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WELCOME TO LUNA PAN'S NEVERLAND Hello again. As you might know, I’ve been reading original English books since the lockdown last year. Currently, I’m reading my 58th book, which is FOUR GREAT TRAGEDIES. Yes, from William Shakespeare! I can’t say I love all the books I’ve read. However, I’m inspired by a majority of them. I always learn something, more or less. But this book in particular, 12 RULES FOR LIFE, AN ANTEDOTE TO CHAOS, written by Jordan B. Peterson is one of a kind. That’s because I do feel I get wiser to some degree after reading it. Not all books can do that. In order to read this huge book, I’ve carried my backpack for weeks. It’s such a precious masterpiece, but I just can’t have it with me all the time. And I don’t have the habit of keeping all pictures on my phone either. That’s why I decided to collect all the words which have enlightened me here. Then, I can read the post any time I want. Additionally, I do hope these words would benefit you as well. Before I get started, I want to pay special tribute to my legendary friends K&K who gave this wonderful book to me last Christmas. Thanks a million. WELCOME TO LUNA PAN'S NEVERLAND 1. Every revolution produces a new order. Every death is, simultaneously, a metamorphosis. 2. Sometimes people are bullied because they can’t fight back... But just as often, people are bullied because they won’t fight back. 3. But standing up straight with your shoulders back is not something that is only physical, because you’re not only a body. You’re a spirit, so to speak—a phyche—as well. 4. So, attend carefully to your posture. Quit drooping and hunching around. Speak your mind. Put your desires forward, as if you had a right to them—at least the same right as others. Walk tall and gaze forthrightly ahead. Dare to be dangerous. 5. Little has changed. Women have been making men self-conscious since the beginning of time. They do this primarily by rejecting them—but they also do it by shaming them, if men do not take responsibility. Since women bear the primary burden of reproduction, it’s no wonder. 6. We deserve some respect. You deserve some respect. You are important to other people, as much as to yourself. You have some vital role to play in the unfolding destiny of the world. You are, therefore, morally obliged to take care of yourself. 7. You must determine where you are going, so that you can bargain for yourself, so that you don’t end up resentful, vengeful and cruel. You are to articulate your own principles, so that you can defend yourself against others’ taking inappropriate advantage of you, and so that you are secure and safe while you work and play. You must discipline yourself carefully. You must keep the promises you make to yourself, and reward yourself that you can trust and motivate yourself. You need to determine how to act toward yourself so that you are most likely to become and to stay a great person. It would be good to make the world a better place. 8. Make friends with people who want the best for you. 9. It is far more likely that a given individual has just decided to reject the path upward, because of its difficulty. Perhaps that should even be your default assumption, when faced with such a situation. That’s too harsh, you think. You might be right. Maybe that’s a step too far. But consider this: failure is easy to understand. No explanation for its existence is required. In the same manner, fear, hatred, addiction, promiscuity, betrayal and deception require no explanation. Vice is easy. Failure is easy, too. It’s easier not to shoulder a burden. It’s easier not to think, and not to do, and not to care. It’s easier to put off until tomorrow what needs to be done today, and drown the upcoming months and years in today’s cheap pleasures. 10. Michelangelo’s great perfect marble David cries out its observer: “You could be more than you are.” 11. Who cares if you are prime minister of Canada when someone else is the president of the United States? 12. To begin with, there’s not just one game at which to succeed or fail. There are many games and, more specifically, many good games—games that match your talents, involve you productively with other people, and sustain and even improve themselves across time. Lawyer is a good game. So is plumber, physician, carpenter, or schoolteacher. The world allows for many ways of Being. If you don’t succeed at one, you can try another. You can pick something better matched to your unique mix of strengths, weaknesses and situation. Furthermore, if changing games does not work, you can invent a new one. 13. Have you cleaned up your life? If the answer is no, here’s something to try: Start to stop doing what you know to be wrong. Start stopping today. Don’t waste time questioning how you know that what you’re doing is wrong, if you are certain that it is. Inopportune questioning can confuse, without enlightening, as well as deflecting you from action. You can know something is wrong or right without knowing why. Your entire Being can tell you something that you can neither explain nor articulate. Every person is too complex to know themselves completely, and we all contain wisdom that we cannot comprehend. 14. Aim up. Pay attention. Fix what you can fix. 15. Tell the truth—or at least, don’t lie. 16. Some reliance on tradition can help us establish our aims. It is reasonable to do what other people have always done, unless we have a very good reason not to. It is reasonable to become educated and work and find love and have a family. That is how culture maintains itself. But it is necessary to aim at your target, however traditional, with your eyes wide open. 17. Set your ambitions, even if you are uncertain about what they should be. The better ambitions have to do with the development of character and ability, rather than status and power. Status you can lose. You carry character with you wherever you go, and it allows you to prevail against adversity. 18. Maybe it wasn’t sex. Maybe every conversation between husband and wife had deteriorated into boring routine, as no shared adventure animated the couple. Maybe that deterioration was easier, moment by moment, day by day, than bearing the responsibility of keeping the relationship alive. Living things die, after all, without attention. Life is indistinguishable from effortful maintenance. No one finds a match so perfect that the need for continued attention and work vanished. In truth, what you need—what you deserve, after all—is someone exactly as imperfect as you. 19. Don’t hide baby monsters under the carpet. 20. Boys like competition, and they don’t like to obey, particularly when they are adolescents... Girls will, for example, play boys’ games, but boys are much more reluctant to play girls’ games. This is in part because it is admirable for a girl to win when competing with a boy. It is also OK for her to lose to a boy. For a boy to beat a girl, however, it is often not OK—and just as often, it is even less OK for him to lose. 21. Why do women want an employed partner and, preferably, one of higher status? In no small part, it’s because women become more vulnerable when they have children. They need someone competent to support mother and child when that becomes necessary. It’s a perfectly rational compensatory act, although it may also have a biological basis. Why would a woman who decides to take responsibility for one or more infants want an adult to look after as well? 22. A few years later, when I was having teenage trouble with my dad, my mom said, “If it was too good at home, you’d never leave.” 23. And a man should look after a woman and children—although that is not all he should do. But a woman should not look after a man, because she must look after children, and a man should not be a child. This means that he must not be dependent. This is one of the reasons that men have little patience for dependent men. 24. If they’re healthy, women don’t want boys. They want men. They want someone to contend with; someone to grapple with. If they’re tough, they want someone tougher. If they’re smart, they want someone smarter. They desire someone who brings to the table something they can’t already provide. This often makes it hard for tough, smart, attractive women to find mates: there just aren’t that many men around who can outclass them enough to be considered desirable. 25. But it’s at such point that you must decide whether you want to be right or you want to have peace. You must decide whether to insist upon the absolute correctness of your view, or to listen and negotiate. You don’t get peace by being right. You just get to be right, while your partner gets to be wrong—defeated and wrong. 26. I wish you all the best, and hope that you can wish the best for others. What will you write with your pen of light? I’m very lucky to find myself keen on writing since a really young age. I remember someone once asked Madeleine L’engle, the author of A WRINKLE IN TIME one question: “What is the best advice you have ever received about writing?” Her answer is pretty simple: “To just write.” Yes, to just write. I’ll keep writing with my pen of light. For all the stories I have to tell, and for all the emotions I have to share, even if I’d only have one or two readers. I'll see you again. WELCOME TO LUNA PAN'S NEVERLAND
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