today i was speacking with a friend at a Hungarian Easter Party organised by the ELTE Faculty of Humanities. he told me that during his experience as Erasmus student he met few people he could have a dialogue with.
that assertion reminded me that i felt just like that and i posed him some other questions to know what he tought about that.
in fact, his point of view was something sensibly different than mine on this matter. he was complaining much more about the lack of culture, rather than the lack of real interaction. he actually believed that most of the people are, i quote, "empty" and the main cause he mentioned was the lack of reading,
i didn't felt he wanted himself to have a "real discussion" on that matter, so i dropped the conversation. i do not feel the need to give unrequested lessons to people. if somebody does not want to compare his point of view with mine in an honest dialogue, all that i could possibly say would be just a loss of my limited amount of time on this Earth.
usually the main reason why someone exposes her/his ideas in a one-sided way is insecurity and fear. that must be respected.
altough, that has never stopped me from reflecting by myself and asking me questions on the issues that the others were unwillingly to reflect upon, if the issues caught my attention and curiosity.
i do not believe that there is such a thing as an "empty person".
i do believe that people are much more than what they know, what they read and the studies they chose.
the reason why i don't think that people are empty, is that everybody is a philosopher.
Aristotle cleverly affirmed that everyone philosophizes: even the choice of not philosophizing at all is already philosophy. why? because we can't help the human pursuit of knowledge.
when we see something we automatically look for an explanation and a category in which it may fall. and if we do not want to think about it, that is already an answer to the question "why?" or the question "what?".
from my point of view, empty people are just superficial. and that may be perfectly fine. the important thing is not to bear the burden of explaining everything to myself, the important thing is to be happy. the art of living is more the art of knowing when to concentrate my energy on something, and when to let things happen.
the grounds on which i disagree with my friend are also those concerning the standards of judgement on people. it would have been great to find someone to discuss upon this issue.
it is very interesting and very subjective.
what i do believe is that the beauty that i saw in humans does not come solely from the cultural knowledge, the culture is the consequence of something bigger: the way we live our feelings. i have always been more interested in what is common to all human beings rather than what makes us different. the type of feelings we choose to cultivate, and the moral answers we give to ourselves to keep living and not become crazy are more important to me than the kind and numer of books a person read.
everybody heard sometime the sentence "she/he has a great mind but is an awful human being".
that is my point. it's so nice to meet someone who can talk about science, general culture, movies, books, politics, current events, and whatever in a polish way. it is more important to see how she/he relates with others and her/himself, the elegance, respect and kindness she/he chose to develop.
that's not written on books.
what may be found on books are the answers that other people gave to themselves and shared to the world. which is beautiful, amazing, extraordinary.
but the truth is that your personal, unique answers are not written in any book in the world.
your job as a human person is to find them. sometimes to create them. that's exactly what scares us, and on the other hand that's something we cannot escape. i'm scared. that's why i respect people who are afraid to discuss their answers. i know how they feel.
“I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light.”
― Brown Taylor
No comments:
Post a Comment
any idea is welcome!