Tag: philosophy

It is great luck when fate takes care to relieve us of burdens we did not choose or did not wish to take on. Often, such moves go unnoticed, even though they save us from immense suffering. We can endure more suffering than we realize, as long as it is justified; when we suffer for nothing, even if this is only what it seems to us, we can endure very little. We should never take on the other person’s cross, or everyone’s cross, just because that is what they do. We must carefully choose the justification for future tears, and thank fate when it makes us free to assume our reason for suffering.

Today, we have reached a point where it is impossible to produce a scholar like the old ones, who kept more or less up to date with everything new in many areas of knowledge. The specialist himself finds it humanly impossible to keep up with advances in his specialty. And so the question arises: how many today are capable of making the great syntheses that are so necessary for orientation? Hard to say… But it is fortunate to note that the major themes have not changed, and that it does not take much to achieve an incomplete but fruitful orientation.

It is no use: either one values what is painful in the past, or one can make little use of it. Time does not return, and it teaches less what requires less effort to absorb. Where it hurts lies an opportunity, and one can only take advantage of the past when one assimilates the paradox of recognizing in it one’s present identity while accepting the part of what was, but is now gone.

Perhaps no more valuable lessons can be learned from life than those that come from intense and prolonged anguish. The moment when this is finally overcome is a milestone, because it usually involves an unusual internal effort. Then comes the effort and the catharsis. The tension eases, a positive feeling emerges, but what happened is not forgotten: it remains a living and authentic learning experience, through which the burden of learning has been felt on the skin