Though I began writing Essays in November 1996, the first collection was published only in 2011. Some of my friends convinced me that they should be published.
“Because,” they said, “the essays will stimulate people’s minds. They’ll encourage the readers to think for themselves. To stand up on their own feet.”
Isn’t this what growing up is all about?
Surely, we are born in order to grow up.
Yet, most people seem to rely on past experience to decide on their future action. There is a reason for that. It is the safe, the secure thing to do. One is most unlikely to make a fool of oneself trying something new.
By that thinking, Christopher Columbus would have never discovered America.
At least he tried.
In fact, half a millennium before Columbus, Leif Eriksson trod on American soil, but, well, propaganda, or false news as it is now called, assigned the credit to Christopher.
But that is of no consequence. They both forsook the safety to explore, to dare, to take a risk and, hopefully, to discover something new.
Heaven is for the brave. The daring.
Why?
The only reason why we were born is to convert the theoretical potential inherent in the Universe into phenomenal reality. This is why every one of us has been accorded the creative gift of the mind. The mind which picks up ideas from the unconscious, analyzes them, energizes with emotions, and converts them into reality.
It doesn’t have to be earth-shuttering. Nor immortal.
You might not be a great composer but you might help someone become one. That would make you indispensable to the Universe. Or you might be able to ignite a smile in people who were sad, who would then become creative. Or you might feed the hungry birds which would awaken people from a mental or emotional stupor—people who forgot their purpose. We were born to do something that no one else is doing, just to sustain the reality in which we might abide a little longer.
And there’s the rub.
We are so inept with our gifts that we abide in a reality for a minutest fragment of eternity. The reality we sustain with our thoughts is ephemeral, transient, virtually insignificant.
Why?
Because ideas last the longest. Emotions for a shorter time. People shorter still. And things… well, things have no life of their own. They are only there, or here, to show us the results of our labours.
Yet it is only the labours count.
Each one of us must find the purpose for our life. The purpose that no one else can fulfill.
The purpose that makes every one of us unique.
Indispensable.
We must make every effort to discovers one’s particular individuality, one’s particular talent, and then apply it. To repeat old mistakes is to waste one’s most precious gift—the gift of life.
Hence, BEYOND RELIGION. Although all religions exist only to sustain status quo, Secular Ethics would guide us into the unknown. My essays endeavour to explore the Universal Laws. As for our mistakes, we must deal with those ourselves. After all:
“Ye are gods,” remember?
Volumes One, Two, and Three.
