Coyote Vision

I’ve spent years pondering what I would say in this post. It just came together for me today.

We humans are all different from each other. Our variety is one of the beauties of human society. Even identical twins, although they have very similar bodies, still have different minds.

I was thinking, watching the 2024 Olympics, that in sports there are winners and losers. But sports are only fun games. The concept does not apply to our individual lives.

I follow the Buddhist philosophy, that we all find our own paths through life. It is a mistake to try to follow another person, even Buddha. Buddha suggested some characteristics of the good life that it would be helpful to adopt, but each of us will need to bring these into our life paths in our own way.

Each of us knows intuitively what is right for the self. We can trust ourselves to make the best choices as we live through our lives in time. It is not meaningful to compare one’s life with anyone else’s.

Ecclesiastes said “Time and chance happen to us all”. It was a profound assertion in his time, when people attributed events to God or the gods. Chance determines much of our lives, for example when and where we meet our life partners, and that is fine. A person’s expected time line can completely change.

The great majority of us will not be remembered by society beyond our grandchildren, except in a genealogy. But I am convinced that each of us personally influences human society, and that the good influences outweigh the bad. When we die, we go into the ground. This is the way of nature.