Chapter IV "Date La Buena Vida"

As I've written in my previous post, we don't have to forget that orders, habits and whims are just one aspect of the complicated art of taking decisions...
In fact if we decide to make all our decisions giving too much importance to these influences, I would say that we are not going in the right direction, at least if we want to live a good life...
The question here is to being able to distinguish between what someone else wants me to do (orders, customs and so on) and what I actually want... and the only way of knowing what we actually want is to take some time to think about it within ourselves... The only one that can tell you what you really want to do is yourself...
However, we don't have to get confused with "what I actually want" and "the first thing that come into my mind" since we tend to find ourselves giving too much importance to something that does not really deserve it and we end up realising that what we really wanted was not what we have chosen...
So, going back to what Savater says about "giving yourself a Good Life" (Date La Buena Vida) I have to say that he points out something that I find really interesting; he says that the secret of giving yourself a Good Life is to give yourself a Good Human Life... What does it mean? Well I believe that a Good Human Life is one in which we are not alone and we can easily find us exchanging, interacting, sharing and enjoying what we are... Human Beings... And all this can be realised only if we are aware of what we really want and not only if it is good for us but also if it is good for others too, or at least if it does not go against another human being and against the Good Human Life that we want to live...
Finally, there is one thing that I want to add... I really love what Savater says about our Cultural reality and the huge importance that it has in all this issue of having a Good Human Life... There is no humanity without a cultural learning, and there is no cultural learning without the Language... How Nice!!! And at the same time how shocking it is to realise that we are such an important link in this chain! We are Teachers of English (or at least we are doing our best to become teachers)... we are Teachers of a Language! So we don't have to forget that we are a key part in the act of building the cultural learning... and from now on... we will always remember and bare in mind that all the decisions that we take are crucial not only for being a Good Human Being or for building our Good Human Life but also for showing our students that we are all part of this cultural world and as a part of it we all have something to do and something to give...