Jack’s Key to Good Life
Dear Readers,
First I want to thank you for visiting Jack’s Key to Good Life section. It has taken a long time for me to feel confident, experienced and worthy enough to share my thoughts with you my dear reader. You are the reason I write and the judge of the soundness of my opinion. I truly thank you for that.
My views are simple everyday philosophy and something that most people probably have contemplated and discussed already many times before. However, you may still find them interesting and useful when you tackle the difficult issues and the common challenges we all have to encounter in our daily lives. My humble hope is that my thoughts will help you to explore some new angles and ideas in your personal search for a key to good life. Life is short and we all deserve to spend more time enjoying the great gifts the world offers us and dedicate less energy to argument and conflict. We have been given free tickets to the greatest show in the universe and don’t want to miss it just because we can’t decide which suit to wear.
I believe that good life starts from concentrating on the important issues, the issues that really matter, and minimizing the time spent on less significant parts of our daily life. Admittedly, someone’s insignificant issue may be significant for someone else, but at the end of the day, we are all made from the same human mould. Your friend may have more money and different things to worry about than you, but a divorce or break-up hurts him or her as much it hurts you. A slap on the face is equally painful on both faces and bad red wine tastes equally bitter in both mouths. Happiness feels the same to a millionaire holding his new baby boy as it feels to a mineworker holding his newborn baby girl. An insult feels as painful to a pool boy as it feels to a high-flying company CEO. A daylong fight over a ruined laundry is a day equally wasted in a farmer’s family than it is wasted in a president’s family. We all cry the same tears of sadness and joy. The tears may stem from different things, but the feeling is the same. In this way, we are all truly equal.
Jack Ulcer- September 24, 2009 – Apurímac, Peru
Let the Dark Clouds Out
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 – How to Steer Away from the Devious Road of Unfaithfulness?
Chapter 2 – Cycle of Success vs. Cycle of Unhappiness
Chapter 3 – Reasons Behind Success – The Invisible Roulette Player
Chapter 4 – Don’t Let Tomorrow Steal Today From You
Chapter 5 – The Insatiable Beast of War
Chapter 1 – How to Steer Away from the Devious Road of Unfaithfulness?
One of my good friends revealed to me a few months ago: “Jack, I love my wife, but I cannot help thinking of other women. I even had an affair with a work colleague and I feel terrible about it. What is wrong with me? Why do I find other women desirable and, at the same time, love my wife more than anything?”
My answer to my friend was that there is nothing wrong with him – physically. There is nothing wrong with him, because he is a human being, and by nature, we, human beings, are constantly physically attracted to the opposite sex. This feeling of attraction may be weak when we are in the “hot phase” of our new relationship, but normally it claws its way back to our brain with a vengeance when the physical peak of the relationship has passed. I also told my friend that this feeling is nothing to be ashamed of, even if it feels contradictory that we can be exclusively in love and have non-exclusive feelings of physical attraction at the same time.
My friend was now confused and he asked: “Jack you are saying then that there is nothing wrong about these feelings of physical attraction in a brain of a happily married or otherwise committed person”? My answer was yes, that’s exactly what I am saying. I explained that I believe these feelings are something we cannot really have control over and there is nothing abnormal about the fact that women find other men attractive and men desire other women, even if they are simultaneously in love with their partners. This is how humans were designed and we cannot reprogram our brain to completely ignore a beautiful woman or a handsome man walking by. We can pretend that we don’t see anything, but our preprogrammed brain tells us to watch.
My friend looked relieved, like the guilt was shifting from him to the designer of the human mould. Like he was just doing something nature had programmed him to do.
I continued and explained that this realization of constant physical attraction is just the other side of the relationship coin, the easy part. The more difficult side of the coin is the mental side, the side that can overrun or yield to the physical side, depending on the strength of the mental side of an individual coin. This side draws the difference between faithfulness and unfaithfulness. Thus, once you have acknowledged the fact that you are capable of being happily in a relationship and still physically attracted to other people, the center of gravity turns to the mental side of the coin, to the human side. This side offers you an opportunity to choose between your priorities: what is more important to you, a relationship and commitment, or your physical needs and attractions.
It may well be that your answer to the above question is the latter; your physical needs weigh more than a committed relationship with one partner. This may be the case even if you have a very strong mental side on your coin. It could be that you simply are not ready to be committed just yet. It could be that you want to see and experience more before you jump into something permanent, something that feels more restricted than a life with open options. And, that is fine. You have every right to feel that way. You have every right to be a single woman or a man and never be ready for commitment. Some people are never ready for a relationship and that is the way they want it.
However, things become different when you enter into a serious relationship and truly promise your partner to be a faithful and trustworthy companion. You make a promise to your partner that you are ready for her or him and ready to be committed, ready to live a life with just one partner, a life without open options. This is a choice, a sacrifice you make voluntarily yourself. You trade your life of open options with a life of partner-stability, trust and companionship. You acknowledge that the life of open options will end, but regardless of this acknowledgement, you voluntarily enter into your new life. It is a conscious choice of two free people.
