~~Quotes and Poetry~~

[Om]

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, he wordlessly picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles roll
ed into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full.. The students responded with a unanimous ‘yes.’

The professor then produced two Beers from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand.The students laughed..

‘Now,’ said the professor as the laughter subsided, ‘I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things—-your family, your children, your health, your friends and your favorite passions—-and if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house and your car.. The sand is everything else—-the small stuff.

‘If you put the sand into the jar first,’ he continued, ‘there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life.

If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff you will never have room for the things that are important to you.

Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness.

Spend time with your children. Spend time with your parents. Visit with grandparents. Take your spouse out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house and mow the lawn.

Take care of the golf balls first—-the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the Beer represented. The professor smiled and said, ‘I’m glad you asked.’ The Beer just shows you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple of Beers with a friend.

[Λεκές]

Η εισαγωγή απ' την αυτοβιογραφία του Bertrand Russell

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness--that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what--at last--I have found.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.

This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.

[GraveMiasma]

skatoxipides tou kwlou OUST

[KoiliaSamprela]

Απόσπασμα από την Συμφωνία Νο1 του Τάσου Λειβαδίτη

Η πλατεία θα μείνει έρημη
σα μια ζωή που όλα τάδωσε, κι όταν ζήτησε κι αυτή
λίγη επιείκεια
της την αρνήθηκαν.

Χωρίς όνειρα να μας ξεγελάσουνε και δίχως φίλους πιά
να μας προδώσουν…

Γιατί οι άνθρωποι υπάρχουν απ’ τη στιγμή που βρίσκουνε
μια θέση
στη ζωή των άλλων.
Ή
ένα θάνατο
για τη ζωή των άλλων…

[sfinotouvlaki]

Mahmoud Darwish - Eleven Stars Over Andalusia

On our last evening on this land we chop our days
from our young trees, count the ribs we’ll take with us
and the ribs we’ll leave behind… On the last evening
we bid nothing farewell, nor find the time to end…
Everything remains as it is, it is the place that changes our dreams
and its visitors. Suddenly we’re incapable of irony,
this land will now host atoms of dust… Here, on our last evening,
we look closely at the mountains besieging the clouds: a conquest… and a counter-conquest,
and an old time handing this new time the keys to our doors.
So enter our houses, conquerors, and drink the wine
of our mellifluous Mouwashah. We are the night at midnight,
and no horseman will bring dawn from the sanctuary of the last Call to Prayer…
Our tea is green and hot; drink it. Our pistachios are fresh; eat them.
The beds are of green cedar, fall on them,
following this long siege, lie down on the feathers of
our dreams. The sheets are crisp, perfumes are ready by the door, and there are plenty of mirrors:
enter them so we may exit completely. Soon we will search
in the margins of your history, in distant countries,
for what was once our history. And in the end we will ask ourselves:
Was Andalusia here or there? On the land…or in the poem?

Mahmoud Darwish - Addresses for the Soul, outside This Place

I love to travel . . .
to a village that never hangs my last evening on its cypresses. I love the trees
that witnessed how two birds suffered at our hands, how we raised the stones.
Wouldn't it be better if we raised our days
to grow slowly and embrace this greenness? I love the rainfall
on the women of distant meadows.
I love the glittering water and the scent of stone.
Wouldn't it be better if we defied our ages
and gazed much longer at the last sky before moonset?
Addresses for the soul, outside this place. I love to travel
to any wind . . . But I don't love to arrive.

Mahmoud Darwish - We Travel Like All People

We travel like everyone else, but we return to nothing. As if travel were
a path of clouds. We buried our loved ones in the shade of clouds and
between roots of trees.
We said to our wives: Give birth for hundreds of years, so that we may end
this journey
within an hour of a countr)\ within a meter of the impossible!
We travel in the chariots of the Psalms, sleep in the tents of the prophets,
and are born again in the language of Gypsies.
We measure space with a hoopoe's beak, and sing so that distance may forget us.
We cleanse the moonlight. Your road is long, so dream of seven women to bear
this long journey on your shoulders. Shake the trunks of palm trees for them.
You know the names, and which one will give birth to the Son of Galilee.
Ours is a country of words: Talk. Talk. Let me rest my road against a stone.
Ours is a country of words: Talk. Talk. Let me see an end to this journey.