A Man's Poverty Is Never Unhappy
Try to get to know yourself better in trying to endure the fulfillment of a dream, by silencing the suffering assumed away from the unleashed world.
The day his grandfather had kicked him out he had been a child; now he was a full-grown man. He could feel it. Poverty – we say it again – had taken them. The poverty of youth, when it reaches a threshold, has the merit of driving the will to battle and the soul to high aspirations. Poverty robs material life and shows it in all its ugliness, giving boundless impulses to the ideal life. A rich young man has dozens of brilliant or gross amusements: horse racing, hunting, dogs, tobacco, gambling, feasting, and the like; all occupations to the detriment of the great and tender impulses of the soul.
The poor young man toils for bread and eats sparingly; after he has eaten, all he has to do is dream. He goes to free shows left by God, he looks at the sky, he looks at space, the stars, the flowers, the children, the humanity in the middle of which he suffers, the creation in which his being also shines. He looks at humanity so much that he sees the soul, he looks at creation so much that he sees God. He dreams and feels great. He dreams further and feels good. It goes from the selfishness of the suffering man to the pity for others of the thinking man.
A wonderful feeling blossoms in him; self-forgetfulness and love for all others. Thinking of the innumerable joys which nature gives, divides them, dissipates them to open souls, and refuses them to closed souls, he begins to weep, rich in thoughts, rich in money. As light enters his soul, hatred leaves his heart. By the way, is he miserable? Not. The poverty of a young man is never unhappy. Every young boy, no matter how poor, will always be envied by an old king, for his health, strength, his brisk gait, his bright eyes, his hot blood, his black hair, his tender cheeks, his rose lips, his white teeth and his fresh breath.*
Can you test the maturity of your reaction to life events so that proof of your worth is valid in one direction only – from general to specific?
What is restrictive in the intra-human realm is sometimes presented to us as a form of renunciation of the “altered” past and as a form of projecting a “fresh” future, related to those life experiences that transform you into someone else. Starting with poverty, which can be a virtue or a weakness, could be signaled (in a multitude of existential situations) and the emergence of a new, higher-level fighting hero who is not affected by the complex called “Low self-esteem”. He is the fresh future, not the fermented past.
The status of the “New Man” becomes perfectly explicable if we take into account his inclination to dream, to analyze subtle states of mind, extracted from the pleasant moments spent in the middle of nature, to see life in an optimistic way. Basically, everything an unforgettable story needs. The New Man is a lover of nature, not a slave to material things, in that he shows his willingness to live without any pretense of originality and notoriety, but embodying the idea of a hero who has in him a flame meant to also contaminate others with his bravery. Either from the ability to endure his own bondage, which he painfully observes, or from a revolt against what he experienced intensely.
The light of all his knowledge and wisdom is like a poem: it is born more of a deep sadness than of happiness.
Poverty and the soul are amplified by man’s struggle with himself, for the glory of God, for the high aspirations of honor, duty, justice, which make the experiences of life not bring him down, but bring him to a high level of spirituality. True spirituality means letting the experiences of life make you aware of the significance of approaching God through the struggle with yourself, so that by transforming pain into strength and wisdom, you can find the meaning of this world.
Here is the definition of Enlightenment: to strengthen yourself in a suffering that you can endure, gradually, thoughtfully, usefully, and thus to know yourself better in the light of God. Don’t try to hide the harsh reality with unreal comfort. You are not tougher or brighter if you manifest yourself in the unreal, only in the world of dreams, but it is good to dream that you are someone else, “the man”, the exponent of a high spirituality, if you want to strengthen yourself in the reality of God.
Try to know yourself better in trying to endure the fulfillment of a dream through the suffering of living alone for a while, only in this way you will develop certain qualities such as humbleness, patience or humility. You must go through the fire of suffering and doubt, in a grip of iron wills, if you want to know God and if you yourself want to become an Enlightened.
The proof of your value can be valid in one direction (from general to specific) – when you sacrifice the treasures of this world for the salvation of the soul approached from the perspective of a spirituality that seeks the essence of things, not their outward form.
The Poverty Of A Young Man Is Never Unhappy if we consider the story behind his subsequent victory, in a continuous relationship with God. Such a man fully understands the purpose and causes of his success in life only if he relates to the spiritual part of his nature, not to the material part of the world.
And here, I would add what a poet of the great existential anxieties confessed to me last night, because the words of a chosen mind are always like a breath of fresh air in the midst of so many deceptive currents:
“Nicu, my dear friend. A young man’s poverty has no hope of being unhappy. For him, life is sometimes a series of losses from too much enthusiasm, sometimes a series of accumulations if he stands on his own two feet. Losses sometimes depend on it, and sometimes it cannot be avoided. Sometimes it’s like a shipwrecked man on the shore, but scattering where he has, then he gives what he has. He always feels happy because the bonds of the soul cannot be calculated in percentages. Nothing is inaccessible to the hopes of his soul, he being full of dreams that cannot be broken even by nightfall. His mind is ready for the decisions he makes in the morning with his eyes wide open.”
* Note: Victor Hugo - The Miserables, State Literature Publishing House for Literature and Art, 1960.