If you make this choice, you should be able to live by your commitment and the promise of faithfulness. Not because you are no longer attracted to other people, but because of respect for your partner. You should be able to fight your physical needs and let the mental side of the coin prevail. Let the human side of the coin beat the physical, preprogrammed, side of you. The choice is yours, because even if your brain may be reprogrammed to feel the sexual attraction, we humans are also blessed with a mind that is conscious and capable of breaking free from the default settings of our brain. This is an amazing power and something that separates us from the rest of the creatures on this planet.
The physical side however is a tough opponent and doesn’t always go away without a fight. It plays games with your mind and tries to win you over. It may make you juggle between a serious relationship and various affairs and flings. It may make you believe that keeping a partner and simultaneously having affairs is a good way to secure the best of both worlds: having a loving partner and a wild sexual adventure, all at the same time. However, don’t be fooled by the seemingly strong physical side of the coin. You can beat it if your mental side is strong enough. You are at the end of the day the one who lets the physical side prevail over the mental side.
Why do people so often choose to yield to the physical side? What makes unfaithfulness an attractive choice and worth the risks? Can the reasons be traced and blamed on a society where affairs sometimes are quietly accepted and treated as a normal, inevitable, course of life? Are we unfaithful because: “we only live once”, “everybody is doing it”, “I was in a different country”, “I had too much to drink”, “I was on a conference trip” or because “it was just my ex”? Do we really know the real reason for our unfaithfulness? Can we accept the fact that the reason for unfaithfulness really comes to one thing and one thing only: lack of respect for our partner.
Lack of self-discipline and weak backbone are the evil cousins of disrespect. An unfaithful partner wants to keep the options open but is not courageous enough to try it out as a single man or woman and risk some time alone when company is hard to find. He wants to play it “safe” and enjoy affairs and a happy marriage or a relationship and believes that he has found the winning combination. It certainly may sound like a winning combination, but is that really what it is. Can an unfaithful person look in the mirror and say to himself: I am unselfish, disciplined and courageous and I truly respect my partner?
I believe that respect is the very key when it comes to successful and long-lasting relationships. Both partners know that they are most likely capable of cheating, but respect keeps them from doing that. They know that there are opportunities and excuses for an affair, but they are not going for it. They know that it’s easy to say, “everybody is doing it”, “I drank too much”, “it was just a one-time thing” etc., but they are still not doing it. They know that they don’t have to be like everybody else and they know that if you tend to cheat when you drink too much, you don’t drink too much in the first place. They also know that a relationship is a choice, not a forced commitment with all exit doors blocked.
It may all sound overly simplistic, but the reason for unfaithfulness in an otherwise functioning relationship really comes to a one thing: lack of respect for your partner. Surely respect cannot be forced or implanted on anyone and there may be difficult circumstances, where there seems to be accepted reasons for unfaithfulness. Maybe one of the partners is completely uninterested in having sex, while the other is longing for a functioning sex life, or there is simply no love and respect left in the relationship etc. However, the question in these situations should be, should I be in this relationship, rather than, should I be unfaithful to my partner.
Don’t take me wrong, I am not judgmental and very well understand that people make mistakes and do things that they are not proud of. And, in extreme cases, partners even give their approval for affairs or prefer an open relationship altogether. However, in a relationship where both partners expect faithfulness and trust, the unfaithful partner should understand the true reasons for his conduct. The cheating partner has agreed to make a commitment, but is not living up to his or her promise. He decided to choose one partner in order to have stability, trust and companionship, but because of lack of respect, backbone and his overriding selfish needs, cannot live up to his promise. It is hard to take the blame, but sometimes reality hurts. That’s why it is called reality.
It can be a tough thing to swallow that you can only sleep with one person the rest of your life. It may be tough thing to swallow that sex has turned from a privilege to an obligation, or to a mere weekly/monthly act of killing the awkwardness of lacking physical contact. However, your commitment is still a conscious choice and a sacrifice, which you voluntarily made yourself. You may want to keep the options open, but then you need to keep the options open as a single man, not as a family man. And, if you don’t want to be a single man, then be a family man, a respectful man. Show the backbone and self-discipline you have in you. Don’t let the easy side of the coin prevail.
There is really no excuse for cheating on your partner and realizing this might just make your relationship happier and hopefully even prevent future missteps. The choice is yours, but if you want to keep the dark clouds out and life up to your commitment, give your partner the respect he or she deserves and expects. You expect the same.
Chapter 2 – Cycle of Success vs. Cycle of Unhappiness
Someone once asked me: Jack, what is the meaning of life? My answer was, family.
