The New Shining Lantern

Pulled down by the pathetic grind of everyday life, we are no longer able to see beyond the limited map of what is already known. Nothing can be more boring and more prosaic. Everything has a limit. But we remain confident that a new day will come to save us from this pitiless swamp of familiarity. If Samuel Taylor Coleridge tells us that 'the light which experience gives us is a lantern on the stern which shines only on the waves behind', what we need, then, is a lantern on the front to hopefully shine on the waves ahead.

I would not have been able to see life the way I see it now were it not for the fact that I understood certain things, made difficult choices and fought for them all along. And then, this is not probably it and there is always already more to it than what a personal attitude could yield or a few words could bring. There is more to it.

Because we know that no one will help the lost child to find his mother except the one who knows them both and keeps a good heart instead of a stone, because we know that nothing will help the lost sailor to come back home except the compass he keeps cleaning, it is safe to say that only those who give with love and help themselves to stand up when they fall will understand.

While many of us tend to forget that our worst enemy is ourselves, many others are busy fighting in the wrong battle. Only a few are blessed with knowledge. We don't remember that problems have been solved for those who keep using the same way of thinking that has created those problems. It is a mistake most of us keep making which is to do the same things and wait for different results.

Bad people are many. No matter what they say or do, nothing good will come from them. It does not take much intelligence to see, even from thousands of miles off, the harm they are doing to others. But it takes much of it to save ourselves from them. God tells us that this world will eventually be left to them for a reason when good people are all gone. Here thus, you will understand, life is no friend and death no enemy.

A bad workman blames his tools. Most people are poor workers and noisy cafe talkers (not to mention social network users). Only hard working persons can give credible lessons in life. They are focused, organized and not easily distracted. But unfortunately, they are not capable of delivering any lessons (Teachers and Learners are blessed!). Therefore, we must work hard ourselves in order to get them. Paradoxically enough, once we have become hard workers, we won't need those lessons. If only we could go back to ourselves for reading, discovering and improving.

Humans are rising and falling as the days keep showing and the nights hiding. Learning is normally better than complaining. Thus, helping someone stand again upon his/her feet after he/she has fallen is normally better than doing nothing and remonstrating. But we need to help ourselves first before asking for help. We understand those who seek out help while helping themselves and others but not those who neither help themselves nor help others. After all, We are not sure that helping them will be of any help to them or to us. When the time comes for us to be in need of help, we never know when but it will when we think it won't, we will then get to see what we have done before. Let us, therefore, keep learning without complaining.

Don't give up, I tell you what now, and seek to see how you can make it despite your plight. People will not give you what they have let alone what they don't have. They will probably take from you instead. Don't give up.

Chokri Omri