The Virtue of Self-Limitation

  • 7.06.2023

Now we need to talk more about the beauty of the little. Therefore we can exit the evil circle of creating needs and products without borders. In this way, we can get rid of this barbaric invasion, this disease of dissatisfaction, which has turned our souls into a wasteland. Instead of selfishness that only thinks of its own interests, we can place a moral of solidarity and help. Instead of a consumption economy, we can create an economy of modesty, and instead of a customer, we can revive a person. ’It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor’ said Seneca. Psychological poverty is the illness of the modern man who does not know how to be contented.

If we do not want to be buried alive at the bottom of the objects, if we do not want to take our place in the ‘cemetery of the living’, we must back down. To resurrect the human purpose, to make sovereign the commandment of the spiritual one’s rule, let us not allow what we have got to have us. The one who conquers oneself conquers the world. True satisfaction is to not fall under the yoke of desire and seek immediate satisfaction but resist the desire. The one who is in welfare is not the one who does overcome his/her desires and impulses, but the one who raises prosperity and goodness and knows how to live for someone else. Since the day we lost the supreme meaning of life, the moral and religious frameworks, we have been looking for comfort in acquiring, accumulating, and reproducing objects. We have to learn to limit ourselves. The world is our trust, our bodies are our trust. Let all touch the earth with compassion, without wasting resources. Let’s look after the right of every living being, tree, insect. ‘While there is too much wealthiness would not go away the heartsickness’ says the great Yunus (Yunus the Dervish), and ‘who troubles one head with the world has got a world of trouble’ he says. Let our concern does not become the world but beyond it. Let our problems be the problems of other people, the oppressed, and the victims. Modesty is a transition from me to us. If we do not want to be bought and sold by evil, let us take a stand with a clean heart against this barbaric invasion that surrounds us.