Τιμή: 10€
Συγγραφέας: Lykaon N. Papazoglou
Τίτλος: Braving Life
Σελίδες: 140
Αθήνα 2025
ISBN 978-960-7748-85-0
The most likely scenario for you and me, and the vast majority of humans, is to strive for excellence in implementing virtues in our everyday lives without ever wholly succeeding in practicing them. If we believe in their value and don’t want to betray ourselves, we shall stumble, fall, and start anew. In the meantime, you will have to face the world, which isn’t exactly the most nurturing environment for a virtuous life. You will have to face life’s hardships, pain, rejection, betrayal, slander, and lies. Your god-loving nature has taught you that anything evil in this world comes from human action and omission, from uneducated people in Virtues and Mortals who are subject to their desires and earthly needs, those who succumb to their mammal entropy. Other than human evil, all the misfortunes, such as sickness, impotence, or disease, will likely happen in your life.
You must show Bravery and Endurance; through those virtues, you must keep calm, firm, and faithful to Gods’ Providence and your Destiny. It is hard to understand that whatever happens in your life, apart from accidents, is a product of your choices, and it is even more challenging to accept that you have the sole responsibility for your possible future. We all came here to play a role prewritten for us and delivered upon our birth. We refer to that role as ‘destiny,’ but we still have the freedom of choice in how we interpret and perform this role. This choice of ours is an ethical one. In other words, we don’t get to choose our destiny, but we can choose to love or hate it, act convincingly or not, and bring our role to life with ethical depth. Our whole life looks like a musical symphony, prewritten and delivered to us. Our moral choices will determine which musical key we will play in this piece of music. In this context, we can even avoid accidents or minimize their impact on our lives.
Knowing that the more virtuous you are, the fewer misfortunes you will attract to your life is essential because your moral choices will lead you away from unnecessary pain and betrayals. By exploring yourself, you will be able to discern the character of others and identify and avoid toxic individuals in your life. Your prudent mind will brace you and keep you away from dangerous situations, bad influences, and poor acquaintances. Your brave heart will enable you to see through lies and deception. Your tamed needs and desires will give you time to think and calculate before yielding to their fulfillment.
Nevertheless, life is painful, and some pain is inevitable. Life’s pain will target your heart, disturbing and upsetting your emotions. You must somehow step up and steer your life’s vessel with a firm, sure hand, like a captain navigating through a storm. Don’t let malevolent talk befalling you impede your psyche, erode your belief in your potential, or block your path to betterment. Refuse to allow lies and slander to affect your judgment or drag you into revenge. You cannot fight darkness with darkness, but only with Light. Lies stand no chance in the face of Truth; dirt can only be cleansed with Fire, and slander will shrink and vanish before sincerity. No one should ever compel you to go against your benevolent nature, neither through words nor deeds.
Actions are of utmost importance and extend beyond physical deeds; they include the words you utter, which can be more painful, disrespectful, and lingering than actual deeds. Therefore, engage only in actions and conversations you are familiar with when you know your participation will improve a situation, and abstain when your knowledge is limited. Your entire life is a learning process, and if you cultivate necessary friendships that lead to improvement, you will become proficient in any topic you wish. Only then should you attempt to positively impact others with your words and actions. Until then, remain silent and think deeply before positioning yourself on any matter. The reward of such prudence is that you will never need to guess the correct answer, will be confident in yourself, will never resort to lies, and will gain others’ trust through your sincerity. Your acceptance as an honest connoisseur will allow you to experience the Terpsis above—that esoteric pleasure that permeates your body and soul, filling them with positive certainty.
