A Quote by Henri Nouwen
In our production-oriented society, being busy, having an occupation, has become one of the main ways, if not the main way, of identifying ourselves. Without an occupation, not just our economic security but our very identity is endangered.
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Our main goal as Iraqi people is to drive the occupation out in any way.
Now this brings me to my main topic - our military strength - more specifically, how to stay strong against threat from outside, without undermining the economic health that supports our security.
No industry is immune and no occupation is safe. All of us need to begin to think in terms of our own inner strengths, our resilience and resourcefulness, our capacity to adapt and to rely upon ourselves and our families.
The first time you have a little success, some good feedback, you start imagining having a career, or being a professional musician. But while being creative, or doing creative work, is very natural for humans, to think of that as your main occupation, that's a really important transition.
There is an ideal of excellence for any particular craft or occupation; similarly there must be an excellent that we can achieve as human beings. That is, we can live our lives as a whole in such a way that they can be judged not just as excellent in this respect or in that occupation, but as excellent, period. Only when we develop our truly human capacities sufficiently to achieve this human excellent will we have lives blessed with happiness.
The identity of just one thing, the "clash of civilization" view that you're a Muslim or a Hindu or a Buddhist or a Christian, I think that's such a limited way of seeing humanity, and schools have the opportunity to bring out the fact that we have hundreds of identities. We have our national identity. We have our cultural identity, linguistic identity, religious identity. Yes, cultural identity, professional identity, all kinds of ways.
We will not put our sons in prison for political membership or resisting occupation, because occupation is the reason for the problem.
We don't think of ourselves in Cafe Tacvba as representatives. When we go and make new material, we feel that our creations are more authentic if we think of ourselves. We don't say, "Let's be the representatives and show the moment that our society is in." But when it comes to performing and we visit other countries, like New York, many people approach us, people who are outside of their own country, and we become a referent. Our shows become this sort of ritual, and our performances become that moment of identity.
Having more and newer things each year has become not just something we want but something we need. The idea of more, of ever increasing wealth, has become the center of our identity and our security, and we are caught up by it as the addict by his drugs.
One of the main tasks of adolescence is to achieve an identity--not necessarily a knowledge of who we are, but a clarification ofthe range of what we might become, a set of self-references by which we can make sense of our responses, and justify our decisions and goals.
Our broken tax code is one of the main reasons the United States lags behind when it comes to economic growth, job creation, and competitiveness. Without pro-growth tax reform, our workers and our businesses will continue to suffer.
The society of Christendom and especially of Western Christendom up to the explosion, which we call the Reformation, had been a society of owners: a Proprietarial Society. It was one in which there remained strong bonds between one class and another, and in which there was a hierarchy of superior and inferior, but not, in the main, a distinction between a restricted body of possessors and a main body of destitute at the mercy of the possessors, such as our society has become.
The wrecking ball is characteristic of our way with materials. We 'cannot afford' to log a forest selectively, to mine without destroying topography, or to farm without catastrophic soil erosion. A production-oriented economy can indeed live in this way, but only so long as production lasts.
The only way to change the world is to change the main character of our story - the one we believe that we are. If we change the main character, if we respect ourselves, then just like magic, all the secondary characters will change. We can only give what we have, and if we don't respect ourselves, how can we respect others?
The night comes for the purpose of checking our busy employment, and introducing an interval of repose between the links of our action and our aspiration. It draws its dim curtain around the field of toil. It buries the objects of our handiwork in darkness, and involves them with uncertainty. It comes to the relief of the exhausted body and the tired brain. Our powers, harmonizing with the diurnal revolutions of the earth, fail with the failing light, and a merciful Providence casts around us this mantle of shadow, and snatches us from our occupation.
Game, noun: Any unserious occupation designed for the relaxation of busy people and the distraction of idle ones. It's used to take people to whom we have nothing to say off our hands, and sometimes even ourselves.
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