SHOP's Guide to Modern Life

Life can be a bit of slog sometimes can't it?  Especially in these dark days of capitalism, narcissism and lack of community.  There are days when you are at a loss to describe how you feel, or why you think like you do. Well SHOP knows how you feel and that's why we've created* this handy 'SHOP Guide to Life'

*we've actually just found some excellent passages from A. C. Grayling's 'Thinking of Answers' and written them out below

Schopenhauer - he had a point

1.  LIFE: MAKE THE MOST OF IT

*We're all gonna die*
Schopenhauer - alone of all philosophers, indeed almost alone among humankind, was able to stare the truth about the human condition in the face.  This, to be brief. is: you get older, and sicker, and then you die.  In the process you lose everything of value: first the broad range of possibilities that were open to you when young; the love you so passionately felt, also when young; then your slender waistline; then your sense of humour.

*So, waste not*
One of the more typically dour of Scottish Calvinist sayings is, 'Wilful waste makes woeful want.'  This certainly has the taste of last weeks porridge about it, all the sourer for missing a great point: that the true waste in life is the waste of life itself: in war, anger, wasted human opportunities through timidity, fear, ignorance, discrimination, unjust social arrangements, economic recession, repressive moralities, distorting belief systems, and all other mental and social wastages that we impose on ourselves or allow others to impose on us.

I would like to know who said the following : 'Every day I live I am more convinced that the waste of life lies in the love we have not given, the powers we have not used, the selfish prudence that will risk nothing and which, shirking pain, misses happiness as well.'  This is one lesson about waste we should never waste the opportunity to apply.

*And remember not to be afraid*
Life is change, stasis is its negation. And, as Emerson said about any difficult circumstances rightly faced. 'They are opportunities no good learner would wish to lose.'

Money alone is valueless

MONEY: ITS REAL VALUE

The rational attitude to money is of course to wish for lots of it, but only because of what spending it provides.  Consider: a person who has ten million dollars in the bank and never spends a cent is a very poor person indeed.  A person who has a hundred dollars in their pocket and spends it on a good time is a rich person indeed.  Accordingly, one should estimate an individual's wealth by what they spend, not by what they have; for in this short life of ours - one should never tire of pointing out that the average human lifespan is less than one thousand months - wealth is experience, endeavour, enjoyment, energy.  It is emphatically not a bank balance, a sheaf of investments, a pile of bricks and mortar, for none of this goes into the grave with its owner, and while it exists in that illiquid form it is of little real use, except as a promissory of what it can be turned into: travel, laughter, learning, expansion of spirit through the acquisition of delights and memories.

The meaning of life: very similar to a Kinder Egg

THE MEANING OF LIFE

Something to do, someone to love, and something to hope for.