At least one piece of good advice

WEDNESDAY, 15 JANUARY 2014

Advice to foreigners if they want to enjoy a comfortable time in a foreign country:

1. Take it easy – no one likes a nervous foreigner.

2. Try to avoid offending the locals. Your behaviour and actions don’t have to be immaculate (see point 1), but it would go a long way if you make an effort to learn some basic dos and don’ts regarding the local culture.

FRIDAY, 21 FEBRUARY 2014

15:15

Caught one of those feelings again that hit you out of the blue: “What am I supposed to do?”

At first I wanted to say, “The answer is probably to make money …”

Then I remembered: Make life worth living for yourself. That is your first priority, your first task, your first responsibility.

20:53

Ask yourself: What have I done today to make my life worth living?

SUNDAY, 23 FEBRUARY 2014

11:37

We tend to get upset every time we’re alerted to injustice, or every time we think someone is disrespectful or unreasonably rude to us.

Ask yourself: “Can I do something about it?”

If not, what good does it do to get upset? You just knock your own wind out, and none of the people you blame for the injustice or the bad behaviour gives a damn about how you feel.

Can you indeed do something about it?

Then do something about it without delay.

And if you can indeed do something about it, and you are doing it, then why bother working yourself up about it as well?

13:06

To know who you are is not the ultimate goal.

To know who you are allows you to belong somewhere, to be part of something bigger than yourself.

To be part of something bigger than yourself and to feel you belong somewhere are also not the ultimate goal.

The ultimate goal is to believe your life is worth living.

To feel you belong somewhere is conducive to believing your life is worth living.

To have a functioning identity (to “know who you are”), is conducive to feeling you belong somewhere.

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