DO NOT WEEP; DO NOT WAX INDIGNANT. UNDERSTAND. Baruch Spinoza

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It was just another Coronavirus Sunday between the solitary walls of my home. Although after several months of isolation I was still feeling able to face what was going on, for some reason on that particular Sunday the idea of spending another day among my thoughts and memories became a little too hard to accept. Sages crave for the loneliness of the desert to face their lives and their visions and understand them; unfortunately, I am not a sage and the lack of social activities makes my days too long and too desolate. Social isolation leaves me alone with the painful events of my life, and when my aloneness lasts too long, I find it difficult to understand the meaning of existence. Despite my reluctance to face another day with myself, I decided to make the best of it and looked for a book that would help me use the time wisely; I decided to use the time to clarify some of my unfinished businesses. It was then that I suddenly remembered Baruch Spinoza, that magnificent philosopher rejected by his Jewish Elders for having understood that divinity is not a Being from another world but the logic order of Nature.  Spinoza said that all phenomena, including human choices and actions, respond to an internal order of cause and effect. He added that Nature processes occur by necessity and none of them could have occurred differently. In other words, it is what it is, and if we wish to avoid hating others or living in desperation, we need to accept what is. In his life Spinoza lived through very difficult situations to the point of almost being stabbed to death by a religious fanatic. However, being a brilliant mind, he reached the conclusion that it is useless to argue with the flow of events. Much wiser it is to understand that everything that happens in life has a cause, and the only thing we can do is to accept the fact that what we are facing is the effect of such a cause. Although most of the time we ignore what the causes of our suffering are, acceptance is an imperative. After closing the book on Spinoza, I decided that the best thing for me to do was to forget about my unfinished businesses and have a nice glass of wine on the balcony.