Chapter 44

Chapter 44

Which is more important, your honor or your life?
Which is more valuable, your possessions or your person?
Which is more destructive, success or failure?

Because of this, great love extracts a great cost
and true wealth requires greater loss.

Knowing when you have enough avoids dishonor,
and knowing when to stop will keep you from danger
and bring you a long, happy life.

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I know for a fact that learning to be content is a key element in living a happy life. However, this is not as easy as it sounds. People constantly check what others do. Even if you say you don’t, you actually do. What others around us think and do affects us on a subconscious level. Even in times of relative prosperity, it is difficult to appreciate things we have now and thereby learn contentment. Were it otherwise, we would not be witnessing high suicide rates in major developed countries. On the other hand, if my living conditions were much poorer but other people also lived in the same abject conditions, it becomes tolerable and my mind accepts my situation readily. But we find it hard to tolerate others nearby us being relatively better off in any sense. I am not just talking about money. It can also involve having better educational backgrounds, a better career, a more good-looking partner, and so on. In fact, it is tremendously difficult to break out of your narrow-minded perspective and force you mind to see and feel things differently in a larger perspective.

Clausewitz notes: “There are very few men – and they are the exceptions – who are able to think and feel beyond the present moment.”

However, I also argue that if it is possible at all to “break out of your narrow-minded perspective” and constantly stay that way, we cannot say that this is a good “mode” for you to be in (or assume) for a long period of time. (In fact, it is impossible to feel like you are totally out of or independent of the circumstances surrounding you. If you ever do, it means you are out of senses and have gone schizophrenically mad.)

Therefore, you must be able to alternate between the present and the future.