Proud (Updated !)

 

Yes !!!

I am proud.

Oh, don't worry ! Not of myself, though, but of being a man. 

Yes, I am proud to be a man, to be able to choose for myself, to be my own master. Every man is a king ! No need to have a castle, more so a people. Every man is a king by winning this title over himself, over his fantasy to become by any means what he already is by God's will. Each of us has an inside link to God, consciousness. He who listen to his awareness AND abides by it is a king, is an image of God. 

But we are no gods. We were created, at least by nature, by our parents. We are not immortals, because the mind alike the body becomes tired of the fight (those who dream of 'material immortality can forget about such a nonsense). Life is a fight, an internal fight. Moche killed a man. Moche, Avraham, the prophets, men of truth are not perfect. It is not easy to overcome the material and the social sides which are providing mirages of happiness, oceans of pleasure. God knows.

 I am proud to be a man, but NOT of Mankind, despites all its triumphs.

Because the one and only one victory we must achieve is a victory on the self.

Yes, As I said in the last post, the main problem might be that man does not honor himself as he should. Individual and collective lowering of the societies is the norm that must be fought against by all means, all the time.

Yes, we must smile to beauty, to intelligence, to grace, to 'délicatesse', to cats, to poetry, to the spirit in the air, to honor, to friendship, to humility, to timidity, to the perfume of the Rosebay, to spirituality, to nature, to freedom, to love.

I named God, in another way, I named Elohim.

"Do what must !", 'fais ce que doit', 'Quod mustum'.

I was sixteen. I was a rebel. 

Still am.

I hitchhiked from Nancy to Orange, 400 miles, planted my tent among others in a big field and walked to the theater. 

Next to me, where I sat, was a man who handed me an LSD*, for free, a little piece of blotter which let me see Wishbone Ash and its pastel colors while the sun was rising over the arenas as an unforgettable moment. The way back to Nancy was the down part of that trip ...

* I didn't use hard drugs but for sure less than fifty times in a ten years period, 15/25. In a word, they are not worth the visit. I used them mostly accidentally and saw in them kind of a whole night of weed smoking in one shot, oh, no, I never got a shot, neither did I try pharmaceuticals except LSD which is very tiring, like them all !.

I can date my "awakening" to my teen age when I first read Kipling's, 'The elephant child' for instance, later on the whole work of Montaigne, Molière ... and then, I have to thanks my last grade philosophy teacher, Mrs Catherine Conrad, a 'modern catholic' who introduced us to Etienne de La Boétie and his 'Discourse on voluntary servidude'. There are other sources but in the long time, those were the main to which must be added the Bible … and my parents, especially my mother who in the seventies was concerned with organic food and different causes like going to Fessenheim to protest the nuclear or to Lanza del Vasto’s community in the Larzac.

 My father's first car, and mine !

A Renault 4cv, one of the last (1958), with which we used to go on holidays from Nancy to Cannes, where my grand mother settled, more than 500 miles that took us two days with a n hotel night.

Underneath is a pic of my father's bike before he got married.

What is medicine today ?

It is not to prevent disease but to cure it, too many often too late because when certain diseases appear, they are already beyond the ability of medicine to stop them.

What is medicine’s motto ?

“Do not harm” … and not ‘do good’.

Those two examples highlight a general problem of mankind. The great majority of people will abstain to hurt but they'll stay short to help.

Life is not about - not hurting - but doing good to one another, helping, sharing, blessing, loving, and so on.

It is not enough to live one’s life as a hidden ‘saint’ but one must engage oneself in the fight for life on the right side that is doing good, sharing the burden, not taking for yourself more than you need as long as others have less than they need.

Alexandre Dumas

best book after the 'Bible'