Money is a means to an end. The end is to broaden one's experience of life, given that with money comes more optionality and freedom to explore different facets of existence.
How often do we mistake the means for the end itself, servants to what should have been our tool?
It is said that fools are people who do the same thing constantly yet expect a different result. Every wise person was once a fool and doing a thing constantly is a surefire way to reach mastery.
The line between persistence and insanity is drawn only in retrospect, when we finally see which paths led to actual transformation.
I think the trick is mastery of what? Outward looking perspective is just a subtle way of pointing a finger out with the remaining fingers pointing back at the self.
It's an incomplete understanding born from limited awareness. The greatest mastery is arguably not of the world but of our own gaze, learning to see without the distortion of judgment.
As much as I love freedom, I don't want a kingdom of chaos. It troubles my mind that half-truths are easily painted as complete wisdom. Freedom without structure is like a river without banks, it eventually evaporates into nothing.
The Inherent Goodness Dilemma
I don't think I've ever tasted a plain mixture of milk and honey. I've been meaning to after reading religious scriptures that paint a picture of heaven with such vivid metaphors.
It's just that it never stuck in my mind long enough for me to execute on the thought. One of casualties of a life lived on autopilot is intentions easily dissolve in the soup of daily routines.
Milk and water however is a perfect metaphor to illustrate how good is contained within the bad and vice versa. In their mixing, they reveal the fallacy of our binary thinking.
I still believe that humans are inherently good, but oh boy, is it really hard to match this belief with my practical reality. Faith in humanity requires a special kind of vision, I think.
It's like the milk has been diluted by water so much so that it has become tasteless, the color remains but the essence is gone.
What's the essence of suffering, I keep asking myself, beyond its conventional teachings.
Suffering is a vehicle to grasp an illusionary aspect of life. Although the pain is gone, the memory of it remains, sometimes morphing into fear or other related emotions, that act like shadows chasing after our authentic experience of being.
It's not that dramatic to say we carry our wounds like phantom limbs, feeling their presence long after the actual injury has healed.
Shadows aren't separate from our essence, much like our fears are not distinct from our desires.
Both thoughts and emotions are fleeting, their staying power rests on our willingness to feed them with attention.
Both the fool and the wise person share the same journey, the difference is only in what they choose to notice along the way.
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