The
present moment hardly leads us to believe in optimism in face of the challenges
that the world presents us. To consider life only by its favourable outcomes
would be to desire the Utopia by Morus to our daily lives: sweet dreams, since
the dream of civilization from the author was a mere neologism to define
unattainable goals – it would not be reasonable for us to fixate in such world
views, since the big and small dramas that take place guarantee our feet on the
ground.
If in
the Americas, formal religion is still an alternative form of console (or would
it be escape?) for most of its inhabitants, in Europe and Asia the atheist
existen-tialism opens dangerous loopholes in the mind and the hearts, creating
obstacles to its spiritualization. The Middle East with its constant wars and
Africa with its ethnical conflicts demonstrate in a forceful manner what is a
planet of trials and expiations in infinite degrees of manifestation, as the
Spirits demonstrated to Allan Kardec.
If
reincarnation was accepted as a biological law and as a principle of reason and
never fideistic, because to believe implies reasoning in secure foundations of
understanding, beyond the concerning research (such as the ones accom-plished
by Doctor Hernani G. Andrade, in Brazil, Doctor Ian Stevenson in the USA,
Doctor H. Banerjee, in India) we would conclude that there is not “history
repeating itself”, but that we re-peat history through successive
reincarnations, in which the intellectual and moral learning hasn’t been
completed (or it has paused). This would change the current paradigms and would
lead us to a new society, more fair and fraternal.
Someone
has already said that the present humanity, stuck to utilitarianism, refuses to
grow up, remaining in the adolescent stage. No
doubt that the behavioral manifestations demonstrate such idea, it is
noticeable the “intellectual sedentariness”, in which everyone seeks for
pleasures in unbridled and immediate consumption.
However, optimism is a permanent state of soul that
generates joy of living, it is recognized that it rests in small as in great
things and causes: looking others
with compassionate eyes, recognizing the human as the most beautiful form of
divine representation which lies latent in all of us. But also in the simple
things: to observe nature, follow the development of a child, recognize the
miracle of life in a pregnancy process, follow the heartbeats of our own heart,
that keeps us alive, look at the waves that wind provokes in the waters of a
river, stretch out, read a good book, talk, smile, dedicating life to a worthy
cause…
Therefore, to live optimistically does not mean to
wait infinitely for the best, but to understand that we are agents of this
process for everything that surrounds us.
Living is for everyone, but to live well and well
living is for the wise who understood that the reincarnation opportunity is
unique. The ancient philosophers knew this. The current philosophers need to
relearn with those. And Spiritism assure us that, if today we are focused on
serious commitments, nothing prevents us to make of them the necessary means
for achieving our own happiness, which is to Live.
Sonia
Theodoro da Silva
Columnist, The Journal of Psychological Studies,
The Spiritist Psychological Society
(http://www.spiritistps.org/The-Journal-of-Psychological-Studies-29-Ed.-English.pdf)