To me family and upbringing are the core of human life. The way we are brought up and our parents’ influence will follow us forever and affect everything we do in our lives. Our personalities may be very strong and we may create a solid character, and feel that all the choices we make are our own, but our childhood experiences and upbringing will always play a big role in our lives. A bigger role than we maybe would like them to play. We may not notice it all the time, but the influence is there, like an invisible and irremovable conductor in a lifelong concert where we play the first violin.
The importance of upbringing and family puts a tremendous responsibility on parents. Our actions as parents will affect the future of our children, and through their actions, the future of other people, completely unrelated to our families. Our actions will affect the future of our children’s children and their children. Our actions may affect the future of hundreds of people, hundreds of children.
This responsibility should not be taken lightly and we have to make sure that we put everything we got into our children’s welfare and upbringing. We have been given the power to give our children a gift that they cannot refuse to accept. The gift is so powerful that it can create a cycle of great success or a cycle of unhappiness and desolation, reaching generations to come. We have to make sure that our gift is worth opening and includes the right tools for our children to do well in this life.
Sometimes parents however feel that they are themselves living in a cycle of unhappiness because of the actions of their own parents. If you feel this way, keep in mind that you now hold the power to stop this cycle and you can turn it to a cycle of success. It may be hard because your parents may have affected you very deeply and blurred your vision, so that you cannot see beyond the learned patterns of your own upbringing, but try to fight against making the same mistakes your parents made. If you don’t know how to do it, look for advice and example. Do whatever you can to put an end to the cycle of unhappiness. It is the hard truth that unhappiness and failure often brings more unhappiness and failure, and success and happiness breeds more success and more happiness. Your child deserves to be on the path of happiness and you are the one who can open the door to this path. Each family opens the door differently and in accordance with their means and possibilities. However, respect, encouragement, nonviolent and drug-free environment, education and support should at least be found in every family’s toolbox.
Regardless of our parental skills, we should sometimes really stop and think about the great influence parents have in their children’s lives. We should remember that when a child comes to this world, the only world he knows during his first years is the one his parents create for him. If a parent teaches his child that it is ok to hit other children, the child thinks it is ok. If a parent teaches his child that saying thank you and please is part of good behavior, the child believes it. In these crucial years, the parent is the creator in a child’s world. A creator with tremendous power to choose the type of world he or she wants to create for the child. This is the most critical time for a child, since he accepts the parents’ word and behavior as the ultimate and exclusive model of life.
The exclusive world-creating powers don’t last forever though. Once a child is old enough, he will start comparing the parents’ world with the outside world, the world on TV, the world in his friends’ house and the world at school. These later world creators may reinforce the world picture created at home, or they may induce a confusing conflict in a child’s mind. If the parents’ world has been severely troubled and too much apart from the accepted standards of a society, it will soon be revealed. This revelation may be a traumatizing experience to a young person and seeing the parents’ world crumbling down may have long lasting consequences on the relationship of a child and his parents. The respect towards a parent may start fading and the feelings of betrayal and bitterness may surface. The wedge between a child and a parent may be put in place forever and it may dig its way deeper and deeper along with the new revelations. This is the downside of a negative parents’ world conflicting with the realities of the outside world.
On the other hand, if the parents’ world has been above the standards of a society and exceptionally warm, supportive and loving, the child may start to feel growing respect and appreciation toward his parents. There is no wedge put in place in this scenario, but a magnet with a great binding power. The magnet’s powers will be enforced once the continuing revelations make the child understand and appreciate that the world his parents created for him is playing a growing part in his success in life. He may have a clear advantage over the child who still may be struggling to understand why his childhood world was so different from the outside world. The disadvantage is unfortunate for the struggling child, because life goes by very fast and every child should have the opportunity to concentrate on life itself and avoid dedicating too much valuable time on trying to find the reasons for the conflict between the outside world and the childhood world. A severely conflicting childhood world can seriously weaken a child’s chances of success in the outside world; in the world where the child’s potential and capabilities will be truly tested.
So what about the financial side of the upbringing? Do we need to be wealthy and successful in order to bring up wealthy, happy and successful children?
In my opinion, good upbringing doesn’t necessarily equal wealthy family and upscale neighborhoods. I would any day born into a family with more love, education and respect than money, than into a family with more money than love, education and respect. Often highly successful people come from modest backgrounds with strong values and supportive environment. I have seen parents with minimum resources bring up highly successful doctors, teachers and businessmen and, on the other side, families with great wealth bring up sons with no respect for others and children living wasted lives. Surely wealthy families can give an amazing growing platform to a child, but even with modest financial means you can have as good as a chance to be a successful parent as any other parent with wealth behind. Values and parental skills are in you and no one can take them away from you. Your example and teachings to your children are priceless and your child’s respect and success can be earned without a large bank account. Modest but good upbringing stands a good chance in making a child wealthy in his adult life, while, on the other hand, wealthy but bad upbringing does not prevent a child from becoming poor.
