Life and Meaning

I found this while I was searching for African web sites on business law. I was moved by the sentiment and I hope you will be too.

James Alan Pilant

AfricanHadithi: On Solitude: Life And Meaning

I do not worry about the future in terms of career. I worry about it in terms of how long I will live. Few days ago, my roommate saw off a friend. He was twenty-two years old just like me. When he passed on, I did a lot of thinking – soul-searching. I always asked what if it was me. What would I have left behind?

A story is told of a Kenyan philosopher who whilst going to teach a class, went along with a cylinder, sand and stones. When he got to the class, he asked his students to fill the cylinder with sand first and then the stones. He then asked them to do the reverse. When his students were wondering what the exercise meant, he interrupted their thoughts with the meaning. He explained that life is the cylinder, stones are family and sand is work, school, career and the likes. If you make stones (family) the foundation of your life, the sand will maneuver through it easily and find their place. If you makesand (the others) the foundation of your life, the stone can not find its place in it. There will be no stability. Only chaos. I trust the wisdom of the master that this is what life means.I have come to understand that life is transient. I shall do my best to enjoy it whilst it lasts.

I shall work hard for the betterment of humanity, this generation and my continent. I shall believe in the future and continuously work for it. So on that day when the Lord Almighty will be calling me back into his fold, I will sing hymns with the grandchildren sitting on my bed. They will sing for me SDAH 427.

First stanza –

‘’In the land of fadeless day lies the city four-square; it shall never pass away. And there is no night there’’

Better still, they should write that as my epitaph.

via AfricanHadithi: On Solitude: Life And Meaning.

From around the web.

From the web site, The Meaning of Life.

http://saraminna.wordpress.com/2014/04/11/chelsea-fagan/

When we’re drunk, though, when our cheeks are flushed with rosé, something changes. There is an almost palpable feeling of defenses coming down, a sudden compassion and joy for the women around you. We make immediate friendships waiting in lines, we compliment uninhibitedly, we laugh and cover for one another while going to the bathroom. We tell secrets and hug and even kiss. We tell one another how beautiful we are, in a very sincere, if somewhat slurred, kind of way. It’s a joyous scene, the kind of unedited girl love we always imagine we should be having but never do. The instinctive prickliness with which we often confront new women is replaced by a kind of curious sweetness, a desire to make one another feel good because life is too short to feel any other way.