Life's Greatest Lesson by Mitch Albom

Excerpt from Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson. The book was the result of his visits with his former professor, Morrie Schwartz.
” Everyone knows they’re going to die,” he said again, “but nobody believes it. If we did, we would do things differently.”
So we kid ourselves about death, I said.
“Yes. But there’s a better approach. To know you’re going to die, and to be prepared for it at any time. That’s better. That way you can actually be more involved in your life while you’re living.”
How can you ever be prepared to die?
“Do what the Buddhists do. Every day, have a little bird on your shoulder that asks, ‘Is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person I want to be?’ ”
Morrie borrowed freely from all religions. He was born Jewish, but became an agnostic when he was a teenager, partly because of all that had happened to him as a child. He enjoyed some of the philosophies of Buddhism and Christianity, and he still felt at home, culturally, in Judaism. He was a religious mutt, which made him even more open to the students he taught over the years. And the things he was saying in his final months on earth seemed to transcend all religious differences. Death has a way of doing that.
“The truth is, Mitch,” he said, “once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.”

Did you think much about death before you got sick, I asked.
“No.” Morrie smiled. “I was like everyone else. No one really believes they’re going to die.”
But everyone knows someone who has died, I said. Why is it so hard to think about dying?
“Because,” Morrie continued, “most of us all walk around as if we’re sleepwalking. We really don’t experience the world fully, because we’re half-asleep, doing things we automatically think we have to do.”
And facing death changes all that?
“Oh, yes. You strip away all that stuff and you focus on the essentials. When you realize you are going to die, you see everything much differently.” He sighed. “Learn how to die, and you learn how to live.”
Written by Mitch Albom (1958-)
American sportswriter, lyricist

Le courage de Non - Possession

L'armement le plus fort ne nous rassure jamais.
L'homme perd parfois son sang-froid.

Pourquoi Othello a tué sa femme, Desdemona? Par jalousie? Par manque de sommeil et fatigue de la guerre? Les deux?
Après, Othello s'est suicidé.
S'il avait eu le bouton de la bombe nucléaire?

Tous les médicaments ont des effets secondaires, parmi lesquels, des médicaments pour la dépression nerveuse comme 'Paroxétine' qui sont les plus forts.
Sur la notice, il est écrit "effet secondaire: peut provoquer des tendances suicidaires" 'Paxil'

Si vos parents faisaient une dépression nerveuse, ils auraient beaucoup de chances de prendre des remèdes."Le remède est pire que le mal"
S'ils avaient des bombes, il est possible qu'ils pressent le bouton de déclenchement de la bombe comme le meilleur moyen pour se suicider.

Pour le moment M.X, il garde son sang-froid, mais demain?
Personne ne prévoit ça.

Les négociation avec maîtrise (pas faire appel à la force) est le meilleur remède.

"Ils doivent être ma vraie famille" Jures Renard

Extrait d'une famille d'arbres,"Histoires naturelles"
Ils ne demeurent pas au bord de la route, à cause du bruit.
Ils habitent les champs incultes, sur une source connue des oiseaux seuls.
De loin, ils semblent impénétrables. Dès que j'approche, leurs troncs se desserrent.Ils m'accueillent avec prudence.
Je peux me reposer, me rafraîchir, mais je devine qu'ils m'observent et se défient.

Ils mettent longtemps à mourir, et ils gardent les morts debout jusqu'à la chute en poussière.
Ils se flattent de leurs longues branches, pour s'assurer qu'ils sont tous là, comme les aveugles.
Ils gesticulent de colère si le vent s'essouffle à les déraciner. Mais entre eux aucune dispute. Ils ne murmurent que d'accord.

Je sens qu'ils doivent être ma vraie famille. J'oublierai vite l'autre. C'est arbres m'adopteront peu à peu.
--Jules Renard (1864-1910), écrivain français

H.D.Thoreau "You must get your living by loving"

The Beatles “Strawberry Fields Forever”
It says, “It’s getting hard to be someone but it all works out. It doesn’t matter much to me.”
That reminds me of “Life Without Principle” by H.D. Thoreau.

Excerpt from "Life Without Principle"
Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives. This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! I am awaked almost every night by the panting of the locomotive. It interrupts my dreams. There is no sabbath. It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work. I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business.

If a man walk in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. As if a town had no interest in its forests but to cut them down!

The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead downward. To have done anything by which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle or worse. If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself.
As for my own business, even that kind of surveying which I could do with most satisfaction my employers do not want. They would prefer that I should do my work coarsely and not too well, ay, not well enough. When I observe that there are different ways of surveying, my employer commonly asks which will give him the most land, not which is most correct.

The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get “a good job,” but to perform well a certain work; and even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.
It is remarkable that there are few men so well employed, so much to their minds, but that a little money or fame would commonly buy them off from their present pursuit.
If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure that for me there would be nothing left worth living for. I trust that I shall never thus sell my birthright for a mess of pottage.There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.
All great enterprises are self-supporting.