There are surely extreme cases where poverty is so severe and options so limited that even with great family effort the opportunities for success are non-existent. In this case however, the responsibility to provide a shot at success shifts more toward the government and community. Individuals cannot succeed if there is a corrupt and unfair system in place that only allows success based on connections and status, rather than merit and competence. Hopefully though, these systems will run toward extinction as the world becomes smaller and the benefits of fair systems are revealed to the whole world. In the same way as the benefits of a good childhood home is revealed to a child when he enters the outside world.
The power of upbringing is extremely strong and far-reaching. However, even if you as a parent hold the power over your child’s upbringing, remember that your child is his own person. You can have a tremendous affect on his life’s direction, but you cannot completely change the core of his persona. No matter what you want him or her to be, or how much you push your child to your desired direction, it may never happen. It may never happen, because your child is not you. He or she is your child and you can influence and direct his life and upbringing, but he is not you. You may be a doctor, lawyer or a minister, and want to keep the profession in the family, but your child may want to be a musician, a painter or a dancer. You may want your son to be a strong family man and a true alpha male, but he may be gay and never want to have a wife and his own family.
If your child is talented and realistic about his dreams, let him be a musician, let him be a painter, let him be a dancer. If your child is gay, let him be gay, let him never have his own wife and family. If you try to suffocate your child’s real persona, you are not only suffocating him, but you are suffocating your relationship with him at the same time. It is too late to ask for forgiveness when you have deeply insulted your child and made it clear that you don’t respect him or his choices. Some things even time cannot heal, but our children are our children forever.
Our sons and daughters will be here once we are gone and they will live their own lives, dictate their own destiny and continue succeeding or failing without our help. Being a parent means support and assistance in bringing new life into this planet, not living our own dreams and expectations through our children. We should give our children the best possible upbringing and tools to succeed in life we can offer. We should not dictate, but guide and provide options. We should help opening the avenues of success. Let the talent and desires of our children fly free, without being suffocated by our own personal preferences. Maybe your son wants to be like you, maybe not, but he is he and you are here just to assist him to be he. We will earn our respect by respecting our children’s realistic dreams and goals and, if we have provided our children a good platform to jump from, a smart kid will make the right choices anyway. Let’s make sure that our children are part of the cycle of happiness and success lasting for generations to come.
Chapter 3 – Reasons Behind Success – The Invisible Roulette Player
Who would have thought that our success is based on a mysterious roulette game played by a gambler that none of us has ever heard of or seen before? In fact the game is played without our approval and with stakes and risks so high that we would be totally insane to even place a bet in the first place. Sounds crazy? Let me explain.
Most of us want to be successful in life and strive to reach a good lifestyle and financial freedom. We want to utilize our talents and become respected and valuable members of the society we live in. This is unquestionably an honorable goal and those who succeed should be given the deserved credit for their accomplishments. They have worked hard and used their talents to meet their goals in life. Good for them.
Success, however, is not only a result of individual talent and hard work. It is also an amazing strike of luck and something that partly originates from a game of chance predating our birth – a game of ultimate roulette played by an invisible player with a power to place bets on our behalf and without our approval. We all take part in this game with equally valuable chips and with an equally slim chance of winning. Just like in real roulette, everyone in the game can be a potential winner, but only the few lucky ones have their chips placed on the right number. The invisible roulette however is something extraordinary and the rules are extremely strict and unforgivable. There is only one shot on this table; all the players are forced to play; and you gamble with your future instead of money. If you are lucky enough to win, you will get a chance at good life and prosperity. If not, the reality is hard and cruel. You have lost your shot at success already before you are born, and without even wanting to play the game in the first place.
As a result of this ongoing roulette game, we are all born into different circumstances and families with different backgrounds and lifestyles. Some children start their lives in a wealthy family in Beverly Hills, some in a blue-collar family in a mining town and some in a dirty slum of a third world country. Some children are deeply loved by their parents and some have to endure physical mistreatment and constant violence and substance abuse. Whatever the circumstances in each of these families are, the common factor is that none of the children had a chance to choose their family or the country they were born into. Neither the child in Beverly Hills nor the child of the slum really knows why he was born into his individual circumstances and into his individual family. In fact, none of us really knows why we ended up being born into our families, or why we were even born into this world in the first place. We may know that our parents wanted to have a child, but we don’t know why it was you and I that made it all the way out of the millions of other candidates. And why now, why not 100 years ago or 100 years from now?
What we should know though, is that had the child of the slum been born into the Beverly Hills family, he would have most likely grown up with a good education and with many opportunities to succeed in life. Had the child from Beverly Hills been born in the slum, he would have most likely grown up with no decent education and without any realistic chances to succeed, no matter how smart or talented he would have been. These children did not ask for their individual family setups. The setups were decided on the invisible roulette table without them being aware that the game was even played in the first place. No questions asked; take what you win and accept your losses. End of story.
