Life is how you take it

Life is tough; and becoming tougher by the day. Living is killing; killing those trying to live. The effort to sustain a household has become a barely bearable burden that sucks the vitality out of the commonality.

Yet, no matter how hard the going may be, we have to keep on keeping on. Life is a constant struggle; a fight for what is best; a test of our will and determination to live. Hence, one needs to have conviction and perseverance that some day things will change, alter for the better.

To live in hope, is the lot of the commoner - the silently murmuring silent majority - whose destiny and fate it is to bear with, and pay for the merrily wanton errors of commission and omission committed by those in whom he placed his trust. Misused and abused trust often becomes the breeding ground of revolutions.

If we are to avoid a backlash; if the trust placed, is not to backfire; we need to begin by empowering the poor. A market economy that is just, justifiable, fair by all - the producer and the consumer - and which encourages growth of everyone together, and preserves unity in diversity, is the need of the hour.

French and Greek voters rejected austerity in the elections held recently, not because they are unruly children who refuse to swallow their medicine prescribed by the economists of the European Union.

Rather, they realise that austerity economics at this delicate moment, the kind that the World Bank dictates, could very well precipitate a double-dip recession that is likely to cause a lot more pain.

As it is, life is grim; the burden of living austere; and more self-denial is not acceptable. Moreover, they want the pain of living - and everyone knows that there will be pain - to be shouldered fairly by all; not only by the common peoples, the hoi polloi, as is often the case.

Francois Hollande, the new Socialist president in France, has called for a 75-percent tax rate on all earnings over $1.3 million. Now that is what I would call a 'Buffet' tax! Not that that is the solution to all our economic woes; but what it implies is that the need of the hour, if life's burdens are to be reduced for the common man, is to think off the beaten track.

Why is it that our economists are acting shy - or is it incapability - to think differently and try something radical instead of only thinking of burdening the people, dumping hardship and adversity on them, whenever they are confronted with a problem. It is time these hoity-toity economists should cast aside their usual hogwash economics. What we need is a Copernican revolution in economics that displaces archaic principles and set ways from their privileged position.

It was the Polish astronomer, Nicholas Copernicus, who in 1543 declared that the planets revolve around the sun and that the earth rotates on its axis. Of course, such revolutions are not made in a day. After all, Ptolemy's system, with the earth at the centre of all things, reigned for 1,300 years even as it grew inordinately complex to explain new astronomical observations.

A century after the publication of the great Pole's theory of heliocentrism, Galileo, still ran foul of church authorities, for his Copernican leanings. Orthodoxy dies hard.

Life is anything but easy. It was poet Robert Frost who said: "In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life. It goes on." How true these words are. 'To keep on keeping on' is all about these three words. Whatever tragedy you may be holding on to, whatever rough experience may have stolen your heart from you, find a way to let it go.

The sun will still rise tomorrow, and the stars will be there again in a few nights. The moon belongs to everyone. Some events may have transpired that seem to have derailed your dreams, but those are only sour illusions.

We need to hold on, to endure, and keep on keeping on. Life will not remain the same, for ever and ever, though it may seem hopelessly so.

Happiness is not as elusive as we make believe. Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. Real happiness and blessedness is never gained, nor attained, through self gratification.

It comes but only through fidelity to a worthy purpose. In other words, to be the cause of happiness, rather than seek happiness, is the answer to the purpose of life, and felicity in life. Maybe the reasons why some have not found success in their endeavours is not because one has not tried hard enough.

Maybe it is because our goal is not true enough. Find a cause, a worthy cause, and pursue it to the end, with true intent and purpose. It will relieve much of the pain of living. It will show you where happiness is.

In present times, we seem solely preoccupied with, and our goal in life appears to be, the hunt for money. Yes, money matters; but not in all matters. Money can never buy happiness. At best, it can bring moments of pleasure. It can ease the pain of running a household but cannot assure happiness of the household. It will not assure you success, and money is not the cause of all failures. Failures are self- made. Inventor Thomas Alva Edison said: "Our greatest weakness lies in giving up.

The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time. If you feel like you are the underdog, then you have to learn to find confidence in your rebellion.

If you can't seem to get anything right in your life lately, then that's when you need to examine your mistakes, go for a walk, then resolve whatever your missteps were in your mind. Find some peace in the fact that the world will reward you, if you do not give up".

Believe in the self, and have confidence that you can reach your goals, that you can be the person you need to be. Search within your heart, find the spring in your spirit that drives you, and drink from it.

Do not let others put you down directly and damage your confidence. Do not listen to other's negativity even if it is not directed at you. You are in charge.

You can make the difference in your own life and the lives of those around you, even in the worst of times. All you have to do is to keep on keeping on, and never tire.

Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you not only merely suffer but also have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer - to have to live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.

Hence, it is our attitude that controls the reigns of happiness and misery in our life. Our attitudes, control our lives. Attitudes are a secret power working twenty-four hours a day, for good or bad.

It is of paramount importance that we know how to harness and control this great force.

We admire success and successful people. But, do we for even a moment think of the misery and the agony of being a successful person.

The toughest thing about success is that one has got to keep on being a success to remain happy. A small reversal of fortune, a mere flip of the coin, will be the beginning of the agony and fear, unless that person is an enlightened person.

Hence, imagine the state of mind of all those incapable and unfit people who have attained success; not because they deserve it, but because those who helped them to success are themselves that - incompetent and inadequate. Birds of a feather are gregarious by nature, flock together; and humans, unlike magnets, attract the same kind - like poles, do not repel in this case, but attract each other.

In the final analysis, life is ten percent what you make it, and ninety percent how you take it. Have courage, and keep on trying to get what you want.

See you this day next week. Until then, keep thinking; keep laughing. Life is mostly about these two activities.

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