"Look attentively and you will see a stunned crowd, aggressive, bewildered, that looks unfriendly and unhappy. In fact, it is made of people just like yourself, escaping to nowhere, not daring to stand up for their own selves.”- Joanna de Ângelis/Divaldo Franco.

 
I know people who, despite their harsh living conditions, awaken in the morning and have the courage to face their everyday problems, and who believe that life is a continuous learning, with errors and improvements. They consider that it is a heroic task to be able to live alive, accomplishing their life purpose with firmness, even if anonymously.

I know others, however, and even some cum laude academic colleagues, whose lives have no spice and are empty, always with the uneasy fear caused by the excesses of materialism/fanaticism, added with a very cosmopolitan device: indifference.

Frequently, our society is not aware of the importance of giving a meaning to life, and is surprised when good financial conditions, plus irrational consumption, causes a feeling of meaninglessness and despair, this not considering a great number of depressive and unhappy people, who make the world a shade of gray with their chronic suffering. 

It is evident that suffering exists

Many people still do not understand that only meaningful goals - the courage to be - can cause a pure joy or an honest satisfaction, because it is only the dialectical dynamics between "being" and "becoming" that makes us be creative within our individual path. This has to be spread and be taught, maintaining a closer relationship between health of the body and the soul.

It is evident that suffering exists and no one would say otherwise.

But we tend to intensify the (bad) experience. In the West, we are trained (and urged) not to see how relationships and things are inconsistent. Therefore, due to this misinterpretation, we believe that we have to achieve happiness as a “product” thus causing anguish and anti-social attitudes.

Happiness and suffering are transient experiences and our main purpose is to accomplish our development, to think, live, and live better.

No doubt, our desire for wisdom in our private and public lives has become more and more important. Since wisdom is in connection with truth, therefore, contrary to lies and deception, it has the power to move us away from all the traps of a life ruled by illusions.

What is necessary to live a chosen life? 

Moreover, in a world where life is so difficult, wisdom can ensure us the serenity to worship, and learn to thank and to savor, for example, the little things of our daily lives: a good meal, an uplifting book, a pleasant company, the embrace of one’s child, a rainy or a windy day, the sureness of becoming, the changes that are in everything…

Although many of us are affected by a superficial knowledge of ourselves, as much as we are driven by material desires and wishes (reductionist), at any moment we can decide to have a meaningful life directed towards wisdom.

So, what is then necessary to live a chosen life?

A courageous will to be and to live doing good, living and acting mindfully, in spite of all the evil that still exists in our individual and collective lives. As Spinoza said, we need the “Courage of the soul”.

We need the “Courage of the soul" to go forward, to live doing our part well, living based on reason and on our heart. Since courage in one of many other virtues, it implies in not having fear. As a quality of the character it is always generous and this is why we find it in the biography of heroes. And we need heroes, the anonymous heroes, who live every day and in this vast world, mindfully educate their children, aware of their responsibility in human fate.

"Courage of the soul” to develop, because the human being needs to be…

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