The Other Question:

I was listening to a very wise old man that said something that awakened my mind again. He said that we need to pay more attention to what our inner score card looks like as opposed to what the outer score card looks like. According to him, the decisions we make should be based on what we want and think is right first as opposed to what others think is right and want.

Question 1:

What is the place for community? Imagine a place where everyone did as they pleased and they never minded what the others would say about their actions, imagine a community where everyone sought first what makes them happy and then did it. My guess that is a very self centred and isolated society. I believe none of us wants to live in such a community and that is why society has determined that he decisions we make have got to be those that society in general will agree to. This imagination of course carries with it the assumption that we all have a measure of right and that each persons measure is different from any other.

Question 2:

What is the place for love? Love seeks the good of others and when love finds, loves seeks to share with others, the joy and even the experience. If we ask ourselves to entirely decide as we see right, we put love to an impossible test because none will then mind what the good of others is. We are loving beings and are expected to be as such, to focus only on the joy that we seek is to neglect so great a responsibility, is to narrow the scope and field of joy.

Question 3:

Then what? What will happen when we all consider our very joy above the joy of others, when we put ourselves first? We shall get away with doing as we pleased but while on the road to that, we shall find that we hurt so many and lost some. To realize that in a way we are all knit one to another is the very beginning of identifying ourselves as a people. We cannot always see ourselves apart because then we shall have denied the obvious, that we are human.

The community we come from is the very base of who we are , we have gathered beliefs and traditions from them and we cannot close them out of our decisions because they form them. But when it comes to making the decisions that will help us become better members of the community we need to stick to the most important basics and in so doing, decide not basing on what we find is in the best of the community or us, but what will facilitate our making such better contribution in a safer way. In this regard we esteem ourselves less important than the decision and the decision a gift to the community. When we finally determine what the most important questions for our decision are, then we can absorb all the other questions better and to the satisfaction of all involved.

Love seeks for the satisfaction of others. When we belong to loving communities we shall carry less the burden of having to answer all the other questions simply because every smile given will be an answer self given. When we love we support and the Greatest Love lays not weight nor burden but Help.

True, we cannot define ourselves apart from the communities we come from, but every community is defined by those that have come from it. In my opinion when we love, we are able to see the most important question and base upon that or those to make decisions. The ones that have loved have supported and forgiven when they felt offended.

How can we walk this road any way? Some times we shall make assumptions, but most times we shall rely on how well we know where we want to go and why we want to go there. In my opinion, forming the mind about these first will go a long way when the other question is asked.

The wise old man was not talking of selfishness, but of being aware of whom we are and seeking that self definition first every time we want to walk this road. We are indeed powerful beyond measure and every time we encounter another life, we interact with a set of decisions, the free spirited have known where they want to go, and not many have enjoyed that liberty.