Chapter 44 From matter to spirit

The ideal of life is to live for the ideal Li Zigong asked Confucius, if there are three things needed to govern a country, which three would you say?Confucius made a sequence and said: The first is food, there must be food to eat; the second must be an army; the third must be faith.Zigong asked, can't there be three things, but only two?Confucius said, then there must be food and faith.Zi Gong asked again, should we choose only one of the two?Confucius said, then choose faith. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have food, and you can’t talk about anything without faith.The most abundant sense of happiness for human beings comes from the state of mind, and the highest power governing the spirit is faith.We need the support of faith to keep our spirit unshakable in our ideal world.With an ideal world, we can be content with the flawed real life, because the flaws in real life are exactly the focus of the idealist's work.Many people understood the importance of ideals through thinking and reading when they were teenagers, but in later life, they gradually forgot their ideals and lost their beliefs.The important reason for forgetting their ideals is that they think that the ideal world is too far away, and they cannot realize it in their lifetime, and their disappointment gradually overwhelms their youthful enthusiasm.Maybe one day, you suddenly give up and sit down, right on the couch where you indulge in material comforts.

The reason why an ideal is called an ideal is a future that can never become a reality. Why should I work hard in vain—this is the idea of ​​many materialistic hedonists.Sounds logical, but they were wrong about the ideal.Because the ideal is not something far away, it is a part of your own soul, you live with the ideal, and the ideal is in your life. In my opinion, an ideal is your desire to make your life beautiful.That is to do it step by step, starting from your own daily life.Maybe your ideal is not a systematic, grand, utopian thing, but your daily actions bring the feeling that the world is getting better.If your ideal becomes the basic motive of your daily actions, with daily effects, how can you forget it and turn your back on it?People who have lofty ideals but have the ability to act pragmatically, I call them pragmatic idealists. This is the person I admire the most, and it is also the state I hope to achieve over the years.I hope to start small and be patient; my hands will be electrified, and everything I do, no matter how small, will shine with the infusion of ideals.Pragmatic idealists may persist in being a careful improver, and derive lasting pleasure from it.That kind of furious and radical idealist attempts to overthrow the existing world in one fell swoop, and immediately realize its systematic, grand, and utopian society, and the price may be large-scale bloodshed and death.There are many cases in history that prove that what is truly lasting and effective is not a whirlwind revolution, but a slow and meticulous improvement in all aspects.Look at our life today. In just 20 years, earth-shaking changes have taken place. It is the great result of hundreds of millions of unknown improvement activities.I believe that in the natural state, people are kind, and seeking happiness is the motivation of life.The most natural person is the best person.From this premise, the ideal world is not the result of people who transform nature to adapt to some concepts, but on the contrary, it should solve the problems that distort people and restore the natural state.If we think that all people are natural and happy, it is an ideal world, then it is indeed not in the distant future, but distorted and obscured in reality.Therefore, we should be more obsessed with reality like a miner, dig out the dross, and pan out the gold mine.

"There is nothing in the first place, where is the dust?" It is more important to solve problems down-to-earth than to sit still with empty ideals.I work every day, sweating all over my face, and my mental and physical enrichment complement each other.When life is at its best, it is like the unity of body and mind in yoga. This is happiness in action and the greatest source of our happiness.