Because of this ultimate game of chance, it is thus possible that the eyes of the child watching the poor slum child on the TV in Beverly Hills could have been the eyes of the slum child looking into the camera filming his daily struggle. Had the invisible roulette wheel spun one more inch to the left, the child living in Beverly Hills could be digging dirt for food in a third world country and the slum child would be watching TV in a warm and cozy TV room in Beverly Hills. The slum child would no longer be a slum child and the wealthy child would no longer be wealthy. It would be the other way around.
This may sound overwhelming, but it is possible that you and I would be living today in the dirtiest and poorest of the slums of this world. We would of course look different and possibly have different personalities, but had that scenario materialized, you would not be reading this text today, and I definitely would not be writing anything on my website. You and I would be fighting for everyday survival. We would be fighting for survival because the spinning roulette wheel passed our slot by a fraction of an inch.
It is a cruel reality that a slum boy can never show his talent in literature or science, only because he will never have a chance to learn how to read and write. It is a cruel reality that a would-be football star cannot show his natural talent because his family or school cannot afford a football. It is a cruel reality that talent is killed every single day before it has even been given a fair chance to bloom. How many great would-be mathematicians and astrologists have died illiterate on the streets, only because they were born into countries where lower classes were seen as inferior and not worthy enough to be educated? How many great football players, golfers or gymnasts have died at childbirth because of a lack of proper health care? How many great inventions and life-saving medicines have been lost forever because genius minds were put in sweatshops instead of schools? How much talent has already been lost forever?
If we are lucky enough to be successful and live relatively healthy and prosperous lives, we should be extremely grateful and feel appreciative of the good life we have. Our talent may play a big role in our success, but the real chance was given to us already before we were born. We got the rare chance to be born into the right kind of circumstances where talent can be transformed into success. Billions of others however never get this chance. Billions of people, just like you and me, would have wanted our slot on the roulette wheel and would do anything to get a better chance in life and a chance to show what they have to offer to this world. But there is no chance for them. They can never show their talent in sports, arts or sciences, because the roulette wheel spun too fast or too slow for them.
Just imagine the faith of the unlucky ones. Imagine being the most promising artist in the world, but unable to paint because you don’t have a canvas and a brush. Imagine being the most promising football player in the world, but unable to play because you have to do hard labor every day. This is of course a radical example of the situation, and admittedly not all the people with even the most amazing talents will ever find out that they had the talent in the first place, but we can still feel the pain of the wasted gifts on their behalf.
When you look at the news and see suffering and desperate people, do you fully appreciate the idea that it could be you on the TV, and someone else could be watching you searching for your food from a filthy landfill? Someone else could be watching you trying to stay alive just one more day, one more night. Watching you follow the hardwired human will to survive in the worst imaginable of circumstances. It could be you. The slum boy could be you. The dying man in a starving village could be you. The woman losing all her four children to starvation could be you. They all could be you, if the roulette wheel had spun one more round, passed one more slot.
We can’t fully understand why some are winners and some are unlucky in this invisible and merciless roulette game, but we should remember that we are all equal players at the moment when the bets are placed and the wheel starts to spin. We all stand an equal chance to win or lose, and no one should be blamed or criticized if their bet was placed on the unlucky number. In the same way, no one should feel complacent or superior just because the ball dropped on his or her number. It could have been the other way round and there is nothing anyone of us could have done about it. The wheel was spun without us even seeing the roulette table.
It is a separate and broader matter if we want to blame governments or individual families for creating terrible living conditions, but a child who is born into extreme poverty or violence cannot be blamed for anything. It is simply out of the hands of an individual if he or she is born into success-enabling conditions or into circumstances where even the smartest of them all will never get a chance to learn how to read. We should therefore respect all our fellow people and try to help the ones who lost in the ultimate roulette to get a fair chance to show their capabilities and let their talents shine. If we would be on the unlucky side of life, we would like others to help us to get a shot at success. We all deserve at least a fair chance to show what we got, and after that: game on. May the best one win!
It is of course clear that not all of us can become successful even in the most favorable of circumstances, but it is simply wrong that talent is not even given the slightest chance to break free, just because someone was born in a wrong place at a wrong time. We should remember that we humans are all on the same boat of life and carry similar hopes and similar dreams. We are all born with a need to be respected and loved. Born with a need to be someone. Someone successful. Someone decent.
Chapter 4 – Don’t Let Tomorrow Steal Today From You
A man walking down the street was asked what he would do if he won 10 million dollars. His answer was that he would leave his wife, quit his job and become a playboy.
