Don’t feed your mind with negative thoughts. If you do you will come to believe them

I strongly agree with this quote because humans do have the potential to create a reality out of something imagined. The way we think definitely influences our outlook on life and since every situation can be viewed in more than one way, the outcome is dependent on the way we think. By filling one’s mind with negative thoughts, he/she is living pessimistically and the more you imagine the worst possible outcomes and unfortunate events, the more you will be inclined to believe them. Eventually, once one’s mind is full of too many negative thoughts it will become a reality for them and they will come to believe that their life is full of misery. I believe in everyone’s life there is a certain amount of happiness and a certain amount of sadness and they compliment each other. One’s apparent sadness could be compensated for by his hidden misery. By believing that negativity is always part of life one may stop filling his/her mind with negative thoughts because there is plenty of space for positivity.

This quote ties in nicely with ying and yang. Ying includes negativity, by filling your mind with negative thoughts you are creating an influx of ying or negativity which means the cycle will be disrupted… Imagine a fully black circle, this is not good. Reality is based on one’s perception, so an optimistic person will view himself as successful in his eyes because he is accomplishing what he feels he needs to accomplish. A negative person will perceive their life as full of misery if they only think negatively.

“In the end, it’s not going to matter how many breaths you took, but how many moments took your breath away” – Shing Xiong

The number of breaths you take represent how many moments you have had, it is an irrelevant and useless statistic. It is more about how many moments had a significant emotional impact on you. 

In addition, the number of breaths you take also represents how long your life was. However, it is not about how long you live but how you lived. The number of breaths you take or the time you lived is arbitrary, but the number of moments you can recall is limited and that is what is important. 

Memories that “take your breath away” will remain for a lifetime but the other “breaths” can soon be forgotten.

I think the number of moments that took your breath away is far more important because it is better to live happy for a short while than live sad for a life time. Happy moments don’t come easily nor do they come in large amounts, they come one by one so if you were lucky enough to have a large concentration of them in a short life, you are considered lucky already. It is not all about longevity, it could just be prolonging a depressing life. 

Maturity is a time when we stop hiding our strengths from ourselves out of fear and begin to live at our best level instead of below it – UN Secretary Dag Hammarskjold

I partially agree with this statement, as it is one of the things that goes on when we mature. However, we can also stop hiding are weaknesses and begin to work on them. When we mature, we may see the importance of our strengths to ourselves and thus begin to show our true colours, in order to get what we desire, for example: if a one has a skill that he/she wants to hide from others but realizes it can get him/her a job, he/she will will stop hiding his/her’s strength from oneself as well as others. Before we mature, it is arguable that we do not live up to our full potential, maturity helps us find what is important to us as well as urgency in our lives.

I think hiding things from people is bad enough, but when we hide things from ourself that can only be detrimental. Ultimately, you aren’t fooling anyone but yourself. Things will resurface up from the darkest depths where you put them.

 

The idea of growing up reminds me of: “When we grow up, our hearts die” – Breakfast Club. This struck me because I realised that when we do grow up we might tend to strive for what we want but not what we need. That is, what our heart desires or what we really love.

The only thing we never get enough of is love and the only thing we never give enough is love – Henry Miller

I agree with this statement because I personally find it harder to return the favor of love more than any other favour. Sometimes the amount of love you try to give will not and cannot be matched by the amount of love you received. For example, it would be harder to love parents as much as parents love you. I believe there are certain things that will never be in equilibrium, love is one of those, this is why relationships do not last forever and this is also why people have disputes. Nothing is in perfect harmony.

One can argue that love is not a favour because it would sound like too much of a chore or obligation. I think it is a predisposition that we are born with and it does not need to be taught, the desire to feel and give love comes from within.

We might also feel that we don’t give enough love because there is the constant belief that we must always return the favour, we also might feel that our efforts are futile or incomparable, this is because we are viewing it from one perspective, the receiving end might feel all the love you are trying to give, thus setting the system unbalanced again because he/she will feel that he/she is not giving enough love back.

I think the psychology behind it is that we tend to expect too much love and as we are social and naturally greedy creatures, we are always on the lookout for more. Love is something you can’t get enough of. It is easier to receive love than to love.

This quote reminds me of this song:

“Every journey into the past is complicated by dillusions, false memories, false namings of real events”- Adrienne Rich

To me, this quote means that dwelling in the past creates complications, false memories and predispositions of future events and reality. I believe in not dwelling on the past and moving on because it is better to focus on what you can change rather than what you could have changed or what you couldn’t have changed. In relation to schema, journeying into the past can bring negative effects and cause you to make the same mistake twice or even develop hatred. However, journeying into the past is sometimes useful or pleasant as you can relive good memories for a short period of time. It is not entirely disillusion as your past may not always be an illusion or deceiving. In my experience, journeying back into previous events has lead me to create unrealistic expectations, as well as underestimate myself. I think as humans we improve constantly so journeying into the past and focusing on previous events can inhibit this growth and improvement. Innovation is important so we should not hold onto what was there before, grudges should be let go, fears should be overcome and anything else that could potentially become a liability should be removed from our lives to the best of our abilities. Reflection on the past is important, which is why evaluating previous efforts is done in school. The emphasis is put on the improving part, by reflecting we learn from mistakes and subsequently improve ourselves. By the same token, it is harmful to completely ignore the past, it is good to know where your origins and humble roots are.

Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers – Voltaire

At first glance, I think back to this picture.

By judging someone, we are making assumptions and jumping to conclusions before discovering more about them. A question tells us what a person wants to know, but we will never know his/her motives for wanting to know or understand something. By judging answers, we are only taking in superficial information and knowledge as a lot could be hidden; it is only the tip of the iceberg being displayed. By judging a man by his answers we are only left to consider how he or she thinks, perceives things or how much that person knows, these are all fairly superficial. In contrast, if we judge a person by their questions, we find out their personality, traits. Questions could also be spontaneous, but there are different types of questions – questions aimed to provoke thought, and questions aimed to extract knowledge. By judging one of these questions we can see a man’s motives, we can see what kind of person he is and we can extrapolate or attribute his behaviour. Although judging is wrong, it is arguable that it is more worthwhile and reliable to judge a person’s questions. I personally think both questions and answers are equally as important as both represent inquisitiveness and both can reflect a person.

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