It doesn't hurt if you know exactly what Sign you were born in. Because there is no doubt that you were born under the stars, so you have something to do with them.
But you just live as if you were born on earth, and you will return here, to the earth. Just greet the stars with a glance, because you can't know anything about them. You can only know the earth. Because you were earth and you will be earth. Get to know the land, get used to it.
Love the earth as your destiny written in the Signs and the stars. Take care of it, rest in it, recognize it also in its materiality, don't be averse to the earth in a squeamish way. The ground is not dirty. It is like you: matter with power. Tickets and stars are the secret. There is no doubt that you live among secrets. But it is more certain that you will die once and become earth.
Epictetus recommends that, if possible, we should not go to the theater at all. But when we leave, let's behave modestly and quietly. There are children sitting in the theater. Children, even babies. The iron curtain goes up, the spotlight flashes on the red velvet, and at that moment, a thousand open-mouthed babies are sitting in the auditorium, waiting for the miracle. A few minutes ago, in their private lives, these babies were serious doctors, intelligent lawyers, hardworking and educated teachers, responsible, thoughtful adults. But the moment they sit in the auditorium of a theater, and the fire of the spotlight flashes on the red velvet of the curtain, this theater crowd can only be considered the small, open-mouthed population of a gigantic children's room. A thousand babies are waiting for the pacifier. And if they get the pacifier, it can be sweet or bitter, it doesn't matter - they sit quietly, happily and obliviously. But if they don't get a pacifier for five minutes, they start fidgeting, coughing, yawning, whining, and often haughtily protesting. What is this stuff? The tension. So don't be too proud in the theater if you like something. Say this: "I was a good kid, I got candy."
When you speak tenderly to a woman, or bargain with the powerful, or argue with babbling nonsense, know that death stands behind you and listens to the conversation over your shoulder. His skeleton is attentive and grinning. Because no matter what words you use to argue your truth, death knows that he will say the last word in your argument. Always think about this when you promise, bargain or argue.
A creative and talented person has no right to steal something from the time necessary for self-cultivation for creation. It is not so important that you write every day; it is more important that you read everyday. You should always have time for cultivation, every day. Because it is not certain that you benefit your country and humanity when you create something; it takes divine grace. But it is certain that you will benefit yourself, your country and humanity too, if you give time to the cultivation of your soul every day, if you read a section of a work of exceptional creative spirits, if you get to know a truth or knowledge precisely. It is not important to have many writers in a community, but it is important to have many readers. It is not important that you write what is beautiful and true; it's more important that you get to know each other.
You have to be very careful about people who are right. For example, great injustice and chaos afflicted them: they were robbed of the fruits of their labor, their freedom, they killed their loved ones, and all this was done unjustly by greedy, mean or cruel people. These people are right, and they walk in the world like a flaming torch, carrying around them a red fire, their undoubted truth. And they want compensation or revenge, and sometimes they don't even know what they want? – just let something happen... These unfortunates are very dangerous because they are right; every man who is right and knows it is dangerous.
In practice, it is only possible to live together with guilty people, with those who have put the wrong wood on the fire, one way or another, and they know it. Societies can be operated with these. The offended, and those who are absolutely right, are worse than people with one book. Because they have only one truth, and they want the whole world to serve this one truth, the truth of their unworthy suffering. You cannot approach them with intellectual and emotional arguments at all. You have to wait until time drains the snake venom of the first pain from their souls. Then they will calm down. And one day they realize that they, the unjustly persecuted and tortured, are also responsible for everything that happened. Everyone is responsible for what happens to them. Then comfort them; not before.
After all, you should know what your business is on earth. Under no circumstances should you keep a certain amount, texture and quality of bone, meat, fat and viscera in a chemical plant. Nor is it to collect titles and ranks, to be the president of some company, to walk around in fancy clothes and ring the bell. Neither that nor this hurts more - to be happy, because there is no happiness, since all your desires are distorted at the moment of realization, and it's more of a pain than a joy. That's how you are. No, your only job, the only meaning of your existence on earth, is to get to know the true nature of human and worldly things, the connection between human and worldly phenomena, and to behave fairly even when your fellow humans behave unworthily. This was your business on earth; not more.
You have to say goodbye to youth cheerfully. So he does not act moved and not emotionally, like the weak, the weak and the uninformed, who stare with bowed head and tearful eyes after the departing youth, wave goodbye and moan in a voice trembling with self-pitying sentimentality: "Vale, Youth!... You are gone, happy Youth." This is not how you should say goodbye to youth. You should say goodbye to youth cheerfully, with full lungs and roaring laughter, like someone ridding himself of an unreliable traveling companion. This is what you should say: "Go away, Youth. I watch your departure without pity. It wasn't so good to be young. There was confusion, fog, longing, ignorance, false concepts, even more false concepts, desire and fear that we would be left behind in the great competition. And when we held someone in our arms, how many misunderstandings! And the fear that we would miss the Other, who more real! And the fame we longed for when we were young, how different it was, how much more suspicious and fragrant, when it arrived! And worldly goods, when they arrived in our lives, how suspicious they are stuck with the filth of human envy! No, you can say goodbye to youth without regrets. It was a feverish state, a touching and tender self-absorption. Now, when you are gone, Youth, I turn with joy to the other landscape. Now I am me, from head to toe. It is not good, it is not wise, it is not quite just: but do I already suspect something about what the truth is? My kidneys are not so good anymore; but my sense is sharper. Disappointments can't come, only surprises." Say this: "Thank God, youth is over."
