Shut Up and Think.

South America Group.
Week 3:"Equilibriums: The importance of remember about our past but looking to the future."

Shut Up and Think.

As the end of this year approaches, I just have to say that this year I was reborn as a brand new man. I read some excellent life changing books on how to follow an intellectual life and got amazed with all of it. I therefore got to thinking about how my values changed, how I seeked equilibrium and beauty, how my taste for music and art changed, how I was going to stop wasting time, how I didn't like futile things anymore, how I wanted to seek and grow my apprehension over things, how I wanted to seek the truth, how I was going to read more and so much other things. I guess everyone already woke up in one of those days in which they feel like they are going to be different people from there on.

The problem was that when I when I started meeting up with my friends and family, my new ideals got into some frustration. Everyone looked at me in the same way, treated me in the same way, talked to me in the same way, thought of me in the same way, and wanted to share the same stupid jokes that I've always thought was so funny. I guess I wasn't a new person to anyone but myself.

I was really perplexed with this because I really was and felt like a new person, but I couldn't openly be one because everyone already had a stupid opinion of me. A stupid opinion of me that was built upon things that I've said and opinions that I've defended in the past that I don't even remember saying or defending.

I started to notice how we humans just can't shut up and be calm. We always have to be saying things. For example, in a conversation, we never want to be the one that stops talking and ends it, so we just keep on saying and inventing stupid things that we don't even remember ourselves saying afterwards.

The thing is that people remember what you say. And for anyone seeking stability and harmony, it's a really stupid, dangerous and unstable practice to have people remember you by things you don't even remember saying or doing.

The key of having a stable and harmonic life is by having firm and consistent values and traditions. That means knowing who you are and having a strict philosophy of life and always acting consistently to it. Consistent people are more trustworthy, reliable and able to maintain longer and firm social relationships.

 

It's important to have in mind that you are what you constructed in the past and that it is not easy to change whenever you think it's convenient to. So the message to everyone here is that nowadays whenever I see someone speaking out whatever is in their heads that don't have any foundations, I just have one thing to say: Shut up and think.

By Lucas Valle, Brazil
20 years old