When Heaven Confers

You ever noticed in movies often times the character suffers some defeat before coming back stronger than before? There are so many examples of this happening, like from a couple of comic book movies in 2018 this happens, with characters like Black Panther and Miles Morales. And it happens in Star Wars with Luke Skywalker or in The Lion King with Simba and in many of the Rocky movies where the titular character just gets absolutely pounded upon before winning the bout. And I could go on and on. In stories, these characters need these bad times in order to come out stronger and wiser and to win at the end and to undergo a transformation for the better. And life works the same way sometimes. It all reminds me of a quote. It is by the Chinese philosopher Mencius. Mencius said, “When heaven is about to confer a great responsibility on any man, it will exercise his mind with suffering, subject his sinews and bones to hard work, expose his body to hunger, put him to poverty, place obstacles in the paths of his deeds, so as to stimulate his mind, harden his nature, and improve wherever he is incompetent.”

A Good Time

In life, I feel a lot of pressure sometimes. Recently, I have been feeling pressure because of expectations other people have placed on me. It seems to me they expect me to be the catalyst for a good time, to make their lives better somehow. I’m afraid. In the past, I’ve done things I probably shouldn’t have in an effort to appease other people and part of me now thinks it is not responsibility to please people, that no matter how hard I try, I can never please or completely satisfy anybody, because you can lead a horse to water but you cannot force it to drink!

Order Out of Chaos

As a younger person, I made a lot of mistakes. I believe I was a provacuter, did a lot of things just to see what would happen and to cause chaos, but I sometimes think my efforts were futile, for each time after I did something I shouldn’t have been doing, I was put in my place. Because of this, I learned chaos always leads to order and what you do badly will catch up to you eventually.

Conversations and Communities are Important

As the title of this post says, conversations and communities are important! As a person, you might learn something you might not have known before from them, make connections, and benefit. It is what happened to Johannes Gutenberg. From one person, he learned about ink and from another person, he learned about printing and from other people, he learned about other things. Later, he ended up putting it all together to make the printing press!

Future Fears

A lot of times in life, I get anxious about the present and future and spend a lot of time worrying about them. What I think about is how I imagine things will go, not how they actually are or will be. Then, once I reach that future most of the time, I think the things I worried about weren’t as bad as I imagined they were going to be and I worried for nothing. So sometimes in life, we suffer not because of the thing itself but because of our thoughts about it and perhaps like Shakespeare said, “There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

Tiberius

There’s this story of the Roman Empire I like. I don’t know if it’s true, but it is valuable to know nonetheless. The story is about a man that invented unbreakable glass and happy with his invention, this man visited the emperor at the time, Tiberius Caesar. He wanted to see if Tiberius would be glad with his invention. Tiberius asked the inventor how he made the unbreakable glass and once the secret was revealed, Tiberius killed him. Tiberius then prevented the widespread use of unbreakable glass. What this story shows, some things, is that some people will not want advancements to occur because they are an impediment to their power and/or their ability to acquire money.

Exploitation

I’ve been thinking lately of how some people get exploited and treated terribly in relationships and how some people get catfished or fooled in other ways. I believe the exploiters are not self-confident people. They like to prey on a person’s weakness, their uncertainties and fear. They have no chance among someone with high self-esteem. But as people doubt themselves, these exploiters rise to the top. Persons that do not know where they are headed or their value have no means to resist their promises and demands.

Happy People

I have discovered it is hard to be a happy person in this life, not just because of outside circumstances, but because of other people. If you are a happy person, more people will want to be around you, hoping your feelings are contagious and will rub off on them. Or, some people will be mad at you, for the exact same reason, they want what you feel.

The Last Jedi

Say what you will about Star Wars: The Last Jedi, I know that movie is divisive, but I actually liked the movie! To me though, I will admit, it didn’t feel much like your prototypical Star Wars film. I believe it is the most unique entry in the series because to me it felt more like an art house film. Plus, the way I see it, the film was always destined for violent vitriol from fans, and maybe all future episodes of the series are for the exact same reasons. If they change too much from what has already been established, some fans will complain, and if they change too little, still some fans will complain! The filmmakers just can’t win!

Star Wars: The Last Jedi has one of my favorite scenes in the series, featuring the character Yoda. I believe it is always wise to listen whenever Yoda is speaking during these movies. What Yoda teaches in this film and the clip above is that we are so afraid of failure, although it is never fatal and final and how sometimes we have to fail in order to grow.

In my life, I have failed many times. The failures bother me sometimes, but ultimately I don’t wish I had done things differently. I feel like I understand and can help other people and the world and do things better because of them. So, to me and to Yoda, failure is part of success!

Your Like Attracts Your Like

You know how some people have plaques in their homes with words on them, of wise sayings usually? Well, I saw one yesterday at a friend’s home. It said, “Your like attracts your like.”

I think attracting things into your life is possible. Yesterday, I also watched a video of a hypnotist my friend’s family had. The hypnotist made people volunteer on a stage and told their volunteers the only person letting them get hypnotized was themselves, by letting their like attract their like. So the world works similar to that sometimes I think.

There has been some news which I blogged about yesterday. I think that is what is happening here as well. People like Hillary Clinton and Eric Holder and even Robert De Niro now have given hate and received hate in return, as evidenced by the article I have linked below. And in the future, even more people will receive hate and violence and other terrible things on account of using hate and violence and doing terrible things! So, I believe everyone should attempt to be like Michelle Obama, another person impacted by recent events, even though she probably didn’t deserve it for what she said recently!

https://dailycaller.com/2018/10/11/michelle-obama-eric-holder-kick-republicans/