to be or to have?

a dear friend wrote me a thought-provoking and insightful mail the other day. while i still meditate on it, i thought some of you may like to read. i offer her (untouched) words to you here:

"I have started reading a new book about quantum thinking. There was a very interesting part about the distinctions between the ego and the real self. One of them was the distinction between 'to be' and 'to have'. It says the ego believes that the only way for it to be peaceful and happy is to have: to have power, to have knowledge, to have a girl/boyfriend, to have money etc. Without these it is not worthy. Whereas for the self it is most important to be: to be a loving person, to be sensitive, to be good, to be nice, to be trustworthy, to be knowledge itself... these are lasting qualities, when they are acquired once, they won't go away. Even if the conditions change, 'to be' will always stay... I was really influenced by this statement... I guess it should be our aim to focus on 'to be'..."

all hieroglyphics

being a photographer, the visual medium speaks to me ceaselessly and with inexhaustible joy. understandable that these lines below really called out to me, to that hopeless photographer within.

"Everything in this world has a hidden meaning, I thought. Men, animals, trees, stars, they are all hieroglyphics; woe to anyone who begins to decipher and guess what they mean. ... When you see them you do not understand them. You think that they are really men, animals, trees, stars. It is only years later, too late, that you understand." 

- Nikos Kazantzakis (Zorba the Greek)

inspiration

comes from everywhere. and i mean everywhere. i just chanced upon this website, and found the precious quote below. i pray we all discover the saunterers in us.

I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks, who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering; which word is beautifully derived "from idle people who roved about the country, in the middle ages, and asked charity, under pretence of going à la sainte terre" — to the holy land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes a sainte-terrer", a saunterer — a holy-lander. They who never go to the holy land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds, but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre, without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering.

- Henry David Thoreau (Walking)

on celebrating birthdays

i find myself again in the musical offering, a cafe and music shop (that specializes in and plays only classical music) rolled into one. for the first time, i sit with my back to the door, and find this endearing sign next to the cash counter of the music shop:

10% Discount if you buy music on the composer's birthday!

adorable, yes?