TABLE OF CONTENTS
500+ Words Essay on A Good Life Is One Inspired by Love and Guided by Knowledge
What gives the term ‘love’ so much gravity?
According to Bertrand Russell, love is what inspires a good life and it is the raison d’etre, the very purpose of life. Knowledge is the means, which makes for a good life. Both are necessary, one provides the drive and purpose, while the other provides the means for making life good and great.
By love, he means the universal love, the emotional content that makes a man human. By knowledge, what is actually meant is the wisdom that a man attains and uses it for the progress of humankind. Love without knowledge makes human no different from other species of living. Knowledge without love would make a human an emotionless logical machine-like android.
Love gets priority over knowledge, as it is more basic in nature; it is like a primordial instinct that is built in every living being. It exists within oneself, and does not require acquiring from any outside source.
What is the reason that knowledge is essential for us?
The distinctive quality and significance of love do not render knowledge inferior. Knowledge is the ultimate objective of humanity; this has been emphasized in ancient Hindu texts and Buddhist literature. Knowledge frees human beings from all kinds of bondage.
A robot does not need any inspiration. It operates on the command it is going to get. However, a person requires a driving force, an inspiration that leads him to the search for understanding. Love is the inspiration that drives a person to understanding, so that it can assist those he loves to profit.
Without the power of knowledge, man is helpless in doing anything that result in the betterment and progress of human society. Love is the check that also prevents a human’s tendency to prevent making anything that would be detrimental to the society. As the world has seen, those who harmed most of humanity were individuals with knowledge-derived strength; but they lacked the inspirational love within them.
People who have love within them will use understanding only for the good of humanity. That is what makes researchers different from dictators and anarchists. The latter had no love that could have motivated them.
How to go ahead with living the good life?
Good life is not something that cannot be achieved. It is within everyone’s grasp. Love is in everyone’s core, it may just need to be rekindled. Self-development is the result of self-knowledge. They can guide everyone to healthy lives together. The following might assist you apply them to your own lives and see the distinction it makes.
#1. Stop judging others all the time
Judgement of others is a constraint to loving others. When an individual begins to judge his relatives on what they have accomplished for him, his affection for them instantly diminishes. He may not understand what hardships they have encountered, the difficult voyage of life they may have passed through, how their experience has influenced their understanding and ideas. To be judged by others is to limit one’s gratitude and approval of others. This is the most powerful obstacle affection.
#2. Stop Finding Motives in Other’s Action
Often one finds hidden motives in other’s actions. Negative-minded people use all their productive time on these, which in most cases are imaginary. When people do anything, it is for themselves. The thought of conspiring against anyone else is the last thought in their mind. They are busy in grappling with their own problems and attempting walk ahead in their own journey.
#3. Accept People as they are
Everyone in this world is a unique individual with his own personality and thinking. A colleague might have a lot of nice characteristics, but a few that you hate. An enlightened person is one who does not force his own impressions of liking upon others.
He understands the fact that everyone has hundreds of characteristics. Learning how to recognise individuals as they are is an undertaking and a consequence of understanding and wisdom. It opens the doors of love inside and makes lives simpler and lovelier.
Love and Knowledge are both vital to a healthy existence. When one reaches the higher realms of spirituality, one realize how intertwined they are with each other. For the truly emancipated, both are the two sides of the same coin.
Soon after the heinous attack in New Zealand Mosque, another dreadful act took place in churches and hotels of Sri Lanka on 21st April 2019. This all were pre-planned brutal aims. Sri Lanka’s attack was not just a terrorist attack, but also rather a terrible warning to all other countries for the next attack to take place in the name of religion.
They only think of killing innocent people in the name of God who led them to land in heaven, but unfortunately, they are doing exactly the opposite that will surely lead. Now, a few days of religious issues have become an irresistible subject for each and every one of them.
The missile man of India Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, who was the brain behind many destructive missiles, quoted a verse of a famous Tamil poem in European Union, which says, “I am a world citizen and every human being is my own kith & kin”. This shows that he was a living example for the quote “A good life is one inspired by love & guided by knowledge”.
Even if he loved all human beings in the world, he did not step back from his duty of making destructive missiles to protect our nation. Neither love without knowledge, or knowledge without love can produce a good life. Love can be interpreted in many different ways.
However, the emotion with humanity, which makes the person selfless for the well being of his loved ones, is the true love and the inborn nature of human beings. However, love without knowledge can be a threat to everyone. Many terrorist attacks and mob lynching’s which our society has witnessed is a proof for this.
Many people who are misled by different ideologies without any knowledge has become a threat to the society. Their so-called love for those ideologies is the reason for many inhuman attacks we have seen.
Their lack of knowledge is the main reason for all these. On the other side, a lot of crimes take place using technologies and science. This shows us the face of knowledge without love.
India has always been an example to the world by the way we live. India has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance. When we use our knowledge to launch satellites on mars and moon, we also care for our neighbouring countries Bhutan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, etc, for their well being and help them in all possible ways for their development.
A balance of love and knowledge is what takes our country forward. An undeniable fact is that there are a lot of inhuman crimes happening in our nation where love without knowledge or knowledge without love has played major roles.
But at the same time, we witness selfless sacrifices of people like Mr. Anand, a great mathematician whose love for the teaching profession and knowledge has created wonders in the lives of many people by his program ‘‘super 30’’.
Many unsung heroes like him live in every part of our country who use their knowledge for the well being of others. People like them always remind us that our true nature and culture is a balance of love and knowledge.
Only the people who are inspired by love and guided by knowledge can be good leaders in the society. Mahatma Gandhi is an example for a real leader who was inspired by love and guided by knowledge. He taught the world the power of non-violence, love and knowledge.
Whenever there is an imbalance of love and knowledge in leaders that will lead to the destruction of others or the people who follow them. Many terrorist attacks in different parts of the world in the name of religions are examples for this.
All religions teach its followers to love and be kind to the fellow beings, but people who do not have real knowledge about their own religions become a threat to the world.
They not only destroy other people, but also lead to the defamation and destruction of their own ideologies. The New Zealand mosque attack, Sri Lankan church attack, Pulwama terror attack on CRPF jawans or the Bilkis Bano case, all were done in the name of different religions and ideologies but all these have the same face, a real imbalance of knowledge and love of their ideologies.
Confucius once said, “Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance”. It is when we realise the extent of our ignorance and move towards knowledge, the love will find meaning in our lives. Love and knowledge are thus inextricably bound together in man’s very nature and if we live according to our nature, they will lead us straight to our Source and Ultimate End.
If we do not follow this natural path of love and knowledge, we will only find emptiness and despair since our nature will never be fulfilled. Knowledge is love, light, and vision.
Trending Essay