Where do we go from here?

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
- If, by Rudyard Kipling

I'll often begin with a quote from a person much more well-known and accomplished. Much thought has been given throughout history to the question of how to live well, and how to handle challenges. For thousands of years, religions have offered frameworks for living a good life. The world can be capricious, and we are sometimes wondering how to make sense of it all, how to cope with the possibility of suffering, how to reach personal enlightenment and fulfillment. Well, with all that has been said and done, I don't seem to have found the final answers. (If you have some ideas about that, by all means post a comment and let me know.)

Great guidelines abound, however. One way to get wisdom is by tracking down and learning about the works and the words of wise men -- and women, too. For now I've learned that

• things are as they are,
• the world is complex but consistent;
• phenomena we marvel at are not a result of the world reflecting human constructs, but rather human constructs adapting to the world,
• and the brilliant ideals of antiquity are rooted in incorrect theories;
• the hopes and dreams of millions not being quite true, or not true at all, because of later discoveries;
• yet they have all lived and died, and some were happy.

The truth does not depend on what we want to believe. We can be frustrated and saddened by it, but it is much better to let it inform and inspire your life, to find possibilities among what's possible, to try to know what's good, and then do it.