Unproductive pleasures pall eventually. After a while you get tired of lying on the beach. If you want to stay happy, you have to do something.
How to Do What You Love
Paul Graham
Category: DESPONDENCY
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On the Parable of the Fig Tree
This parable speaks about someone who had a vineyard wherein was a fig tree, and for three years he found no fruit on it, so he decided to cut it down. This is what we sometimes do. When I look at myself and find no fruit, but only family and work problems, with the children and with friends, and consequently I judge myself a failure. And I ask [myself], “What is the point of my life? I suffer from anger, depression, and stress.” And in the end I may say, “Cut it down; why does it use up the ground? What more could I do than that?” And then I fall into indifference.
But the keeper of the vineyard had wisdom. He saw that there was a third factor for the growth of the tree, in order that it may bring forth fruit: time. So he said, “Leave it alone this year also,” but the factor of time alone will not [cause it to] bring forth fruit, for the year might pass, without there being fruit on it too. Therefore, the keeper of the vineyard will do two things: the first thing is to “dig around it,” that is, to pull out the weeds surrounding it which hinder growth; and the second thing is to “fertilize it,” that is, to nourish it, which is steadfastness in grace.
—H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Develop Your Personality
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“That is the general characteristic. Here are the particulars for a person who lacks grace: Once he has turned away from God, the person dwells on himself, and makes self the main goal of his life and activity. This is because at this point, after God, there is for him nothing higher than self, especially because, having previously received every abundance from God and having now forgotten Him, he hurries and takes care to fill himself up with something. The emptiness that has formed inside him because of his falling away from God causes an unquenchable thirst inside him that is vague but constant. The person has become a bottomless abyss. He makes every effort to fill this abyss, but he cannot see or feel it getting full. Thus, he spends his entire life in sweat, toil and great labors; he busies himself with various occupations in which he hopes to find a way to quench his unquenchable thirst. These occupations take up all his attention, all his time and all his activity. They are the highest good, in which he lives with his whole heart. Thus, it is clear why a person who makes self his exclusive goal is never himself; instead, everything is outside him, in things either created or acquired by vanity. He has fallen away from God, Who is the fullness of everything. He himself is empty; it remains for him to seemingly pour himself out into an endless variety of things and live in them. Thus, the sinner thirsts, fusses, and troubles himself with occupations and numerous things outside himself and God. This is why a characteristic trait of sinful life is, in its disregard for salvation, the care and trouble about many things (cf. Lk 10:41).”
—St. Theophan the Recluse -
“People today are always running… and if you ask them why, they don’t know.”
—An entry based on Elder Joseph of Vatopaidi from the Orthodox weblog ’The Ascetic Experience’ -
Then there is the question of dying, which we have carefully put far away from us, as something that is going to happen in the future – the future may be fifty years off or tomorrow. We are afraid of coming to an end, coming physically to an end and being separated from the things we have possessed, worked for, experienced – wife, husband, the house, the furniture, the little garden, the books and the poems we have written or hoped to write. And we are afraid to let all that go because we are the furniture, we are the picture that we possess; when we have the capacity to play the violin, we are that violin. Because we have identified ourselves with those things – we are all that and nothing else. Have you ever looked at it that way? You are the house – with the shutters, the bedroom, the furniture which you have very carefully polished for years, which you own – that is what you are. If you remove all that you are nothing.
And that is what you are afraid of – of being nothing. Isn’t it very strange how you spend forty years going to the office and when you stop doing these things you have heart trouble and die? You are the office, the files, the manager or the clerk or whatever your position is; you are that and nothing else. And you have a lot of ideas about God, goodness, truth, what society should be – that is all. Therein lies sorrow. To realize for yourself that you are that is great sorrow, but the greatest sorrow is that you do not realize it. To see that and find out what it means is to die.
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“There is, in fact, an incredible freedom in having nothing left to lose.”
—Marya Hornbacher -
But underneath all our emphasis on successful action, many of us suffer from a deep-seated, low self-esteem and are walking around with the constant fear that someday someone will unmask the illusion and show that we are not as smart, as good, or as lovable as the world was made to believe.
—Henri Nouwen, Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life -
“Let not your laughter be much, nor on many occasions, nor excessive.”
—Epictetus, Enchiridion -
Joyful persons do not necessarily make jokes, laugh, or even smile. They are not people with an optimistic outlook on life who always relativize the seriousness of a moment or an event. No, joyful persons see with open eyes the hard reality of human existence and at the same time are not imprisoned by it. They have no illusion about the evil powers that roam around, “looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8), but they also know that death has no final power. They suffer with those who suffer, yet they do not hold on to suffering; they point beyond it to an everlasting peace.
—Henri Nouwen
SO GOOD QUOTES 