Vera Meum

If attempting to make a significant life change, we must recognize that the larger the change the longer it will take to see results. Many a dream is lost to lack of patience, discipline, and consistency.

We live in a time of unprecedented pace of change. It is not possible to map out a step-by-step plan for the future. We must instead develop the discipline to routinely ask ourselves the following questions: “how do I wish to live?”, “how am I living now?”, and “what do I need to change today to close the gap between these two perspectives?”.

Life is in constant motion, electrons, atoms, planets, stars, galaxies, and everything in between. What makes us think that we alone shall remain the same, or believe that it is good or useful to do so?

Art, music, children, love, laughter, all play a melody in our soul that vibrates and resonates throughout our whole being. We must allow the soul to be played as an instrument each day, else the vibrations slow and fade, and we abandon our song altogether, forget to dance, cease to live.

It overwhelms the soul to think of all of the good people that have come and gone on this earth, that have quietly and without ceremony done the right thing, consistently, loved fully and humbly, across time and culture. Such is our shared history, undocumented, of far more significance than the wars and conquests we so often choose to aim our retrospective lens upon.

When the busy-ness ceases, the devices unplugged, the tide of adrenaline slowly recedes. The wind breathes quietly and the kernel of the soul is laid bare. It is here we at last find meaningful communion with the infinite.

When seeking wisdom and contentment, one of the primary skills to master is to know what is enough. There will always be a cycle of desires, goals, and achievements, but there will also always exist the point of “enough”. We must define it, reach it, and move on.

Job number one as a parent is to be a hero to one’s children. To accomplish this requires maintaining consistent character and promptly rectifying our inevitable missteps. Becoming a better parent means becoming a better person; it’s an especially fruitful job.

Some adults work in consumptive jobs “for the children”. But we should consider what our kids need most: attention, good role models, empowerment, self-reliance, a safe and secure atmosphere, education, and above all love and forgiveness. A consuming career may help support funding a quality education and shelter, but falls short providing many of our children’s most fundamental needs.

In a full lifetime, we can expect to live through many chapters, ranging from childhood, to adolescence, jobs, relationships, parenting, death, grief, changed living situations, retirement, and so on. We must reduce our surprise and fear of each transition, for as it often is with novels, we may look back at chapters fondly with the understanding that we will never get another chance to experience them as we did the first time.

Moods are heavily influenced by physical factors such as sleep, food, fatigue, and stress. It is not always possible to think oneself into or out of a particular mood. We must recognize our mood, try to understand and address its origins, but not use it as an excuse to behave poorly.

Sickness, injury, bad dreams, personal loss, mistakes, and other seemingly negative aspects of our lives all serve a district purpose, to remind us of our fragility and weakness, to provide much needed perspective, to humble the ego and its irrational delusion of invincibility.

Humility is an indication of intelligence. The greater our intellectual capacity and the more knowledge we attain, the more we realize how little we truly understand.

To know something of math does not infer that we comprehend the whole of it; to be aware of spirituality does not mean that we understand it universally. We must still learn, augment, correct, and clarify our understandings over time and avoid the temptation to believe that we have conquered anything in its totality ourselves.