Journalled on Saturday, 22 March 2025 | Santo Cristo, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: 28 degrees, hot, sunny and slightly overcast.
It is Saturday, the weekend, and I am still working as if it were a normal working day.
It is also exactly a month until my birthday. I will be 59 in a month, and in a year and a month I will be 60, and where have all the years gone?
If it were a short time ago, I would have been lamenting what I had not done, built, accumulated, etc. Now I look at it from another perspective and, more importantly, through a lens that recognises the past is gone. What was or was not does not really matter anymore.
We have to live today, without the past polluting the present; otherwise, nothing gets done, and our lives do not flourish, grow, or move forward.
I have learned this recently by listening to people better prepared than I, advocates of this mentality, whilst also reflecting on what is now, what was, and what could be in the future.
The only real guarantee is what we do and have today. Whether you arrive at the position you are in today through integrity and honesty, only the future will show whether it rewards you even more or punishes you. There is no escape.
We have to be truthful and authentic with ourselves and others, always remaining humble. Without practising these virtues, we shall always live in the illusion of what we are not. If anything is not fundamentally true, genuine, or authentic, life will show us, and we will eventually be punished for our own ignorance.
I call it divine justice! Our lives are always a mirror of our choices and who we are.
No matter how much we try to hide something from our past, wherever we are or were, it will always eventually appear, show itself, and rear its head, usually when we least expect it and don’t want it, and at the most inconvenient time. The more we try to hide it, the more it will appear and punish us.
It is our responsibility to be genuinely, authentically and integrally ourselves, showing others who we really are. That is our only responsibility in relation to others. Understanding this, it is the responsibility of others to decide whether they will accept us as we truly are, thereby informing us while including all our faults and flaws. There is nothing more for all others than to show who we generally are, and for others to accept us or not.
It is neither complicated nor complex, but difficult. Throughout human history, societies have been divided into upper, middle, and lower classes, and there has always been a push-pull among them, with most wanting to belong to the upper class and very few to the lower.
When I had the school in Copacabana, one discussion that arose from class debates was which social class the pupils considered the happiest.
The more intelligent pupils would say the lower class, which I would agree with, while the middle and upper classes would say much less so.
In my observation, those from the lower class are already accustomed to a level of suffering in life; they are numb to it, and any improvement that appears in their lives is a welcome bonus, something unexpected and extra, and because of that, they are grateful.
Whereas the middle class has eternal aspirations and struggles to move up into the upper class, it is consequently always financially squeezed to death: a better house, a better school for the kids, a better car, better clothes, everything to show that they are better, but they cannot really afford it; keeping up with the Joneses.
The upper class, which everyone wants to be part of, is always insecure about money, friendships, family, and relationships.
More money demands more responsibility, and not everybody has the infrastructure to handle such challenges. I know many rich people who live in chronic unhappiness.
Obviously, I’m not saying that everybody should want to be poor. In modern society, everybody seems obsessed with wealth and with looking happy, good, and healthy 24/7, like the perfect call in a Coca-Cola or margarita commercial.
Social media has obliged us to put our lives on display, even though in most cases, it is not really ours. Only a small part is ours, and it doesn’t fully reflect what we want to portray. For a long time, I have stopped doing this, even when married, trying to portray my life to a standard I thought I deserved for my hard work.
As Jordan Peterson says, “Life is brutally hard”, not just for you but for everyone, regardless of social level or status.
I think the fundamental secret is to live it fully, on your own terms, not others’. Never for others, only for ourselves.
Be kind and be happy, and if you can’t be happy, still be kind, but not naïve!
In bed by 9.30 p.m.
Thank you.
Thanks for reading this blog post. Please explore my other posts and share your thoughts in the comments section.
Richard
