, every classical or artistic formulation was, I realised in that flashing moment, if seen with a truly meditative mind, to be nothing but a direct route into the interior of the cosmic mystery, where in the alternation between inhaling an exhaling, between heaven and earth, between Yin and Yang, holiness is forever being created.” –

Our life unfolds today in a stressful environment. The world is looking for an “antidote”. A part of this ” antidote” can be found in music. As we are looking for the forest and the meadow to heal our souls, in the same way we should look for music. Our Earth was born from the Universe’s Song. That is why everything that exists in nature,expresses itself through a song that can be perceived by the souls who live in contact with it. All these songs form a symphony that is vital for humanity. Music of the spheres, so dear to Pitagoras, is a reality: celestial bodies that slip in their orbits have sound vibrations, creating a cosmic music. There is a music of human nature which resonates with the music of the spheres being it’s echo.
The music blends toghether in a perfect harmony. If the music of the Universe comes to us then as a normal reaction we should turn to the universe through music.
Music is a universal bridge, crossing the barriers of culture, age, and language. Perhaps, eventually, we will learn that it also spans those of time… and space.

“An invisible thread connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place, and circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle. But it will never break.” – Ancient Chinese Proverb.
All cultures have pondered what it is that governs the individual path of each person, and among them, many have conceived an astronomical thread that predicts their paths.
Think of the Moirai of the Greeks, who hold a thread of gold for each person on earth and cut it suddenly when his or her death is due or the other Red Thread of the Cabala which connects the believers to the Holy Land of Jerusalem.
Such a viewpoint on life and relationships has given birth to holistic philosophy, which states that our vital essence isn’t confined to the borders of our physical body. Holists declare that we are one with the Universe and see the notion of the Red String as one of the ways towards understanding this unity.

Have you ever found yourself thinking: ’’This person has entered my life for a reason’’? Quite possibly, you’re right. And it might be the case that Fate has already guided you to the point where you can bring change into the lives of others.
It is logical to think that if life is conceived as an excellent text (Latin text: knitting, connection), the strings are the primary material of men to rasterize their daily lives. To ‘lose the thread’ is now a universal expression to refer to practical or even existential deviation.
Thus, the legend of the Red Thread tells us that within the labyrinth of encounters and shared stories there is a pre-designed and perfect path, a scarlet string which, like that of Ariadne, connects us with our irrevocable destination placed at the edge of another string that will also lead to us.

When you set out for Ithaka
ask that your way be long,
full of adventure, full of instruction.
The Laistrygonians and the Cyclops,
angry Poseidon – do not fear them:
such as these you will never find
as long as your thought is lofty, as long as a rare
emotion touch your spirit and your body.
The Laistrygonians and the Cyclops,
angry Poseidon – you will not meet them
unless you carry them in your soul,
unless your soul raise them up before you.

Ask that your way be long.
At many a Summer dawn to enter
with what gratitude, what joy –
ports seen for the first time;
to stop at Phoenician trading centres,
and to buy good merchandise,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and sensuous perfumes of every kind,
sensuous perfumes as lavishly as you can;
to visit many Egyptian cities,
to gather stores of knowledge from the learned.

Have Ithaka always in your mind.
Your arrival there is what you are destined for.
But don’t in the least hurry the journey.
Better it last for years,
so that when you reach the island you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to give you wealth.
Ithaka gave you a splendid journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She hasn’t anything else to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka hasn’t deceived you.
So wise you have become, of such experience,
that already you’ll have understood what these Ithakas mean.

Ithaka-by Constantine P. Cavafy

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How reassuring the thought that we were once giants, that we were once perfect and somehow immortal, that, if there is no evidence that we have lived, no one can say precisely that we have died…
“And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you./ Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,/ you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.” Each of their Ithakas—sense of original identity—means the same as yours.
Ithaka is the home that gives you an origin, that you grow out of and that greets you as a stranger when you finally return.
Ithaca exists for each and everyone of us, but in a different way. Only the bold make the journey.

“Bear in mind that every man lives only this present time, which is an indivisible point, and that all the rest of his life is either past or it is uncertain. Short then is the time which every man lives, and small the nook of the earth where he lives; and short too the longest posthumous fame, and even this only continued by a succession of poor human beings, who will very soon die, and who know not even themselves, much less him who died long ago. “Marcus Aurelius. Meditations. Book 3.

Stoic philosophy is meant to be for everyone, regardless of class, race, age or occupation. This is because stoic philosophers themselves came from varying lifestyles and social classes, yet most of them arrived at the same conclusions. For example Epictetus was born a slave, yet Marcus Aurelius was born a Roman Emperor, both of them however lead extraordinary lives.

Therefore this philosophy transcends space, time, and personal circumstances, making it freely available to anyone who wishes to understand it.

Image: Marcus Aurelius Distributing Bread to the People by Joseph-Marie Vien, 1765 at the Musée de Picardie in Picardy, France.