Maybe this fellow was serious, maybe not. But when I heard his answer, I started to think about this man whose dreams and parts of his real personality are hidden behind the mask of his restricted financial resources. I started to think about him going to work, every day, hoping that one day he could afford a lifestyle that would allow him to break free from his daily routines and escape from the watching eye of his boss. He would be ready to change his life completely, if he would just have the financial means to do it. He would also maybe carry out a hidden plan to tell his boss what he really thinks about him or her and leave the spouse behind who does not match the picture he has painted in his mind of a dream partner. All his plans are lying there in hibernation, waiting for the day that allows them to step out into the sunlight. Waiting for the day he can take off his mask and leave it all behind and wave goodbye.
I don’t think this man is the only person who would change his or her life substantially, if the financial situation would allow it. His planned changes are probably much more radical than most of us are thinking about, but he is still an example of a person who is not entirely happy with his present life and eager to open a new chapter when, and if, the opportunity arrives. All of us have probably sometimes contemplated our future circumstances and thought about the opportunities and changes money and success could bring. This does not of course mean that we are all planning to leave our current jobs or partners if we make it big, but most of us perhaps have some sort of a desire to improve parts of our lives and a plan to create more happiness through wealth and success. Our plans and desires are different, but most of us want to change things for the better, whatever the better in each individual case might be. No big surprise there.
But before we continue on the path of creating a better future and living the good life in our minds, we should stop for a moment and think about the life we are living today, and look at who we really are. Do we treat our current life too much as a stepping-stone to something better and more glorious, and forget that today is also a real and concrete part of our lives? We shouldn’t forget to live in the present just because it’s not reflecting the perfect picture we have painted in our minds. What does our current life become, if it only exists because we have not been able to hit the jackpot yet? What if the unexpected happens and we never make it to the big league? Was our life then just a masked effort to break free from the life that was never quite good enough for us, or does our life actually become a real deal at that very moment when we realize that making it big might never happen? Did we forget to live the life that has dragged along with our efforts to build a future that would allow a complete financial freedom and a platform for our true personality to flourish? Was our life like the Amazing Race, where the million-dollar prize shone so bright that the changing surroundings were hardly noticed by the participants running blindly toward the goal?
It is admittedly not easy to always fully enjoy the present moment, especially if our ambitions are high and the goals we have set make our lives extremely hectic. It can be difficult to value and appreciate our current situation, knowing that there is so much more that could be ours. We see all the astounding villas on TV and people driving luxury cars to five-star restaurants and enjoying life without financial restrictions. We see clearly the lifestyle that we one day want to have and we work hard to achieve this goal and sometimes make compromises that facilitate reaching our final target.
But in midst of all the ambitions and hurry, we should also remember that we are alive today and have people around us who need us today. We should not put decency, friendliness and love on hold for the sake of a future that may or may not be there. We should not let the future hold us down today, but instead, try to value the good things we have now and strive to find our real personality already before we become successful and wealthy. Surely we cannot tell our boss that he is a jerk, if we need our job, but we can still try to be ourselves as far as possible and remind us that sometimes unpleasant experiences make the drive for success stronger and will make us appreciate our accomplishments even more once we get to the place we want to be in. We can try to make most of our lives already today and, at the same time, continue working toward our bigger dreams and goals. If we meet the goals and fulfil our dreams, we can at least look back and realize that we have been alive all along.
We should also try to keep in mind that the moments of glory are sometimes short and the happiness stemming from a reached goal or a fulfilled dream may not last forever. This might be particularly true, if success and money come quickly and unexpectedly, but regardless of the source of our financial freedom, the contentment may start slowly fading away once we have reached the place where our dreams and goals have materialized. We may ask “What now? I am a millionaire, I drive a Ferrari and I have my dream house. What now?”
The question we can ask in that situation is, are we truly happy? Forget the occasional good feeling coming from the envious looks of our neighbors when we pull into our driveway with our $100,000 car, or the surprised looks on people’s faces whey they see our amazing house, but are we truly happy? Are we truly and genuinely happy with our lives?
If the answer is yes, you are a true winner in life. You are not a winner only because you have made it financially, but you are a winner because you have managed to reach a happy state of mind. Happiness, in my opinion, is the true goal in life, and money, fame and fortune are just servants of king happiness. I also believe that happiness inside a rich man is exactly the same feeling as it is inside a poor man. You cannot put a price on a feeling. It is something that is inherently in us and something that different things in life can trigger. Money and success may be one of these triggers, but they are not the only ones.
It may happen that we have plenty of money and success, but we have sacrificed too much to reach the lifestyle we always dreamed of. Maybe we forgot to live life while we were busy getting wealthy, and missed parts of our best years. Maybe we acted disrespectfully and unfairly toward others while creating our fortunes, and now, when we are finally wealthy and successful, feel that it’s too late or hypocritical to fix the damage. Maybe we forgot that true decency and genuine desire to help others lies with people who help and are decent already before they become wealthy and successful. Maybe we have lost our true friends and have replaced them with acquaintances who are financially on the same level, but don’t have the strong bond of a life-long friend? Maybe we have realized that money needs good friends and family to reveal its true worth. Maybe we have just sacrificed too much and cannot feel true and genuine happiness inside us. We are rich and successful, but are we truly happy?