Merely to come into the world the heir of a fortune is not to be born; but to be stillborn, rather. You must get your living by loving.

In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post office. You may depend on it, that the poor fellow who walks away with the greatest number of letters, proud of his extensive correspondence, has not heard from himself this long while.
Really to see the sun rise or go down every day, so to relate ourselves to a universal fact, would preserve us sane forever.
Written by Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862 )
American author, philosopher, and naturalist
My close friend gave me "Walden, Civil disobedience and other writings on society" as a gift. At that time, it was Greek to me, but now I can read it. One joy also came to me today.
I'm so happy to recommend you one of his works.

張麗玲(chou rei rei) acts as a go-between

En décembre 1995, 張麗玲(chou rei rei) avait 28ans. Elle a décidé de filmer des personnes qui sont venues au japon comme étudiant.

A ce moment-là, elle était employée d’une entreprise au japon et elle manquait de budget.

Mais elle est allée à la station de télévision sans rendez-vous et a demandé de l’aide, par exemple, une caméra vidéo.
Son supérieur, un réalisateur de télévision et sa famille ont apporté leur soutien à son projet.

Enfin en 1999, ses documentaires sont passé dans des émissions en Chine, puis au japon.
Ces temps-ci ses documentaires ont un certain succès.

Quand on utilise un «décodeur », on peut se procurer des renseignements précis.
Aussi bien qu’on peut comprendre les souffrances des personnes qui sont venues de pays étrangers, par des documentaires.
C’est très salutaire pour l’un l’autre.

Much has happened since we handed over our voice

Excerpt from Reports. Oct 19, 2006
Somehow the more soldiers that die, the more legitimate the illegal invasion becomes.
Somehow profiting from tragedy and horror is tolerated.
Somehow the death of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people is tolerated. Somehow subversion of the Bill of Rights and The Constitution is tolerated.
Somehow torture is tolerated.
Somehow lying is tolerated.
Somehow reason is being discarded for faith, dogma, and nonsense.
Somehow being politically informed, diligent, and skeptical has been replaced by apathy through active ignorance.
Luckily this country is still a democracy. People still have a voice. People still can take action. It can start after Pat's birthday,(Nov.6.)
(The next day was elections.)
Written by Kevin Tillman. He joined the Army with his brother in 2002, and he served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was discharged in 2005. His brother, N.F.L. player, Pat Tillman was killed on April 22, 2004, by fire from his fellow soldiers.

Robert Scheer, a liberal syndicated columnist and the editor of Truthdig, based in Santa Monica, Calif. said of Kevin Tillman,"He is not proselytizing, he is not a political person. He just decided because his birthday was coming up he felt strongly that he had to say something. Since the article went up on the Web site, it has received more than 4,000 responses, though Web server limits have prohibited publishing that many".
For example, Comment#32292 "The points you make in your story are so important and I hope lots of people get to see this article".

The coalition takes enormous precautions

A team of American and Iraq epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred.

Of the total 655,000 estimated "excess deaths," 601,000 resulted from violence and the rest from disease and other causes, according to the study. This is about 500 unexpected violent deaths per day throughout the country.

The survey was done by Iraqi physicians and overseen by epidemiologists at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health. The findings are being published online today (October 11, 2006) by the British medical journal the Lancet.

"We're very confident with the results," said Gilbert Burnham, a Johns Hopkins physician and epidemiologist

"The Department of Defense always regrets the loss of any innocent life in Iraq or anywhere else," said Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros. "The coalition takes enormous precautions to prevent civilian deaths and injuries."
-- Excerpt from washingtonpost.com

The population of Iraq (2006 estimate) is 26,783,383. Encyclopedia

Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution

1. Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.

2. In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.

日本国民は、正義と秩序を基調とする国際平和を誠実に希求し、国権の発動たる戦争と、武力による威嚇又は武力の行使は、国際紛争を解決する手段としては、永久にこれを放棄する。

前項の目的を達するため、陸海空軍その他の戦力は、これを保持しない。国の交戦権は、これを認めない

Tomorrow, Nov.3 is Japan's national holiday called "Culture Day" (文化の日: bunka=文化　no=の hi=日 ）. Japanese Constitution was officially announced in 1946 and came into force on May 3 in 1947. To commemorate these events, Nov.3 and May 3 were made into national holidays.

Japan's Article 9 came after the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So, Article 9 reflects this new reality of potential nuclear and other kinds of technological annihilation of the species.

Nine public intellectuals (like Kenzaburo Oe or Ooe 大江健三郎) established Article 9 Association in 2004 to shine the light of Article 9 upon this turbulent world, in order to join hands with the peace-seeking citizens of the world.