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Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

Until recent times, to be alone, yet speak out, was often called prayer;
nowadays, it is often called posting on the Internet.

Someone once asked psychologist Alfred Adler, after one of his lectures,
“Dr. Adler! But what of God? What do you say about God?” Dr. Adler
simply replied, “I would hope, if there is a God, that God would be pleased
with the way I have lived my life.” Dr. Adler’s words were prayer in a
sense. Publishing on the web is often prayer for me.

We cannot prove to ourselves or others that God exists, nor prove that
there is no God. We do not need to prove to ourselves or anyone that we
exist. We each have a life, and we have choices. Each waking moment
we are faced with a kind of moral dilemma: “What shall I do next.” Few
moments become monuments, other than a first footstep upon the moon’s
surface, or a gunshot in Ford’s Theater. But, a myriad of moment to
moment decisions can add up to something monumentally good and
saintly, or notoriously evil, or simply add up to a life of wasted time and
lost opportunities.

Often, the greatest virtue can be found in the agnostic who has bypassed
God as middle-man to goodness.

I awoke on this first morning of 2006 with the thought “I hope my life is
pleasing.”

I so often think of various old saying from India:

“A saint can see saintliness in even the worst of sinners, but a sinner can
see sinfulness in even the holiest saint.”

“When a pickpocket meets a saint, all he sees are pockets.”

“If a woman is my elder, I must treat her as my mother. If she is my
peer, I must treat her as my sister. If she is younger, I must treat her as
my daughter.”

Epilogue:

In a chat room, this morning, someone complained of boredom.

I replied, “People who are bored have no one to blame but themselves. If
you are bored, you can find something interesting to read or learn or
discuss, and can share with other bored people.”

Boredom is sibling to sloth.

Soliloquy is an actor speaking aloud to himself. The audience hears, but
the character is unaware of their presence.

An early symptom of postmodernism is when the actor explicitly
addresses the audience, and when an author pauses in his narrative to
speak directly to the reader as reader.

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