Happiness does not always come with a change in material circumstances. We have maybe abandoned our previous lifestyle and moved to something that we thought would fill us with real happiness and enable us to feel more confident and even invincible. Maybe we enjoy the feeling that we don’t have to please people anymore and we don’t have to listen to a demanding boss anymore. We might enjoy the feeling that no matter what we say or do, we are still going to be ok, because we don’t really need anybody. We have money and nobody can hurt us. We don’t need a job or our current partners, because we have options. We can always find a new partner and withdraw more money from our bank account. But are we genuinely and truly happy?
It is undoubtedly respectable to set high goals and have the desire to be wealthy and successful in life. It is however also good to be realistic about the effects of the hard pursuit of prosperity and sometimes ask ourselves, what is the price to pay for the future, and how much we are willing to sacrifice to reach our goals? Am I sacrificing so much that my goal will be eventually tarnished by the very actions that were necessary for reaching the goal? Am I wearing a mask and only ready to remove it until I feel that I have enough money to be truly myself and reveal the true life I want to be living? Am I honest to myself and true to the people near me? Am I building success separately for myself, or am I building it on top of the life that I am currently living? Am I going to be happy when I finally have the chance to remove the mask and show the world that I can finally do what I want to? Will the happiness last?
You may think that it is premature to ask all these questions and try to contemplate the effects of success and money before anything has even happened. Why not just go for it and forget the consequences and see what happens when you are rich and powerful? You may think that you will be 100% happy when you have reached the target of being a millionaire and think that who ever says something else does not know you. Maybe you are right. Maybe you will be 100% happy and maybe it is premature to ask all these questions – I don’t know. However, trying to enjoy every moment of this short life is still probably a safe bet and may provide some balance for the days when you don’t have to worry about money anymore.
I hope that all of us who seek success will find it along with the happiness that may come with money and fortune. However, I also hope that we remember that life is a journey and most parts of the journey are needed to reach the final destination, whatever it may be. We should be able to travel the whole distance as ourselves, without too thick of a mask holding us down, and without forgetting to look around once in a while. There may be a golden city waiting somewhere along the way, but we should sometimes stop and think about which route we are choosing to take to reach the city and what we are we going to do once we get there. Is the city going to change us dramatically or are we going to use the treasures for the benefit of others and ourselves in a balanced way? If we travel carelessly and too fast, the glimmer of the golden city may start fading sooner than we thought.
Chapter 5 – The Insatiable Beast of War
A soldier shoots an enemy fighter in a war he did not want to be in. The friends and family of the killed fighter are furious and seek revenge. In retaliation, they kill the shooter and a couple of his fellow combatants. The friends, brothers and fathers of these newly killed soldiers find out about the deaths and now also want their own revenge. The war they never wanted to fight has now become personal and actually makes sense to them. They want retribution and they want to fight the enemy like never before. They soon kill more enemy fighters and lose more of their own. The war escalates and becomes a full-scale carnage with thousands of casualties. When the war finally ends, someone asks the survivors why they went to war. The group looks at each other and hesitates, until one of the veterans say: they killed my brother.
Wars are truly petrifying self-feeding machines. They gather more power from each death on the battlefield; like a hurricane gathers more power from each molecule of moist warm air it sucks into its system from the ocean surface. War usually starts building a strong case for itself as soon as it is let out of its box. It just needs to be let out and it will soon become its own powerful advocate, terrifyingly brilliant in creating more and more reasons for the soldiers to keep it alive and out of its box.
Whoever holds the keys to the box of war carries a tremendous and frightening responsibility. By letting the war out, the key keeper doesn’t just start one war with one purpose and one reason, but also a set of micro wars fought by people seeking retaliation for their personal losses caused by the original war. This cycle can easily spin out of control and create a huge amount of personal wars, where people don’t anymore fight for the original purpose, but for a purpose of finding retribution for their own losses. They may stop caring about the reason they were deployed in the first place, and instead, concentrate on fighting the micro wars that created themselves inside the frame of the original war. There is now a more personal and more powerful motive for fighting the war than the one they were given in the beginning. The beast of war is now alive and it starts to breed and gain more power with each offspring it produces, and the task of putting it back in its box becomes more and more difficult as the breeding continues.
Maybe this quality of uncontrollable escalation is the whole point of war, but it makes the beast extremely dangerous and unpredictable. The beast will keep sucking more and more people into its endless belly and continues creating thicker and thicker clouds over the reasons and rationale for opening the box of war.
