Today's post is about two things:

a. A great attempt by philosophers to bring a philosopher's view to current news, like Daily mail does but with a different kind of look. I think it's mainly created by Alain De Botton, but it's not all exclusively his work. Their website is called "The Philosophers' Mail" (pun with Daily Mail intended).

b. An article of theirs that has to do with beauty, youth, personality, and aging, all of them combined in the face of the world's super model crush, Cara Delevingne.

On their article there is a paragraph saying this:

We make such a big thing of youth that we struggle to find good ways of dealing with the inevitable facts of ageing. It's slightly demented for a society in which most people live into their eighties to locate twenty one as the high point and regard everything beyond that as downhill and lamentable.

I want to focus on this because it really concerns me. I am deeply fallen in that trap too. I'm not even 30 and I'm already in a panic that I'm too old and my youth slowly (but not so slowly) fades away and I will never be that young again. As true as this is, we (my fellow 27-28ish friends and me) shouldn't behave like there's nothing more to life than a pretty young face. (All my readers over 30, please don't hate me, be compassionate with a girl in deep existential angst). Of course, every celebrity that respects herself goes on a full-face of botox to prevent herself from crying every time she looks herself at the mirror, but I respect the woman who doesn't care to show her age, who doesn't find value only in being young. I have a long way before me, until I become that woman, because young as I am now, I totally freak out every time I picture myself at my fifties.

Only one thing makes me feel better. That when I’m 50, I’ll have become this super wise person and will be way beyond all these matters. Truth be told, I am not that old, but I'm getting older. I have my choices to make and some of them you can never take back, so youth isn't always as carefree as “Everyday toiletries” make it to be. Still, it doesn’t need to be as bad as all the photos around us show it to be. Years ago, people of age were fully respected and considered of great value. What happened to our modern society, I wonder?

On a happy note, Jung believed life really begins at 40. I'm adopting that, it definitely suits me.

photo found at facebook

I want to share with you an article I read the other day What Work Is Really For. With such a high rate of unemployment in Greece (and everywhere else too) we seem to be deeply anxious when we can't find a job and then again deeply anxious when we work (am I going to get fired? or I'm not paid enough etc). We don't have a lot of time to think if work is good or bad, we just want a job. To pay for the essentials, to provide -ourselves or our family-, to live. To have a job used to be everybody's right, now it's become some people's privilege. It's a hard situation we're going through, that's not new. I like what Gary Gutting says in this article:

...in our economic system, most of us inevitably see our work as a means to something else: it makes a living, but it doesn’t make a life.

It's true, isn't it? Do we even live a life of quality anymore? I don't know. Sometimes I think I live as I want, some others all I feel is anxiety, to do all these things I have to / want to. And those times seem to be too many, but then I try to remind myself what's essential to me, to live a "good life" -apart from food, that is.

Socrates believed that the pursuit of material wealth was not the point of living, he always talked about how important virtue was. What do we consider important nowadays? Except money and success, I mean. What are the important qualities a person ought to have? I guess it's personal, but we have to admit, we live in a world totally pointed at material wealth and fake needs. We give a large amount of money to have the new i phone, but we don't have money to buy a book, or go for therapy. Now, I'm just only imposing my own criteria for what one should do, aren't I?

Anyway, I wonder, what do you think is an important quality for a therapist to have? What really makes a good therapist? Do we prepare ourselves as we should or are we in such a rush to earn a living that we skip some steps on the way? And something more. How do you spend your free time? Do you have any?

image by micromeg