Life is for Getting Better

That should be the guiding principle no matter what.  Simply, relentlessly to improve.  With that as one's guiding principle, life will get better -- as a self-fulfilling prophecy.  It doesn't matter where one is or starts from -- only to get better.  The fatal flaw, is thinking nothing matters, and nothing makes a difference -- so doing "anything," is enough to ensure and entitle one to a wonderful life.  It doesn't happen that way.

The opposite or antagonist of improving constantly, relentlessly -- is having a great ambition -- without doing the little things that gets one there.  Instead, all their time and energies are focused on already being there -- and all the fantastic things one will do when they achieve their great ambition -- but until then, they never feel they have to do anything to improve and get better.  In their mind and fantasies, they are already "there," and just waiting for everybody else to realize that.

They themselves feel that they shouldn't care -- or be able to tell the difference -- but everybody else should, for their benefit.  So there is this essential disconnect of any personal responsibility for their own lives -- only that everybody else should make it better.  Obviously, that's not going to happen -- because everybody's first responsibility, is to take better care of themselves.

Lacking that, no amount of caring by others, is going to make up for it -- because that is the limiting factor that cannot be overrridden by any other(s).  It simply is what it is.  Nobody can care more for another, than they care for themselves -- because that is their essential life force, their power to do anything.  "Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could."

Improving implies knowing the difference -- because if one cannot tell that difference, what difference does it make?  But if one knows the difference, that is an infallible guide no matter what one is doing -- even if they are on the wrong track, because they can right themselves, and get back on the right track.

The Beginning of Intelligence

The popular notion is that intelligence is what an individual accumulates inside their own brain -- rather than that it is rightly, what resides in everything.  Thus the act of intelligence, is reading that which is everywhere -- and connecting the intelligence in one, to another -- creating a response (intelligence) greater than merely the sum of its parts.

That is the response one experiences when the end result, is much more than they could have imagined, or planned for -- working only with the knowledge (intelligence) in their own brain, but is the greater collective result of all the intelligence involved -- working together.

However, there are many individuals who think that their intelligence and the purpose of it all, is to work against and even compete against every other, thus nullifying that effect, and so the net result, is to cancel out every other person's or thing's contribution and effort, and even destroying it.  In that way, everything they do, results in less, or worse, rather than more, or better.  It does not matter how much they do -- because everything they do, makes things worse than better.

So the last thing you want from such people, is for them to do more -- because they are counterproductive and destructive -- and once that is recognized, have to be neutralized and isolated, rather than ignored or denied.  Pretending it is not happening, or denying it is so, makes any problem, much more so.  That is also intelligence -- knowing the difference.

Not recognizing that difference, is why problems keep repeating themselves -- and even getting worse, no matter how much more time, energy and resources are poured into it.  The problem becomes the solution -- and is perpetuated by the explanation that it is the way it's always been done -- as though that was a sufficient and adequate explanation for why things are as they are.  There is no escape from that circular, self-sustaining argument -- as the only way things can ever be -- because it cannot be any different.

So the intelligent mind knows when not to continue this chain of suffering and ignorance -- by not being that link that supports it, and by that abstinence, breaks the chain of suffering and dysfunction.  That is the act of "enlightenment," where formerly there was only endless darkness and confusion. That is to see things as they really are -- and not merely as we wish them to be, and thinking that is enough to make it so.

That doesn't make it so -- no matter how much one wishes it were so.  Knowing this difference, is the primal act of intelligence -- distinguishing the delusion from the actuality.  The delusion will never solve any problem -- but will be the root of all our problems.  Conversely, once the actuality is embraced, that is the ending of sorrow produced by the multitude of problems created by one's delusions.

That is the beginning of intelligence.