The Art of Living

The Art of Living is said to be as essential to a person’s life as knowledge of wood is to a carpenter and mastery of iron is to a blacksmith. Be it in the form of or integrated in a belief, a goal, a set of standards, principles, morals and values, a moto, a covenant, an oath, a commitment, a creed, or a purpose.

One is in introduced to the art of living in many ways. Some start with reason, others  in the search for meaning, or through realizations and beliefs, faith and revelations, or through life’s circumstances. How one is initiated into the Art of Living, and how one applies the art in one’s life, and in what form it may take, it matters little; as long as it becomes a natural part of a person which one could be measured.

We all must strive not only to live, but to live well and in the best way we can. Without the  Art of Living – the art of living well – the human animal simply live to survive – content to be part of the cycle of aversions and attachments: the avoidance of pain and the search for gratification; and nothing more worthwhile. Without the art of living, the human animal is merely an animal. Anyone who goes through life without the proper application of the art of living is a blacksmith inept in forging metals, or a carpenter unskilled in woodworking. Anyone whose life is deprived of the art of living remains to be a lesser vision of themselves.