“So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide. Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and grovel to none. When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself. Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision. When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.”
- Chief Tecumseh -
I don't know if any of you will fully read that quote by Chief Tecumseh (Shawnee Chieftain) but you should, over and over again. It's meaningful and in my opinion if a person is to build and lead a meaningful life one should feed on a diet of meaningful influences, thoughts and behaviours. It's a personal choice though - I know what worked (and works) for me and what I've achieved and created through the ethos and practice of it but not everyone wants a meaningful life I guess, especially as it takes a lot of effort.
It's Saturday and we felt keen for a walk. I was a little annoyed however as we had need to travel to the city (otherwise called, "the shitty") to do some things (which I may write about down the track) and that meant a nice hike in the countryside wasn't possible. Never one to let anything get in the way however, we decided to combine our Saturday-city-commitment with a big old walk around it.
We parked close to where our meeting was in one of those hideously annoying and expensive multi-level car parks and went straight to our city-thing then 90 minutes later pointed our feet in the direction of one of the parklands that virtually surround the city and did a massive loop right around the city keeping to those parks as much as possible. It was a legit-long walk but a good one.
I believe it's important to make the best of what life hands us; that means working on the bad to improve it, celebrating the good and seeking to replicate it and to "see and create" opportunities everywhere. To do other than this is, in my opinion, is to only partially live life and that just won't do.
Like Chief Tecumseh says in his quote above: "love your life, perfect your life."
I don't think "perfect" ever exists but seeking improvement is certainly within everyone's grasp and if we fail at that what's the harm, we can always try again.
Anyway, I'm not trying to persuade you I guess, just open up a thought or two. Only you can find the desire to improve your life, to love and close-to-perfect it, and only you can make it happen. Choose to or not, you'll end up in the same place...all human beings do (dead I mean); what's important along the way is whether the journey was meaningful.
Here's some Saturday music selections of mine, tracks I've listened to recently, all today as it turns out. If you'd like to get involved write a post, tag it #saturdayselections and post it in the
WEEKEND EXPERIENCES community.
Design and create your ideal life, tomorrow isn't promised - galenkp
[Original and AI free]
Image(s) in this post are my own