Whenever we encounter injustice or cruelty in life - a child is tortured, an animal is abused, a person is humiliated, or they are not given what is due to them according to divine and human rights - I am always tempted to ask again and again whether it is your right and duty to intervene, to intervene, to assume the ungrateful role of an unwelcome procurator in the trial of foreign destinies? Or move on, with a guilty conscience but unscathed? Know that you have the right to interfere in the affairs of strangers and the world only as long as you, personally, without the intervention of strangers or authorities, can actually help where you experience indignity, injustice or cruelty. Because whoever, with legitimate indignation, transfers the help to others, "draws" the attention of the authorities or philanthropists to what he has seen, is already making a "case" out of human misery, is already assuming a role between suffering and help, is already deceiving himself and the world. Stay alone with human suffering and try to help according to your power. If you can wipe the tears from a child's face, if you can make the fate of a sick horse easier, if you can give money that is yours, or give clothes to the ragged, or help with something, personally, with advice and action - then, and only then, do you have the right to intervene. But everyone who calls the police in such situations, or writes a letter to the newspapers, or organizes a fundraiser for those in trouble, is suspicious. Your pain and misery are also personal, and you can only help in person. Everything else is vanity.
Worldly dignity is gold smoke and play money; but human dignity is a reality, pure gold. Why do you play for fake money when God filled your pocket with pure gold?
Whoever you face, know that he is only human, with only one title to greatness: justice. No matter what he says, what he knows, what his rank is? He has the right to be considered human only if he overcomes vanity, desires, pride and greed in himself, and speaks the truth in your case and in the case of the world, which was just discussed. Everything else can be attractive or attractive, but don't let it scare you or tempt you.
People like to be bigoted and hateful when they can; and most of the time they are really as peculiarly cruel as children. But you remain humble and at the same time preserve your dignity. Because you can only save both at the same time. Your human dignity will be a distorted behavior if the self-awareness of the humility of your fallen being does not shine behind it; your humble demeanor will be the impression of a softie's cowardice, if they do not feel your human rank behind this demeanor. If you have to live among people - and you are neither a tapir nor a vulture, where else can you live? –, you must rule and obey at the same time, always dignified and modest, always serious and willing, always humble and dignified. Otherwise, you're just a friar, a pathetic and cowardly slave. But Epictetus was indeed a slave: yet he bore this fate with humility and ruled over men.
Is it surprising that meanness springs from a man like poison from a toad? But just think, what kind of man is this? How distorted, how weak, how only hate and envy is his power? Wipe off the secretions that splashed on your face, don't step on the toad, because you will stain your shoes with blood and pus.
Externally worn, conspicuously displayed and proven religiosity always hides deep and cowardly greed and sex hunger.
The greatest, tragic temptation of manhood is not woman, but vanity. At the same time, worldly hunger rushes in: you want rank, a position among people, a title or an order of merit, everything that glitters, that you can hang on your chest in swags, that you can print on your business card in empty and sonorous words. You want an armchair when the others are crowding barefoot on the country roads and in the patches of the cities. You want dignity when life is so miserable for masses of people that most of them lose their human dignity. This is a difficult hour in a man's life. Most of them fail at this point. Only a man and a man remain who can bow down to human misery, settle for the only rank that a man can bear: the rank of awareness of work and willingness to help, of patient fairness, and reject everything that the world can give him in the form of worthless recognition. Just think at this time, what vile people hold the highest titles and ranks! They boast orders of merit! Stay, untitled and unadorned, man. And then you will really have some rank among people. Otherwise you will only be a dignified or gracious gentleman - are you so modest? I thought you wanted more.
Do you think you've built a house and can look out on the world from the proud perch of your career? Don't you know that you will remain a wanderer forever, and that everything you do is the movement of a wanderer on the road? You are forever moving between cities, destinations, ages and changes, and when you rest, you rest no more securely or permanently than the wanderer who rests in the shade of the roadside apple tree for half an hour on the way. Know this when you draw up plans. The meaning of your journey is not the destination, but the wandering. You don't live in situations, you live on the go.
The work, which is only yours, from which you have no way to escape, nor your right, which is your destiny: you need not only skill, ability, knowledge, experience, gender. Work requires more than inspiration and grace. And it requires not only the diligence of a draft animal. All this is necessary and all this is not enough.
Work also requires divine virtue. That virtue is patience. Not leaving work. Don't freeze to death. Not to run away from it. To endure patiently, like a mysterious disease, day by day, for years, to live with it throughout life, like a prisoner with a pill of dust, like a patient with the scourge that God has meted out to him.
