Recently, I took my car to the garage to fill it up with gas. And the young man who came to put gas in my car had to truly be the most unhappy, the saddest individual that I’ve seen in a very very long time. No smiles, desultory, all of these things. And I was going to give him my standard, how are you today? It’s okay.
It’s a great life speech. And I decided, nope. I’m gonna let you think this through for yourself. Because if you don’t, you’re going to be a very, very bitter old man. Because unless you die, you will one day be an old man which kind of asks all of us, why would I spend my time anytime in a state of misery when I could be happy?
I could be happy. I could be going forward in life and I think this is the great secret. I have to choose ultimately if I’m going to get to work on me. Recently, I was in Bangkok and I went to the weekend market. There’s around 1,500 or 2,000 shops that are at this particular market, and it is dynamic.
People are moving around and selling and screaming, and there’s lots of traffic which makes it all very, very interesting. But the thing I liked about it most of all was that people had no time to be miserable. Because if they were miserable, they wouldn’t have had the opportunity to sell anything. And one particular shop, I think, was the most fascinating of all. They were selling coconut ice cream.
Okay. And that sounds pretty ordinary really, just ordinary ice cream but they had a show that was involved with the ice cream. And little bit of background. When Odysseus decides to go home after the Trojan War. Right?
His men get pushed by a storm. They get pushed onto this island, and I’m sure everyone knows it’s the famous lotus eater’s tale. So they’re there and they eat something like a lotus which is kind of a narcotic or what have you, and they don’t wanna leave. This drug makes them totally lazy. They just wanna relax, forget the world, etcetera etcetera.
So we come back to my story in Bangkok. People are walking by and they’re buying this ice cream and they’ll ask you, how many scoops do you want? Three scoops, please. Okay. So they slice the coconut and they dig out the coconut so you now you have a little cup.
And they already have the ice cream premade and the one guy runs into the middle of the street. And the other guy, one scoop, and he throws the scoop up in the air, and the other chap catches it in this bowl. Two scoops. Same thing. Up into the air, into this bowl.
Real theater for sure. So I stood there for around 20 minutes watching these men and the show alone brought people in to buy the ice cream. Right? So here we had a great juxtaposition between the lotus eaters lazy, boring, uncomfortable lives and my coconut throwers, if you will. People that were excited about life.
And here is doctor Csikszentmihalyi, Flo, presented right in front of us. Right? I’m sure the time for those men passed extremely quickly. They were excited about their lives. And I would think if they’re excited about that aspect of their lives, just maybe they can be excited about the philosophical aspect of their lives, whatever that means, and maybe the spiritual side of their lives.
Right? So many things are possible with excitement. So truly, we want to talk to people that are bored with life and say, wait a moment. Wake up. Wake up and smell the roses or whatever analogy you wanna draw.
Gosh. Realize that it can be a good existence. It really can because you need that energy, I feel, or you need that kind of good fortune when things are really really really really bad which they will be at one point in life. They will be horrible. And you say to yourself, I cannot go on.
This is it. I’m over. I’m done. I’m finished. And then somehow, deep in your heart, there’s a little spark of energy that says you, no, Leon.
It’s not the time to end it all. Push on and you do. And you find the portal, you find the door and you open it, and you’re off. One of my young students has just written a paper on overcoming obstacles, you know, and I was deeply touched when I read it because it suggests that whatever adversity we face, we can overcome it or overcome them if you will. And the paper also suggested that we’re all the same.
We all have anxiety. We all have fear. We all have that deep concern. I was reading the other day a great saying. Originally, apparently, it’s from Oscar Wilde, the great playwright who was eventually convicted of homosexuality just at the end of 19th century.
And he died in total infamy with no money and an embarrassment. His children changed their names, and his tombstone had to be paid for by the mayor of Paris of all things. Just a mess. And so this statement is picked up by John Lennon who had a dynamic life until he was unfortunately shot of all things at 40 and killed, and it comes to us. And the statement is, it will all be fine in the end.
And if it’s not fine, it’s not the end. So I think this is what we want to say to everyone who’s sad, who’s bitter, who’s angry. It’s not the end yet, baby. Push on. You can do it.
You can do it. If I can do it, you can do it because we’re all the same. We’re frail human beings striving on our path to God and our path to enlightenment on our path to lead a better life. And you know what they say. You know what they say. Critical thinking is excellent especially if you want to achieve something out of your life which you do, and critical thinking is great. It’s truly great. Always excellence. Why not? You take care. God bless. Bye bye.