Three Important Life
Questions to Ask
Have you ever wondered: there has to be much more to life
than this—the life you are living
right now?
If you have, then maybe you should also ask yourself three most important questions in life: Am
I happy? Am I wise? Am I good?
In life, you choose the way you feel. You are seldom, if
ever, a victim of your circumstances. If you feel depressed, it is more often
your choice, rather than due to your physical problems or mental conditions. As
a matter of fact, It has much to do with your thinking about how you feel about
what you have and what you want in your life. More specifically, it has to do
with your happiness, or how you look at your happiness.
If happiness is to be found in things that are outside,
instead of inside, yourself, you may have easily become unhappy. For example,
you may have set a certain standard of living, a certain set of criteria for
relationships, and a certain number of material possessions you desire; you may
then naturally become depressed and unhappy when your external realities are
not realized. In a way, you may have imprisoned yourself with these
pre-conditioned external realities. In other words, you have the ability and
capability to make yourself unhappy. In a way, you may have become the
proverbial bird so used to the self-imposed cage that it will not fly away even
when the cage door is wide open. That explains why your unhappiness is your own
making because your mind is ingrained in what it has set to get out of life,
instead of looking elsewhere, such as inside yourself, to seek the happiness
that has been eluding and evading you.
Asking the question “Am I happy?” is self-awakening.
You may be knowledgeable, but not necessarily wise. Wisdom
is the capability to self-intuit what you already know and then diligently
apply it to your everyday life and living. Knowledge is the accumulation of
facts and information, while wisdom is the connection of these dots to see
their logic and relevance in everyday life and living. For example, a scientist
is often knowledgeable in his or her field of specialty. However, that does not
necessarily imply that the same scientist has satisfying and successful
relationships; in other words, wisdom may be lacking in that scientist’s human
life, and therefore may be unhappy in spite of being knowledgeable.
Asking the question “Am I wise?” may awaken you to true
human wisdom.
Man is inherently good by nature, but may have become
not-so-good or even bad, due to the toxic physical world he is living in. The
body has both direct and indirect contact with all material things through the
five senses. The perceptions by these five senses may then become sensations
and experiences that are stored in the mind in the form of thoughts, emotions,
feelings, and ultimately memories. If the body is constantly exposed to toxins in
the mundane world, the human mind may also become infected due to the intricate
body-and-mind connection. The degree of human goodness is relative to the
extent of the contamination of the mind.
Asking the question “Am I good?” may enhance your desire to
be a better person.
The art of living well is to answer all the three
important questions in life, which are intricately and inextricably related.
Your answers will be totally different from those of others because you are you—a
unique individual. Remember the story
of the three blind men giving their own accounts and descriptions of what an
elephant looks like; each of them is touching different parts of the same
elephant.
Stephen Lau
Copyright© by Stephen Lau
