mink

HH will be addressing the Canadian Parliament tonight. We are without a state, but we're lucky to have networks in the political economies of the states we live in. His Highness the Aga Khan to Address Canadian Parliament  (AKDN) Aga Khan to address special joint session of parliament on Thursday, February 27  (CNW) Spiritual leader Aga Khan to address Parliament on Thursday  (Canada.com)

Today was hard. I always manage to convince myself that my city of birth can't be hard to live in - it's my city after all. I've been over being clamped for no reason by confused parking authorities and lost a whole day of work as a result. I've been misfined by the police themselves. I've been robbed. But today was just hard. I almost hit someone because they were crossing the road without looking, and ended up taking all the blame for a burn-mark the size of my thumb on his knee... and being called a white racist who wants to murder people on the road. Funny how, no matter how hard you try, the stranger in the midst of the public is out to fight you quite hard because that is how the world looks to him. Therefore, it's got to look the same for everyone, otherwise people just get downright shafted. 

It's difficult to control how others will steer their ambition. You only control what you drive. The challenge is navigating the path before you to the best of your advantage with as little obstruction to those around you. 

There's a bunch of works on investing that I've spent minimal time and attention on. But today I clicked on a post referred by a friend , and found some simple but fantastic words from Li Ka-Shing (who I only found out about through this post). Here is an extract: " Life can be designed. Career can be planned. Happiness can be prepared. You should start planning now. When you are poor, spend less time at home and more time outside. When you are rich, stay at home more and less outside. This is the art of living. When you are poor, spend money on others. When you’re rich, spend money on yourself. Many people are doing the opposite. " This puts a lot in perspective for me, compared to the other works I've seen. Thanks, LKS and NM!

Human life, among other things within it, is limited. Dreams may exist without boundaries, but in order to bring them to life, they must have constraints. These constraints must be proportional to those that constrain life itself. In making constraints, sacrifices are necessary and inevitable. Choosing which sacrifices to make might seem an open-ended task, but in reality it seems to make most sense to exclude any sacrifices that prevent the choice-maker from living a happier, longer and more prosperous life (if not, then the possibility to one day make less choices may become a worthy sacrifice and that is contradictory). 

Stories have been told throughout humanity. Sometimes they were told through cave paintings, and other times through paper documents created on Microsoft Word. Fact or fiction, they are stories, and are all ready with the same instruments. The situation in which they are read may change, but the principal of telling the story for another person, group or even generation to ready does not change. What, then, should be expected of the number of stories? Is it proportional to the human population? Does it depend on the ability of storage devices (from caves to disks) to stand the test of space and/or time? And can some stories last forever?