“I pray that you allow yourself to wrestle with these questions — about the quality of your love and the depth of your service to humanity”.Dr Cornel West
I learnt from Wikipedia that Cornel West is an American philosopher who is inspired and influenced by Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, Ralph Waldo Emerson and other philosophers and civil rights activists. His quote reminds me of Socrates’ quote about living a life worth living by examining ourselves, such as the quality of our love and the depth of our service to humanity. I agree as these resonate with me about living loved and loving others, and as Einstein also said, a life lived in service to others is worth living. It starts with self love that radiates outward to others, and a revelation that we are all one and interconnected.
Yes, what really matters in life is the quality of our love and the depth of our service to humanity. It reminds me of Mother Teresa’s quote “We can do no great things, only small things with great love.” I don’t subscribe to the society’s mindset that focuses on accumulating material things and attaining outward achievements and success because these things do not define our identity – they are an illusion that the world is attached to when they have forgotten or do not know their intrinsic worth as human beings. There is an innate dignity in each of us, regardless of what we do for a living. I choose to believe small things done with great love are what really matters in life, and they cannot be measured in any concrete form or economic term because they are priceless and comes from the heart – they may be small acts of kindness, or words of encouragement, or sharing of edifying materials, or simply sending peaceful thoughts to bring about world peace. Yes, as I have learnt, research has shown that when we do nothing and just sit and meditate, we can actually bring about world peace.
“In the early 1980’s practitioners trained in the art of meditation were placed at various trouble spots throughout the Middle East. With clockwork-like precision, each time the practitioners began their meditation which focused on the feeling of peace, crimes against humanity dropped, emergency room visits declined and traffic accidents went down. Statistics reversed each time the meditations ended. This happened with such regularity that those conducting the experiments were able to calculate the minimum number of people meditating on peace, needed to effect a change in a community, or the world. The number is surprisingly small: the square root of 1% of any population.”
(From “Guided Meditation for World Peace“)
I think the economic system as it is today tends to devalue and dehumanise people because it attaches a false value on human beings based on their so-called “net worth” in their businesses and so on. It is sad when those who think they have a lot look down on those who have little because they do not realise they are all one and equal at the very core of their beings. Each of us is equally valuable simply because we are children of the universe. We cannot add or diminish our value by what we do or not do. We are interconnected in a living ecosystem, and each of us has gifts and talents to use to serve one another, and no one is greater or more important than one another, no matter how much we accomplish or how much we have.
Even in the natural world, we see trees and beautiful flowers that do not attempt to accomplish great things; they simply grow and blossom where they are, and the whole world benefits just from their presence and fragrance. In the same way, we human beings do not need to try to accomplish great things; just by loving and accepting ourselves for who we really are brings great peace and tranquillity to the world, and whatever we do that comes out of this revelation is only a natural extension of our blessing to others, whether it is in the form of small acts of kindness, or words of encouragement, or sending peaceful thoughts to the world, and so on. This may sound unrealistic to the monetary-based and economically-minded society, but that is how I see life from a holistic and naturalistic perspective.
Related articles
- Why I LOVE Metta Meditation (mayyoubepeaceful.com)
- Inner Peace and World Peace (vamadevananda.wordpress.com)
- We need a world of peace (newnewenglandmama.wordpress.com)
- The naked human body (prophetic1dotorg.wordpress.com)
- Don’t Be Defined By What You OWN, Be Defined By What You DO (thestrenuouslifemanifesto.com)
- Can we use the word “Universe” instead of “God?” (lampinalaska.com)
Nature and Us 