A common wisdom is to learn from the past. Our times mistake rabidity for enlightenment. We have read the books, we have raged against the injustices in our history, but have we learned the lessons the past pleads us to learn? The common foolishness is to ignore history's lessons, and in some cases, we miss the messages completely. All true lessons in life also teaches us how to live well, and if this is not imparted on us, then we have failed to learn, or the lessons have failed to teach. 

How many times have we fallen for the same traps? Have we toppled our oppressors only to take their place? We see the loud tear down the unjust only to transform into the same enemy parading a different flag. We have witnessed, and are witnessing still the dedicated rightful souls who tear down and dismantle the machinery of abuse only to be corrupted by the cause and build from the parts of the old reign a different but equally terrible weapon of oppression. 

Many times when there is an opportunity for all men to be equal, we tend to turn into animals seeking to be "more equal" than others. It is a cycle of oppression that we must learn to escape. We have mastered bringing down our enemies, but we must also learn how to avoid becoming our vanquished foes. We cannot advance until all tests are passed, and all lessons learned. 

If we rely solely on the lessons of our times, we are destined repeat the mistakes of our predecessors. A look into the past provides wisdom to learn and clear warnings on what to avoid.

The past is also there for us to learn from. So let us learn from the richness of the works of the previous generations and the colorful history painted by the hands of tragedy and heroism. Let us be unsatisfied with learning only, but also to add study and then practice. There are those who study for other reasons than to learn - for instance: to fulfill a requirement of a course. But proper learning requires proper application also. Many people, though the normal course of education, have studied the works of Buddha, Jesus, Socrates, and Aurelius but go on with lives untransformed because they have failed to integrate knowledge into living. Let us then practice well what we teach ourselves by uniting wisdom with life and by avoiding all that are contrary to the lessons. 

It is perfectly right to live by the ideas of our predecessors so long as these concepts are sound and good, our age is after all is still retrospective. But have too new ideas born from the marriage of our inherited past and life in our contemporary times. In the great conversation there is time to listen and time to speak. A time to learn and a time to live. When you remove the artificial constraints, and limiting rules of the land, you will see that all thoughts and ideas belong to everyone, and every accomplishment in history - the work of our predecessors' hands and the product of thier minds, are the birthright of every person living today. And when we give back to our times and bequeath to the generations that will follow, when we give as much as we take, we contribute to the great conversation. 

Anyone who takes part in this ageless exchange inherits all that was achieved from the past but also belongs to them the future and whatever may flourish from this process of learning and teaching and learning - this is a perpetual dialogue that will continue long after generations of mortal flesh return to stardust. 

Some take on life with the mindset of a solder being thrust into battle, others go about it as a child arriving at a playground. Whatever approach one takes, one thing is apparent: that we must take on life with preparation - a preparation for more of itself - for when the stages escalate as events unfold. We must always be prepared to learn, and learn to prepare for life. We must prepare as if we are preparing for a battle and a game. 

Life is a game with complicated rules and complicated players - you, the others, and the forces with their own progression on the same board. What is in our power is in the playing of our part in the game, the handling of the ball when it is in our hands and not when it is in others, and not in the ball itself. Ours is in the throwing of the dice, not in its landing. If we are to judge rightly our life, we must judge it by how in every stage it is played and not the outcomes: its failures and successes. Judge the quality of a person not by the clothes they wear or the cars they drive or the house that separates their heads from the sun, the rain, and the strangers, but how they acquired what they have - the person that wears the clothes, the driver of the car, the person that lives the life. Do your best to play fair and play well and accept everything that happens as a lesson.

When inevitable failures come, turn away from blame. Blame nothing when possible. Blaming is an excuse and an acceptance of helplessness. And if you accept whatever befalls you in life as a lesson, then blaming is also a rejection of the lesson. 

Nobody can predict the future. No entity can assure tomorrow. All our good works may be laid waste by the unseen hand of misfortune and the piercing dagger of tragedy, and if this is to be our fate then it is outside our power. We, however, must do our best with the skills, tools, and knowledge available to us at the present. 

While we have no control of what will come, we have limited but significant power to influence our fortunes through proper preparation and through improving our perceptions. If you live correctly with right knowledge and in the best of your ability, then whatever tomorrow brings, even if it is tradgedy, there is neither reason for nor temptation to blame.

Let us then live like the stoics by concerning ourselves only thoughts and actions under our control. Let all misfortunes or blessings that result from our actions be the residual effects of living and not the centerpieces of life itself. Focus life on living, and not on its side effects: successes and misfortunes.

We enrich our lives whenever we practice living well - in doing what is right, in preparing our minds, in taming our emotions, and in discovering the eternal verities of life. As common souls this is what we need to pay to enter the richness of a beautiful life. When our practice has become more than habitual, when it becomes part of us, when we integrate the nobler virtues in our person then we become noble as well. And such noble souls have no need of trying because they already are.

Our dreams can also be great teachers. Dreams are our teachers but they are also the test. A dream shows us what is yet impossible, and dares us to reach it. Dreams are not always only motivational, sometimes dreams are also revelatory. 

How many times have dreams taken us deeper into realities and realizations more than the careful consideration of the facts? Dreams can, if we allow, strip old paint to reveal the hidden colors of our world. Dreams teach us wisdom by showing us the miraculous in the common.

An often companion to dreams is prayer, but all dreams are in fact passive prayers. And Like all prayers, dreams are also a study of truth. Anyone who dreams great is on an expedition into the unknown and is destined to learn great things.

Dreamers may discover that a dream is the mind speaking with the soul though a secret language; it is poetry that can be beautiful or frightening. A poetry that "comes nearer to the vital truth" than can be learned from all of history. 

Dreams are transformative. Dreams make a day out of darkness, a jovial carnival from the cast shadows. A dream is hope in sacred garment.

When we dream, we cast aside the purely practical in favor of the essential and we come to see what is invisible to the eye, we get to measure what can not be measured, weigh what can not be weighed, we get to experience what cannot be described. We learn lessons that transcend our tangible world.