a meaningful life
THOUGHTS
It takes a Good Mind, to Build a Good Life.
Mon.March.25.2024 - Ubochi Afor
There is a saying that "As a man thinketh, so he is". And in many ways this is true, but since I have a quarrel with simplifying life into adages and quotes without the full story let me delve into the matter, with a little more depth.
No "Meaningful Life" can exist without "Meaningful Thoughts". "A Meaningful Life" is a direct product of the investments in an approach to life, that is developed from a mind that is edified and fed by "good" or shall I say "Meaningful" thoughts. You must think of yourself and the world, in good ways, in order to adopt and sustain a course of life that leads to a life of meaning. If your thoughts are good, they frame the world in hope and possibilities and in holding on to such hope and fighting to access the possibilities, you secure a much greater chance at positive success and the joys of "A Meaningful Life".
If your thoughts are bad, they frame the world in blight and error and God cannot be seen, nor good accessed by "mere accident", where one has blinded himself to the greatness of natural meaning that exists even in the midst of the obvious corruptions of the world. Meaning is naturally encapsulated in every occurance of nature including volcanic eruptions, Earthquakes and Flood, yet a blind Mind, laden with bad thoughts cannot process the inherent values encapsulated in "process".
If you do not think at all, then you will collide with the world in your aimless sail and end as a ship wreak and not even with the significance of a Titanic but rather a pebble drop in the Ocean of life, a most "meaningless" exhibition of the waste of a human life.
THE POWER OF THOUGHTS
Ray Charles lost his sight as a child but remained a Joy to watch and became one of America's most prolific musicians.
Thoughts and imagination are deeply linked and it is only via imagination that innovation can arise. This trifecta of mind originated ideas are at the heart of every invention known to man including social notions like marriage, financial notions like currency and spiritual notions like prayer.
Bad thoughts enable prayers for unseen evil men in your family to "die, die, die", good thoughts enable prayers for the visible good in your family to be "blessed by God". Bad thoughts enable the "Japa" and survive, good thoughts enable the "Our Country" and thrive. It is out of the "fullness of the heart, that the mouth speaks" and it is out of the bounty of thoughts that you can fathom, engage and achieve "A Meaningful Life".
Thoughts precede actions, as such a man who does not think, is always engaging in reflexive action and failing to achieve any depth in interactions or life, beyond accidental and luck driven success. The thinking man however, is able to adopt reactions that are a credit to his own intentions and desired end from the events of life.
I recently read a quote that "he who does not read, has no advantage over he who cannot read", I surmise also, that "he who does not think, has no advantage over he cannot think" and yes, thinking is an action word and requires effort.
THINKING
Thought is a naturally Occurring nuisance of existence, like breathing. In its natural form it is a random Occurrence that takes place regardless of the conducive nature of the content Received.
for example, the nose, left alone, will breathe while in a gas chamber and will still breathe while surrounded by fresh air, but a thinking man will hold his breathe in a gas chamber and fight to escape, in essence thoughts are an automatic response but thinking implies a reaction that is "conscious" and not automatic, calculated for results, aimed, active not Automatic.
In its natural form, thoughts "creep", stroll and crash into our minds. In thinking we are able to weed the thoughts, hold them, fence them, bleed them and tame them such that is equal to holding ones breath in a gas chamber. Thinking is an action and it requires discipline, allowing a control of the content akin to wearing a mental gas mask.
Filtration is needed in order to avoid the self poisoning effects of Selfish, Stupid, Saline and other toxic thoughts (Bad Thoughts), training is needed to adopt Edifying, Inspiring and Restorative thoughts (Good Thoughts).
Thinking is an active response that requires cordination and intention. It is not a default to have good thoughts or Bad thoughts, either is a factor of orientation, training, experiences, exposures, environments and more, but for those who choose "A Meaningful Life" and active effort must be made to orient ones mind towards Good thoughts.
GOOD THOUGHTS
Good thoughts, hmm, hard to define but I will try.
When your thoughts help both you and the world around you, I consider them good. When your thoughts hurt either you, or the world around you, I consider them bad.
I know of a wonderfully intelligent member of my family, who loves everyone around him but whose thoughts and suggestions are laden with fear and trepidation towards life, he is poision.
Good thoughts are not kind thoughts, loving thoughts, glorious thoughts, and any other gentle allocations of expected positivity "alone". These values apply to good thoughts but can easily apply to bad thoughts, where for example, the Americans justify the "murder" of Sadaam Husein and Muarmar ghadafi, with democracy.