People who have the power to decide about going to wars should probably be required to have some hands-on war experience themselves, before they would be allowed to make the decision of sending young men and women inside this self-feeding beast. It sometimes feels that people, who have not personally experienced the horror and ugliness of a war, fail to fully understand how terrible and serious a war is for the people involved in it, and how unpredictable and uncontrollable the consequences of starting a war can really become. The individuals fighting the battle are naturally the ones who are paying the real price for their sacrifice and they are the ones who are placed in situations where their personal losses may create a false but powerful purpose for the war they maybe never felt was worth fighting for; if they don’t believe in the original reason for fighting, the beast will provide them with one.
It is ironic that war brings the best and the worst out of people. The courage, friendship and loyalty of the soldiers on the battlefield is remarkable and something that shows how people on the same side can become almost like brothers and sisters fighting together and sacrificing their own lives for each other. It is however sad that sometimes the rise of these great human qualities is due to a war that was started by human qualities that are anything but admirable.
There may be a time and place for a war, but it seems like too many wars in any given country are started by decisions of a small group of top leaders, and the soldiers doing the work are somewhat uncertain why they should be shooting the enemy; until of course the enemy shoots their friend or brother. It is a tragedy that sometimes the ultimate sacrifices and the rise of the great human qualities are a product of a war that was started by people who would never make the sacrifice themselves, or who do not truly understand or care about the real-world consequences and terrible family effects of a war. It is shameful and unfair to waste the amazing courage and loyalty of soldiers for a cause that that is not worth the sacrifice.
Wars seem to never go away. It is probably partly so because the people who actually fought in the previous wars, and suffered the most, take to the grave with them the personal tragedies and important lessons learned from the horrors of war. A generation who never actually physically experienced a war may become fascinated by the earlier wars and may even romanticize the true nature of war and battle. We see war movies with great personal stories and acts of courage and friendship that are amazing to watch. However, even if there are undoubtedly great personal stories inside a warzone, we should remember that sometimes the main creator for these stories was a war based on false premises. We should remember that the true reason for the war is the story we should really pay attention to.
War is the invisible author of its own terrifying book and the personal stories of courage, friendship and loyalty are just chapters in the main story. The book may be great, or it can be so rotten to the core that the only good parts in the whole book are found under the chapters of personal sacrifice and individual heroism. The good chapters don’t unfortunately change the rottenness of the main story, and it is a regrettable waste to have these great individual stories inside an unworthy book.
If there is a good and objective reason for a war, the personal sacrifices and amazing human qualities arising on the battlefield are something that did not happen in vain, and the soldiers can receive the genuine respect they truly deserve for their incredible efforts; they become a part of a great book. On the other hand, there are number of wars where brotherly loyalty and acts of immeasurable courage are tarnished and diluted by the weak and reckless reasons for starting the war; the performance is first class, but the venue is corrupted. These sorts of wars are truly a disgrace of the greatest proportions and something that deeply undermines the remarkable qualities and heroisms of the soldiers fighting in them. The personal stories of courage, friendship and loyalty become just chapters in a rotten book and the dishonorable overall story starts eating away the hard earned honor of the soldiers.
However, even if wars are ugly and terrible, we should not try to completely forget the horrors triggered by them, but use them as an educational tool for our children and new generations, who have never actually experienced a war at first hand. People should be constantly reminded how horrible thing a war is and shown the shocking pictures from the battlefield to remind us all that war is ugly and there is nothing glorious about dying children, destroyed families, amputated limbs and traumatized minds. If our children and new generations are shown the horror of war in its true, impartial and candid form, we may avoid another war in the future. People who have not experienced the true dreadfulness of war may be the ones who are most likely to start one in the future. They simply, and of course fortunately, lack the real-life war experience to understand the true tragedy of war and therefore might go into one with false and unrealistic expectations. When such war is over and one more leader in the history of mankind has learned the terrible lesson of war, it will be too late for the people who died and suffered because of it. Just like it was too late for the victims of any other war that was fought without a reason worth the sacrifice and human tragedy that it created.
We should not let our leaders to take our families and friends to wars without giving us a reason we can truly believe in. We should ask our leaders to demonstrate a true understanding of the seriousness and power of the insatiable beast of war, before getting us involved in one. There may be a time and a justifiable reason for a war, but the goal and rationale of the final decision should always be objectively balanced against the horrors that war inevitably brings to the soldiers and families involved in it. War does not die when the peace treaty is signed and the glasses are raised to mark the end of the fighting. Even when the guns on the battlefield have fallen silent, the war continues to live inside the people it sucked into its complicated system.
We should share the images and stories of the horrors of war in order to prevent the real-life horror from happening again in the future. The lessons learned from wars stay alive only if we pass them on to the future generations in their true form. We know that people are capable of starting the most terrible and unnecessary wars we can imagine, and we should not kid ourselves that – without a constant and realistic education about the tragedy and wretchedness of war – the future generations will be any smarter about wars than the previous ones were. One thing is sure: The beast will always lie in its box. Waiting for the next person to unleash its devious fury.
New Chapters
New chapters will be added here along the way. Thank you for your patience.
Respectfully,
Jack