Knowledge vs. Wisdom...
Being an avid reader since childhood, I have always read to view our life and the world from a different perspective.
Taking over the personality of the characters of the book while reading, being soaked into their world, in their frame of thinking, I always got a new insight on how we can perceive the world in a different way.
Some people read to accumulate knowledge, to enforce their frame of thinking, their fixed view on the world. They like to be surrounded by people who think in the same way as they do.
That never interested me. I love to be surrounded by people who challenge my thinking, who make me question my own ideas, my own perspective.
As you can see in this pile of books, I read in different languages, fiction, non-fiction, from Western authors, from Eastern authors, ...
And what is the main thing I have learned in reading books for forty years?
That our mind colors everything, that our mind labels every experience, that our way of thinking is conditioned by our upbringing, our culture, our past, ... Once we can clearly see that, witness that, we get less and less troubled by our own mind.
We free ourselves, we are not longer attached to our own ideas, don't get hurt easily anymore by the words or judgments of others, and all we can feel is enormous compassion not only for our own human condition but also for the struggles, the pain and the ignorance of others.
And there lies the key, in being detached and cultivating an attitude of compassion for ourselves and others. Knowing that success and failure are relative and related. They are the tides of life and that we can learn from both, as long as our compassionate attitude grows...
Sending you tons of love, Barbara.
Ps the left pile are some of my notebooks where I wrote down what struck me, what inspired me and what I wanted to remember <3
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