Good thoughts are "right" thoughts and right thoughts can only come out of a "right" mind. A jeolous friend cannot produce good thoughts, a scared parent cannot produce good thoughts, Political interests cannot produce good thoughts, and if you possess the same or any flames of negativity, in one coin or the other, ditch it because cloaking them in Love, Kindness, Democracy or whatever layers of "facade" goodness cannot make the inherent intentions good, or the resultant chaos good.
Equally as one cannot give what he does not have, you must aim in the direction of "A Meaningful Life" in order to have good thoughts and these good thoughts are a key part of how you can guarantee yourself "A Meaningful Life".
The world that we live in, is "fantastically" corrupt, but you cannot eat of the apple and still see God. Many people do not understand this and continue to react to the world with "intelligence" negating the need to filter experiences, direct thoughts and guide reactions actively and via the imaginative reconstructions of a mind trained to adapt every situation towards good.
GOOD
The notion of good, is seminal, foundational, Componential and essential for and to "A Meaningful Life". "Know this and know peace". Follow this, and end at "A Meaningful Life".
Meaning in life is found in "spiritual" notions that are best encapsulated in an "Arrow of God" article but I will try to share it in a non-spiritual and practical summary here. Think of it as so... If a bag of cement needs to be good in order to make strong concrete and a plate of soup needs to be good in order for you to enjoy it. Why do you think that Any other thing in life allows it's bad version to lead to enjoyment?
Even sexual predators seek "fresh girls", evil spirits seek "good boys", political enemies expose "bad" news, corrupt officers plant "incriminating" evidence. In life good repeats itself as a positive, even in the lives of inanimate objects and bad repeats itself irredeemably as a negative even in such crass cases as a bad beer, bad kiss, bad movie... Should there not be a clear room for bad thoughts.
Your thoughts should empower you, to take on the world, they should edify you, Embolden your dreams, repair the damages of past sins, both the ones committed by you and the ones committed against you.
If your thoughts like a bag of cement is bad, it can never build the foundations you need for "A Meaningful Life".
You must be good, in order to have the capacity to generate, Contain and Process, good thoughts. otherwise, even the best ideas, will skip through your mind and not find fertile soil to grow on and even you, will not have the mind to hold on to them, because you cannot reason inline with the rythm of Good thoughts, where you, as a person is bad.
REASON
When I speak of reason, I am not talking about "reasoning", but rather "a reason", in summary why. The seminal effect of a reasoned life, is that reasoning births a justification for the travails of life, that gives full value to our labour, justifying it as labour and not suffering.
Without reason, cooking for a husband becomes a bore, carrying a tired Son becomes a chore and providing for a family, a dwarfing drain on business gains. With reason, cooking for a husband is all a sport, carrying a Son, a man's sport and providing for a family is a game on which to bet more than any sport.
Reason makes the subsidy of expensive meals for a seminar, "reasonable" , it makes waiting 1 more year to get the right course in school "reasonable", it makes waiting, giving, loses and all the other things of life that deserve a complaint, a complement to your journey towards "A Meaningful Life". It takes thinking to find your reasons.
Again, if you are not good, you will reason wrong, so please will thinking, start with thinking about the content of your internal character, moral fiber and organic intentions. If they are driven by self seeking, revengeful or Painful motivations, your reasons are already wrong and "A Meaningful Life" is on the right, so you may want to make a U-Turn now before you finish the reading. Without good reasons, this article will not achieve any results in your life, except maybe and expansion of vocabulary and an amply waste of time.
DEFINITIONS
Without thinking, life is a river float that moves downstream with the currents and you are merely a dead fish whose destination is most definitely the sea. With thought, life begins to have meaning and make sense. It is in this definition that you can leave the river currents and channel out to streams, agree "and flow" into the Sea or resist and swim up stream.
I swim upstream, rejecting the notion of the African as a limited errand governed by the Western world or Asia. I can afford to swim upstream because I am a thinking man and I have defined my life in such a way that the river cannot contain me, nor move me beyond my own interests.
I have already defined the world around me, so it cannot define me. I give meaning to the world around me and my own Perambulation, in the chosen courses that emerge from my well thought out definitions of life.
If you do not think about the world and cannot conceptualize your position in it, how can you negate or alternate, how can you swim, when you fail to even process the fact that you are in the water? Or what you are, in the water?
You must define, your life and your purpose, through an active analysis of who you are, where you've been, what you come from, taking lessons where they need to be adopted and dumping memories where the pains serve no purpose. All this to arive at a life that is defined and oriented to a destination which if reached can be values "by you", as "A Meaningful Life".
PURPOSE
A Meaningful Life is in any ways as simple as a purpose driven life. It is a life which you live for clear reasons and with an expected end. In many cases, even when those aims are not achieved, the journey leads to unexpected pleasures and glories that make life worth living.
