The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #149410   Message #3476020
Posted By: freda underhill
05-Feb-13 - 08:23 AM
Thread Name: BS: The 10 Commandments for atheists
Subject: RE: BS: The 10 Commandments for athiests
Alain de Botton's 'list for life'

Resilience: Keeping going even when things are looking dark.

Empathy: The capacity to connect imaginatively with the sufferings and unique experiences of another person.

Patience: We should grow calmer and more forgiving by being more realistic about how things actually happen.

Sacrifice: We won't ever manage to raise a family, love someone else or save the planet if we don't keep up with the art of sacrifice.

Politeness: Politeness is closely linked to tolerance, -the capacity to live alongside people whom one will never agree with, but at the same time, cannot avoid.

Humour: Like anger, humour springs from disappointment, but it is disappointment optimally channelled.

Self-awareness: To know oneself is to try not to blame others for one's troubles and moods; to have a sense of what's going on inside oneself, and what actually belongs to the world.

Forgiveness: It's recognising that living with others is not possible without excusing errors.

Hope: Pessimism is not necessarily deep, nor optimism shallow.

Confidence: Confidence is not arrogance - rather, it is based on a constant awareness of how short life is and how little we will ultimately lose from risking everything.