Dec. 4 : Our Daily Lives

In these chapters the two “quotes” that mostly caught my attention were both on chapter 29. The first one is:
“The universe is sacred
You cannot improve it.
If you try to change it, you will ruin it.
If you try to hold it, you will loose it.”
The other one is “therefore the sage avoids extremes, excesses, and complacency”

The first one caught my attention so much because it reminds me of the control humans want and believe they have over the earth. We are always trying to change it in ways that are convenient to us but forget the long terms consequences of our acts. We ignore the fact that by destroying many of nature’s aspects, we are actually destroying ourselves because we depend on nature to survive. When we were nomads and we lived as “one more” creature on earth instead as “the” creature. We respected more what we had and we took a better advantage of it. We are currently taking more than what we need and focusing on our own benefit and this will lead to our self destruction because we will destroy everything we need to survive. In other words we could say that humans interacted better with the earth and everything else on it when it wasn’t trying to control it.

The other quote is one I have heard many times throughout my life and it is one with which I completely agree. I believe that to be able to be in a good state, one must learn to find a balance. That is why if you ever go to excesses you unbalance everything and rightness and happiness are messed up. The hard thing is to find the balance point in which everything is right and enjoyable. Still the only way of finding the balance is by living and applying “ guess and check” to life and that way you can take reasoning from your trials and errors and apply what you learn to life. Extremes are bad because they permit you only one thing and never give you other possibilities, instead the balance permits you to play around with it in small amounts and experience new things. Excess is also bad because everything in nature is made to follow a certain balance and if you are the only thing that does not posses that balance, then you don’t interact peacefully and easily but forcefully.