Saturday, October 27, 2007

Limiting my choices

I recently turned vegetarian. I also recently bought my first Apple product. I don't have any mp3 player to date whereas my friends have bought their 5th generation iPods. I'm only using my second cell phone after 6 years, and that's because my brother insisted to pass it down to me and took my first cell phone, which was working perfectly alright. I didn't plan this actually. I wanted to try out how being a full-time vegetarian is like, I instantly made that decision one afternoon and that's it. Plus hopefully I'm executing the most effective way to stop global warming and stop killing animals. I feel good about it. Buying Apple is easy, I don't have to compare prices from the various PC vendors and choose from the oh-so-many models out there. I prefer not to spend that much time on the research and decision-making process.

Then I thought, hey, by being a vegetarian or buying a Mac I am limiting my choices! Don't get me wrong, it's a good thing. When I go out, I don't have to fuss about what to eat because there's only so many vegetarian options in one place. I don't upgrade my phone if it's still working. Now I'm starting to think if I can apply this to aspects of my life I would be a happier person than I am now. By limiting our own choices, we are sort of forced to take the very few alternatives that are available to us. Therefore, we stop worrying and start living. Going on with our lives. Once a decision is made and there is no turning back, it's like a burden is lifted off your shoulder. When you know you don't have other choices, you would resign and accept whatever path that lies in front of you. Of course people will say we always have choices, but what if we proactively limit our choices?

We can apply this in almost anything: careers, spending, food, schools, anything you can think of. Start building a habit of limiting our choices and we might just be on our way to be happier individuals.

Sunday, October 07, 2007

Racism

Someone wise said: "If we could all laugh off racism jokes in the world, wars wouldn't be started and fights between people wouldn't happen."

Are we taking ourselves too seriously?

Oh human. We are sensitive creatures. Smart as we are, we are so easily manipulated. Mind controls are weak. Words can start a war. Words can also stop wars.

Exercise mind control and non-violence. Let us all be happy and peaceful.

Happy Sunday.

Nice



That's probably the most generic description of a thing out there. Not to mention the most overused of all descriptive words. I have to confess I use it all the time. What can I say?

On someone doing something cool: "That's nice"
On someone going on holiday: "So nice!"
On someone getting something cool: "NICE!"
On someone asking how the food was: "It's nice"

Kinda boring, isn't it? That's as safe an answer as we can get. For all it's worth, it allows us to not say anything else afterwards and the other party will be more or less satisfied with the comment. Genius!