A little book to make you ponder and laugh about real values, and false ones.
Excerpt:
Getting real is simple. But people can confuse being simple with being easy, which it isn't. Being simple takes a lot of effort and thought, and often a lot of heartache. It also means walking around with your bullshit detector permanently switched on, which is why people who like being simple spend a lot of time recharging their batteries. There's a lot of bullshit out there to detect. The trick is to separate the real values from the false ones. You can usually spot the false ones by the amount of bluster and fanfare that comes with them. The real thing just speaks for itself.
Even if sometimes no-one is listening.
Abundance
“He is richest who is most content with least”
There is a whole industry trying to sell people tricks of abundance, by which they seem to mean ways of attracting huge wealth. This is missing the point.
If you live in a remote village in Indonesia, one toothbrush hanging by the village water pump is enough for the whole village. To someone else, a garage full of Bentleys and Lamborghinis will not be enough because it is still missing a Thunderbird. Nothing is worth more, or less, than our ability to appreciate it.
Alcohol
Always to be enjoyed for taste, pleasure and good company, never for consolation. That is the road to addiction.
Approval
The quest for approval can be the graveyard of your dreams. If somebody, somewhere, doesn't disapprove of you, you should consider taking a long walk on the wild side. Approval is a game played by people who don't know how to live, because they are afraid to take risks. Some of the best things we will ever do involve making absolute damn fools of ourselves. If you're afraid of doing that, you may be approved of but you won't really be alive.
The harder someone makes you work for their approval, the more sure you can be that you don't need it. Approval is the false version of appreciation. People whose appreciation is really worth having are surprisingly generous with it, because they can afford to be. Don't play approval games, and don't let other people play approval games with you.
Also by Meira Eliot on obooko: Moldavite