Anyway, I will wanted to share this but just didn't get down to it.. Well here it is. Enjoy..
Life Just IS, So Just Do Your Best, Darling
By Douglas Chew
" Have you ever found yourself thinking about how the ideal life should be? Not quite how you can enjoy yourself a lot, or have a lot of money or fame or whatever but how things should be in an ideal world?
And then find yourself feeling frustrated or disappointed when reality don’t seem to conform to that picture? And almost angry thinking about how come people don’t just all do what is in that picture, i.e. the “correct” thing? And almost a feeling of helplessness or maybe even despair, when you realise that it is almost hopeless, that the environment is just not going to be saved, or that banks need bailouts, or that those who seem to deserve more ain’t getting it but instead money is siphoned off by corrupt officials? Or that world peace is just something that beauty pageant contestants talk about and there is almost no glimmer of hope for it to actually happen unless there is actually no more life in the universe since the perverse quest of humans or for that matter all lifeforms is survival and the universe is such that survival means sometimes killing or hurting just to be ahead? Or just to survive?
Well, here’s the funny thing.
Life Just IS.
What do I mean by that? The truth of the matter is, life just is. Simply that. It IS. There is no simple formulae or over-generalisation that is going to be able to capture the complexity that is LIFE. It isn’t complicated, it’s complex. Meaning, complicated things can be unravelled. Complex things can only be analysed. And it’s even hard to know if the analysis is correct. We are never going to find 1 single formula that is going to express all of how life should be lived, regardless of how badly physicists or engineers want to find it. And I think we might know what the phrase was when some ancient emperor asked his wisest man to find that single phrase which would be suitable in any situation or circumstance in all of life. They thought and studied a lot and thought some more. And had all sorts of busy little forums and conferences and meetings and discussions. And finally, they boiled it down to this: “This too shall pass”. Abe Lincoln thought that this was “How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!”
Yes, this too shall pass. All glory, pride, sorrow, pain, vanity, brilliance, all will pass. Good to keep in mind, certainly pretty enlightening but abit hard to execute as a formula for living life. What I think can guide our path though is this. Knowing that life just IS, meaning, we cannot control it and it is not going to respond to our whims and fancies, at least not all the time, and sometimes when we least expected it not to. And sometimes when we least expect it to, it actually does, we can only go about living it the best we could. That is, Life Just IS. So Just Do Your Best, Darling.
Life is one big adventure. The biggest adventure we are ever going to have, since by definition, life is the only thing we have. And that’s why we love stories of great adventures. From Robinson Crusoe to Moby Dick, to Tom Sawyer or even poor Oliver Twist, their life is an adventure, and we love rooting for the adventurers. The twists, the overcoming of odds, the battles won and then also the battles lost, the pathos, the catharsis we feel, it’s vicarious living. Too many big words? Vicarious means experiencing someone else’s experience through them relating it to you. Be it through a book or a movie or just a story being told by your friend.
Think about it. Why do we love the Olympics or sports or stories of people winning, or adventure stories? Because they are expressions of people just doing their best. At the best and highest levels, like the Olympics. The ideal of Citius Altius Fortius, is precisely that, do your best, faster higher stronger. And sometimes, you know, at the Olympics, you see that gymnast, having trained for like all her or his life, 12 hours every day in the gym, since 3 years old or whatever, working real hard, hands all blistered, coach scolding away, parents all full of hopes and crushing expectations. And then it comes down to just a 2 minute performance, on the bar, to the proverbial line. He puts himself on the bar, swings, does the double somersault or whatever, and then ………. Then misses it. And falls. You can almost hear the audience going, awwww, gasping away. Imagine what runs through his mind as he hits the ground. I suspect it would sound something like, “SHIT!” if he’s a swearing man. Or if not, a huge “ARGH!”
You know what? You know what I really love about sports in this case? They get up, pick themselves up, and then get back on that bar and finish off the performance. Yes, they pick themselves up and finish off that performance. It is not the end. No, tomorrow is another day, there are other competitions to compete at, and well, it happens. Yes, SHIT happens. Life JUST IS. Bad things happen to good people, just like good things also happen to good people. And just because you trained real hard doesn’t mean that you are going to win that gold. It certainly does give you your best chance of winning it though. And after all that, after trying your damnest, and it’s not just on the training grounds but also in your life that you still got to cope with, after you get home at night, you still got to do those dishes in the sink that was not done yesterday. And after all that, you know what? You might not win.
But you know what? It is already the best that you can do, and if you had done that, then I think you can be already pretty satisfied. Because simply there can be no better result already. Sure, you could have trained even harder, maybe your mum should have put you in gym school or whatever these places are called where they learn sports, earlier. Or you could have slept earlier instead of playing that silly computer game. Yeah, a whole bunch of what ifs. And the next time, you would try to sleep earlier. You would maybe be inspired to work harder. You could do absolutely nothing about going to gym school earlier since time unfortunately is a uni-directional quantity (which is a smart way for me to say that it goes only in 1 direction, i.e. forward and it won’t go backwards no matter how much physicists or engineers want it, at least not yet). And so you do. And then maybe you will win. Or maybe you won’t win. But well, you had already done your best.
An alternative is to quit. Then well, you would have a total chance of zero to ever win that gold. You would be totally defeated. And then you must also try to move on. Try your best to move on. And maybe you’d find another thing where you could do your best. Or maybe that thing also you cannot win. Who knows? Just do your best.
Now, so you are thinking, ok, so what’s your point? Are you trying to state the obvious or what, you are asking the author. Actually, I don’t think it’s that obvious. Many a times, we just cruise along, or give in to rage and anger, the dark side of ourselves. Or sleep too much, eat too much, berate ourselves, irritate our love ones, not enjoy ourselves enough, work too hard until it destroys what else is important in life. And sometimes, it is just our way of coping with this complex thing called life, which is what we are living. Well, just do your best, darling. "
