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You Belong
The Bushmen in the Kalahari Desert talk about the two “hungers”. There is the Great Hunger and there is the Little Hunger. The Little Hunger wants food for the belly; but the Great Hunger, the greatest hunger of all, is the hunger for meaning…
There is ultimately only one thing that makes human beings deeply and profoundly bitter, and that is to have thrust upon them a life without meaning. There is nothing wrong in searching for happiness. But, of far more comfort to the soul is something greater than happiness or unhappiness, and that is meaning. Because meaning transfigures all.
Once what you are doing has for you meaning, it is irrelevant whether you’re happy or unhappy. You are content — you are not alone in your Spirit — you belong.
~ Laurens van der Post
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The white man is like a snake that eats its tail to live…We don’t live well in your cities, which seem like an infinite number of black warts on the face of the earth…
What’s the point of living if you can’t hear the lonely voice of the herd or the barking of the frogs around a pond at night? …I prefer the wind that rushes on the surface of a pond and the scent of the wind itself, cleansed by a rain shower at noon.
Air is precious for the red man, because all things share the same breath; animals, trees, and man…