In fact, many people's meaningful life, appear to be abject failure to others but are a satifying end for the ones who take the roads charted by their hearts, and followed by their mind.
Pay attention to that last sentence. The road should be charted by your heart, but the heart has no capacity for execution and therefore it is the mind, through thoughts, that must adopt the chart and translate it into a journey in the real world.
A meaningful Life is a purposeful life and while the mind "Can never" be trusted to give you purpose, when purpose is found, it cannot be achieved by wishful thinking, but through constant engagement of the creative abilities of the human mind, through active thinking. It is these thoughts that will allow the navigation of the rough Seas of human reality, on the road towards "A Meaningful Life".
However, not as stated early, that this is not a factor of intelligence that negates principles and character, Good and God, such can never achieve A meaningful Life. It can gift your visible success, economic progressions and Public notoriety, all of these things can also be fruits of A Meaningful Life, if your process is good, but these by themselves, without the "Meaning" that is encapsulated in the process, have no value, if your aim is to have A Meaningful Life.
HOPE AND POSSIBILITIES
a key value of thinking, when paired with purpose and reason and standing on the foundation of a Good Heart, is that it enables hope and Possibilities for the dreams or our hearts and the Visions of our Spirits.
A thinking man, can always fathom a new way that might work, one more thing to say, something else that can be done, to move the business forward, to make the family work, to survive, to grow, to heal, to thrive.
A thinking man, when positive and seasoned with the whether wear of a good heart, is always optimistic and that optimism while often broken, is at the heart of every invention known to man.
Virtually no invention was made by a man who has concluded that all that needs to be done, has been done.
Yes, I know that you want to argue with me about Accidental Presidents, Incidental Inventions, Random Manifestations and revelations et al, and yes they do occur, but anamolies are not a standard by which any "thinking" man can stroll through life. And even in the most random circumstances, there is often an element of thinking that is not obvious to those who tell the stories of the accidents, Incidents and Manifestations they claim to know so much about.
HAPPINESS
When I tell people that I have been consistently happy since at most the age 18, they think that my life has been consistently good, since then. Far from it. My life over the years has become consistently convoluted and laden with conflict. In family, at work, with the society, the deepening reasonings of my mind, stronger definitions of life, and restrictive commitment to a purpose driven life has drawn unerasable lines of conflict and scratched crack lines that will last a lifetime and still I stand, because my life finds meaning in the swim upstream.
When I was younger, I was a model, Businessman and more, women littered my environments and my friend kept many friends but I prefered a girlfriend. In the many nights of loneliness, when the girl of your dreams is busy doing her own thing, it feels like stupidity having so much options and still waiting for a dream that isn't sneeking into the nightmare. But I was happy. Not happy that I didn't have what I wanted, happy because while I didn't have what I wanted, I thoroughly understood, that the options available where not options, because they were not my choice.
Happiness comes both from having, as from not having and knowing that the reason you do not have is because you made a choice. It is easy to live without something when you know that it is your own choice, for whatever reason, a passover, an intentional omissions, a refusal to Concede and not a loss, but a rejection of options that are not optional to "Your" Meaningful Life.
Find your flow, with the river, along the streams or in rebellious and turbulent refusal to flow and a commitment to swim up stream. Think through it, reason, decide and in the end, you too may find "A Meaningful Life", regardless of the conditions, as I have.
My happiness springs from the essential fact that I am living "A Meaningful Life", a good life and everything that is missing, are the very things that can Poison my mind, weaken my resolve and hamper my journey. By thinking of life like that, the missing things, no longer smell tasty but are revealed for their Saline, Selfish, Stupid toxicity and my joy remains, in reasoned appreciation for the glory of the things I have and the added value of the things I do not have, which are not lack but the added load of wastes, which I have Relieved myself of.
English fails me here, but I hope you get it.
Happiness is a key value of "A Meaningful Life" and it is found in both the things you gain and the things you loose, when you "reason" your existence and choose your course for the "greater good or you and your world".
Once that choice is made, the world will not leave you alone, it will still be what it is, but at least you can now decide how to engage it and when as may happen, you loose, you will not get lost.
AML - SERIES PROFILE
A MEANINGFUL LIFE
the "A MEANINGFUL LIFE" series is a non Religious, Non Enterprise look at life and meaning, written with the hope of getting you to a life of pure Joy, real Happiness and Satisfaction with your own life, regardless of your faith and economic profile.
It does not intend to preach, but where necessary it will. At the end, the desired result is that from this series you will pick up the tools to give your life greater meaning, and live a more satisfying existence.
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