Philosophy of Life

Many religions across time and across the globe somehow preaches the same ideals, even as different as they may be. For example, the need of speaking the truth, the respect for other life, and the quest to attain a true happiness, whether its nirvana or heaven. For me, many of these religions have the same universal morals that I do believe in, but I do not believe in the whole religion or way of life. Many of them have influenced my way of living life, such as growing up as a Catholic and later dismissing much of western religious thinking for Buddhist and Taoism ideals. I live my life as a fusion of much these different cultures, and also use my experiences to become the person I am today.

I believe an individual should live their life as free from the constraints of society, and even their own mind, and yet still be a worthy and functional person to the people around them. I think that people are the cause for their own depression and problems, and they alone are the cause for their wrong actions. On the flipside, I think people are also the key to their own happiness. Much like Kant, I believe that someone’s actions should have pure intentions behind it, where the final result is not much important, but only how the person feels while carrying out the action. It does not have moral value if you make a promise to someone in order to get something in return later on. With that said, it is only the essence of the moment that shows you whether you truly do something out of the greatness of your heart, and shows you whether you truly have an unreasonable happiness for mundane things. I strongly believe that people should live to care, to eventually love, and do something that benefits even the smallest of details in someone else’s life.

In Taoism, it speaks of following the “way” to achieve certain themes of their culture. Many Taoist principles include naturalness, vitality, peace, detachment from desires, and spontaneity. I believe that much of things you do should be effortless, such as belief of “Wu Wei”. You should be soft, aware and graceful, the way water is. Water is seen as soft and weak, and yet it can carve stone and move earth. I believe it is human nature to be intuitive, to seek the truth, and it has brought us to sometimes destructive forces. Humans end up trying to fight the balance of nature, they fail to see that we are a product of nature itself. Much of human kind never reaches its own natural side, and focuses too much on living in their own made up world of irrationality and illusions. We become too accustomed to thinking this way, that we forget what it is to actually live. Like Taoist ideals, we are like leaves floating down the river, and when we try to go against it, we only find ourselves in conflict with our minds.