Choose
and renounce
Choose
a project, set a goal, means excluding things that do not fit in it, which are
not our style, things that do not fit into our program. Choose implies resign. When
there is a behaviour motivated by a project, every man is glad about the
waivers involved, because he is committed to the choice that he has made.
This is the way to enrich the personality. Otherwise we
are turning over the things that we have renounced, or rejecting the things
that our commitment brought, and so the choice -the exercise of freedom - makes
little sense. So, the circumstances sometimes bring us where we do not want to
go. But not because those circumstances are stronger than us,
but because we give up, because our project was not strong, because it had no
conviction and the necessary values. It may happen that a man take this
world for fifty years and still do not know what he's doing in it, simply
because he has not known what to do with his life.
How to know what to do
In order to know what to do, and achieve a consistent
and satisfying project, he must know himself. This is not an easy task. Many mistakes were made in this regard. There are many
teenagers who discovered in their forties, the great ability they have to
learn, for example, Russian. But nobody helped them to discover they had that
ability innately. Many mistakes are committed in one's knowledge because of the
low estimation of him, that is, underestimation.
In this respect, the
teaching of parents, as well as the teacher’s, is often wrong. We
have not discovered the positive values that our children or students had. We
have not put the stake to grow in their innate values. "Fight your
flaws!", we said, when each defect rooted in the young man is the
equivalent to five, six, ten, twenty, or hundred dominant values of positive
features, one hundred gifts he have received, which might to be developed.
That person, perhaps, has had a hard time trying to
eradicate a defect, for example, his disorder: he is fighting the whole day
against the closet; he does not know where to put the shoes, socks, etc. And,
however, it would have cost little
to develop other values such as generosity, punctuality, friendliness,
perseverance, generosity.
With very little effort he would had grown up in a lot
of virtues and would have made many people happy. But as nobody showed those to him, he has not grown in
other state values. This kind of people has a negative conception of themselves
- because he knows he is messy, and believes he is a disaster which always has
disordered books -. They have a bad image of themselves. No one has discovered
for them their positive side in which they easily could grow.
Fighting in a negative way almost never get virtue. Develop positive values that each person has and wants
to develop freely, with the help of others, is how virtues are achieved, which
is what makes them important to other people. We must end that pedagogy
based on the negative, because it is only compatible with the most radical
anthropological pessimism. The truth is that, the person, man or woman, is a
wonder. Each person is unique, unrepeatable and irreplaceable. And besides, has
many more positive features than negatives.
Making
values
Therefore,
we must go trough it, be brave and deeply ask: Who I
am? What values do I have? Which values can I achieve? How can I take advantage
of the values I have?
Efforts should be done in orther
to develop specific values and corresponding virtues. How? Exercising a virtue, there is no other way. Do
you want to become more sympathetic? Then, start to smile more, and stretch
your facial muscles. First you will get a little rabbit smile, but it
doesn’t matter; it will come a time when your muscles will stretch
easily. Sympathy is not achieved by doing a master, but exercising it, and if
you do it, you'll never make downward estimations of your own person’s
value.
If you, arriving in this
world, had in sincerity - innate qualities given to you - a score of 8, you
will have to die with a total of 800, achieved with little efforts. This
will be your biography and you will not have another. That's what economists
call added value. In life, there is growth or decrease. What happens if a person is born with a high value of joy and without
any effort he has a wonderful smile, and scored 1000, and when he dies he has
only 200? Inflation has eaten him! He has lost the great gift of life.
We can laugh, but this is extremely important. If we are
born with 800 of joy and we arrive at seventy-five with only 200 of joy,
everyone will say: "Take care, he is a grumpy old man, keep it away,
because it can bite you." If, however, we were born with 800 and raise
this value to 8000, they will say: "Take care of this old man: he is
charming, you'll see how nice he is, how well you spend it with him ..."
Growing up in the virtue of
joy brings happiness to a lot more people. If we decrease in the virtue of joy
we are alone and feel isolated, and we grumbles, dreadful and wretched those
around us or the ones we have to care. We have lost the papers on the path of
life, because we've never met truly ourselves, because we simply and unfairly
have undervalued ourselves, because we have not managed to develop the values we
already had, and we could increased it with low cost.
The
ethics of virtue
I'm
talking about virtues. I like to talk more about virtues than of values. It is
not only a question of words, but a fundamental problem about the meaning. The
virtues can be taught only indirectly. Instead, they can be learnt directly,
living them. It deserves respect the rule
"the duty because of the duty," but without forgetting the ethics of
happiness, which is what might be resurrected, without losing the reference
point of law. When I do the right thing, I do it because I feel like it, and I
feel like it because I'm so happy. The wise guy who does evil is not
happy, is a miserable. It can easily be shown that he is a miserable. Let me
give an example: a girl who puts up with his mother, whose only fault is to
have a bad temper. Shouts and shouts, and this is like molten lead that falls back.
Even so, she is patient with her mother. And because she does that well she is becoming good. You
can say it's silly, but it is not: is happy. Her mother expands herself by
shouting to her and, thanks to that, she do not have to go to a psychiatrist. If the daughter would be resistant, the mother
probably would have to go to a psychiatrist because it would raise many
conflicts between them. And that daughter would finally leave home. This
not happens thanks to the strong character the girl has.
Indeed, it is not true that we are good people and,
therefore, we do good. Only when someone tries to do good, after some time trying the same thing, it finally
becomes good. Only by striving we’ll seriously develop the kindness that
has been given to us with life.