Patience is not a human virtue. If he does undertake and practice it, then, and only then, will he sometimes resemble God.
Sometimes you feel like you're going to die the next moment. In such cases, it is not absolutely necessary to call a doctor. Learn not to fear and not to hope. Death is not the worst thing that can happen to a mortal, no, death is not "bad" at all: death at all. Let us die, if we have to, in a human way, that is, with dignity and without haste or pomp.
But let's live as long as possible, in a human way, that is, attentively, looking for the meaning of phenomena and symptoms, examining their true nature. What could you say to the doctor if you call him at a dangerous moment, and then he asks for the cause of your illness? Your mind works, so you should know everything that concerns your body. And if you look at yourself in this way, you will be shocked at how complicated reality is: every human thing has an infinite number of reasons, every aspect that connects to the universe is a reason for something that happens in our life or in our organization, and the main "cause" is myself, the a fact of existence. It is the "cause" behind all the phenomena of life. This cause can be eliminated arbitrarily, but it cannot be completely dismantled, explained, or understood.
Love, proclaim and confess the truth, the small and big truth, the truths of ordinary days and fatal moments, always, bravely and without fear. But it doesn't hurt if you smile quietly at the same time: at yourself and at the truth.
Because truth is constant and unchanging, like the great laws of nature. But you, the person who believes in the truth and confesses it, are not permanent or unchanging. Even the weather can change your intentions, even the snowfall can divert you from the path marked by the divine order, even a woman can influence you: you are so changeable. What can you expect from yourself?... Proclaim the truth, but it doesn't hurt to smile sometimes.
It's also amazing how sensitive people are. Like a rose. Like a primrose. They pay such fatal attention to every word that might offend their vanity, like no one and nothing in the world of the living. Even a tone of voice can wound a person to death, yes, even if you just keep silent about him, when he expects you to praise or approve of him: it turns a person into your enemy forever. And these same people, who perceive everything that concerns their person with such a terrifyingly fine hearing, who perceive the opinion or truth flashing towards them even in the intimacy of a handshake, in the tone of a telephone conversation, these people who are gentler and more sensitive than mimosa carelessly follow the most vile things, without batting an eye. they are cruel, indifferent and sometimes cheerful. This flexibility of the human soul is not worth criticizing; you just need to know about it. And never be surprised by anything.
People are usually offended if we are too polite to them. I am talking about European and American people. Only the Chinese can bear the unconditional, the complete, the fatal politeness, which has permeated the entire fabric of their body and soul, one with life, even for colonists and princes. This politeness, which is clear from the way of life of the people, is the highest expression of human coexistence. But our politeness is completely superficial. Only his literature and his proclamation of war are polite to the French: his dining room, his shop and his salon are no longer polite. It's not enough to say "I'm sorry" when you step on someone's foot. You also have to feel: "I'm sorry" - and that's much more difficult. Our age is one of the most impolite ages of mankind. The executioner of the Middle Ages still knelt before the victim and asked for forgiveness because he was forced to cut his neck: and Marie Antoinette still said to Sanson on the blood bench: "Pardon". But now neither the executioner nor the victim apologize to each other anymore. sad. And if someone is perfectly polite these days, contemporaries perceive this behavior as cold, dispassionate indifference. Today, everyone demands "pretence", and politeness is perceived as evasion and betrayal. It is not: it is simply experience. There is no other solution. When everyone is digging into the other's guts, with passionate love or maddened hatred: you remain polite.
And the forms must be followed until the last moment. During a meal, during a conversation. In bed and at the table. And when human coexistence becomes more and more formless: you remain faithful to the established, final and crystalline forms of greeting, bowing, shaking hands, expressing feelings, forming opinions. In an age when everyone demands that you wear formal clothes, you should always wear a jacket, and in the evening, if you are invited to a party, wear a black dress. Not for the clothes, but for the form.
Education is saved not only by books. Education is saved by the small reflexes of everyday life. When an era comes at you with a raised fist, you say hello back, calmly and politely, by raising your hat.
You can't do anything else.
It doesn't matter who speaks for your country. It doesn't matter what those who think they have the right to speak for the country say? Listen to your country. Always give everything to your country. The world has no meaning for you without your country. Don't expect good things from your country, and don't be bitter if you are hurt in the name of your country. All this is uninteresting. Don't expect anything from your country at all. Just give the best in your life. This is the supreme command. Bitang who does not know this command.
And never forget that you were also a son of the world. It is related to negroes and stars, reptiles and Leonardo da Vinci, the Gulf Stream and Malay women, earthquakes and Lao Tzu. You had something to do with all of this, you are made of the same material, created by the same soul, the same soul welcomes you back. That's for sure.
With my last breath, I thank fate that I was human and that a spark of reason shone in my dim soul. I saw the earth, the sky, the seasons. I got to know love, fragments of reality, desires and disappointments. I lived on the ground and slowly became enlightened. One day I will die: and that too is so wonderfully orderly and simple! Could something else, better, greater have happened to me? It couldn't happen. I have lived the most and the greatest, the human destiny. Nothing else or better could have happened to me.