The world -Charlie Chaplin

The world is a cruel place. It's each man for himself and the cops against all. But Charlie Chaplin films tell you to laugh. Life is reason enough
We all know this guy. This little fellow who cannot do anything right. Wherever he goes, he creates trouble. He can't keep a job because he never reaches on time. Of course, he gets delayed because he has to be with a poor blind girl, looking after her needs — but that does not count. He gets fired.
If it is a mechanical job in a factory, rest assured, he will be the one to have a nervous breakdown. If he were to get a job waiting at the tables, he will walk through the wrong door every time. As a singing waiter, he cannot remember his lines.
He is just a good-for-nothing tramp who can't do a thing right. But he has a special gift. He survives.
We all know that. The tramp that Charlie Chaplin created is a survivor. He never gives up. No matter how bad things get, he manages. And boy, do things get bad for him.
He is perpetually looking for a job —or money. Very often, he is looking for food (he doesn't think twice before stealing a hot dog from a baby), or he is looking for a dry place to sleep in. A roof over his head would be just great. If perchance he is well-fed (like when he is in prison), he is out to bum a smoke.
And then, he is forever hopeful of falling in love. Mostly, the girl he is in love with likes somebody else. But does that matter? Would that stop him from falling helplessly in love again? And, above all, he is looking for "a little dignity".

Too much has been said about Chaplin, the humanitarian. Too many words have been written about his speech at the end of The Great Dictator. They are wonderful words, necessary even at the time when the film was made. (Every time I hear "..look up, Hannah. The clouds are lifting. The sun is breaking through", I get goosebumps).
But that is not where the essential magic of Chaplin lay.
The magic, for me at least, is in his relentless optimism. He always carries a hope in his heart that a better world is round the corner; that the night is ending. And it is not just a notion — all of the tramp's actions are guided by this belief.
Does he have a reason to hope? The evidence says, no.
The world is a cruel place, where people kill each other for greed, where machines have taken away the last shred of dignity from the working man; where fascist dictators dance devilish steps with the balloon-like world.
And it is not just the world at large— even human beings are mean and self-centered. The rich only care about themselves (unless alcoholic stupor forces them to forget themselves) and the poor must fight each other for the little resources that remain. The horse-riding girl in the circus is terrified of her father who is mean and a bully. The society women in The Kid seem heartless even as they fight for what they think is correct. People do not talk to each other. There is no sense of community. Every human being is an isolated cell that must fend for itself. It is each man for himself and the cops against all.
The funny thing is that even the tramp doesn't care. In a continuous struggle for survival, where is the time to look out for others? That is what makes him so identifiable, so real. The fact that he is selfish —like the rest of us.
And yet, when a blind girl kisses his hand in gratitude, he gives her the last dollar he had kept for himself. When an unknown neighbor is kicked out of her home, he gives her shelter. At that moment, he is not thinking of the consequences. When a newborn baby is abandoned, he eventually learns to nurture and care. He does all this in spite of himself. As if, he is telling us that this is our innate nature. That, actually we are all good.
That he does this without a trace of sentimentality is what makes it really moving. That he does it with humor is what makes it heartbreaking.
He is the funniest man ever. I have never laughed louder or longer in any other film. His scripts are tight, the gags are superb, the execution is perfect, his body is an incredible instrument of perfection. He dances better than anyone else, he plays the violin, he skates, he skips rope, he boxes.
He does all of that and life pushes him down again and again. Every time, he jumps right back up, ready to punch away the adversities in store for him. He never complains —in fact, he never lets anyone complain.
Because he has an immense faith in life. "Look at the tree that becomes a tree, a rock that becomes a rock, the same energy flows in you. Life is reason enough.."
It's not that life is beautiful. No, that would be sentimental. Life is "by no means beautiful. It is vile, wicked, awful… But it is wonderful" (Limelight).
That is the key then to the joy that Chaplin movies give you. It is beyond the laughter, it is beyond the (often failed) love stories; beyond the social commentary that his films made. It is his faith in life which is uplifting. The dance will go on, spring will be back, dawn is breaking.
Life does not care for anybody, it is neither good nor bad. It is beyond that — in itself it is wonderful. And we would be foolish not to see that. We would be foolish not to realize that even suffering and pain are as much gifts as joy — because it means that we are alive.
Just as death is inevitable, so is life. And we must celebrate that. That is happiness.
The message is clear. "Sing! Never mind the words..."

No competition.

While professional soccer is still struggling to find a firm foothold in the United States, in the 1970s the North American Soccer League marked the brave first attempt to introduce the game to American sports fans.

 While most teams had only limited success at best, one did manage to break through to genuine mainstream popularity - the New York Cosmos.
It was the brainchild of Steve Ross, a passionate soccer fan who was also a major executive at Warner Communications.

Max Ross told his son Steve: "In life there are those who work all day, those who dream all day, and those who spend an hour dreaming before setting to work to fulfil those dreams. Go into the third category because there's virtually no competition".

Source: "Once In A Lifetime - The Extraordinary Story Of The New York Cosmos" by Gavin Newsham

Greed.

Once day, having learned that the King of Fez was hunting lions in the neighborhood, they decided to invite him and his court, and killed a number of sheep in his honors.

The sovereign had dinner and went to bed. Wishing to show their generosity, they placed a huge goatskin bottle before his door and agreed to fill it up with milk for the royal breakfast.

The villagers all had to milk their goats and then each of them had to tip his bucket into the container. Given its great size, each of them said to himself that he might just as well dilute his milk with a good quantity of water without anyone noticing.

To the extent that, in the morning, such a thin liquid was poured out for the king and his court that it had no taste than the taste of meanness and greed.

Source: "Leo The African" by Amin Maalouf

Plane crash survivor.

Juliane Koepcke was the daughter of two famous Zoologists who ran a research station in the

 Amazonian Jungles of Peru.

 She was on a flight with her mother going from Lima, Peru to Pucallpa, Peru in the Amazon jungle.

The flight would take less than an hour. They were flying to spend Christmas with Juliane’s father.

The flight went fine until halfway through it. A lightning bolt hit a fuel tank and ripped the right wing off.

Presents were flying around the cabin and then Juliane was sucked out of the airplane as it spiraled to the ground.

She was still attached to a row of chairs. She fell two miles before she landed in the jungle among thick foliage. She knew about the Amazon and how to survive, because her father had taught her. She had a broken collarbone and one eye was swollen shut.

She had major lacerations on her arms and legs. She found a creek and began walking through it to find a stream that would lead her to a river and civilization. She survived crocodiles, piranhas, and devils rays.

She walked for 10 days before she found a boat and a hut. She was starving and had maggots infesting her wounds. She stayed in the hut for the night and the next day Peruvian lumberjacks found her and brought her to a nearby town.

2 frog.

This is the story of two frogs. One frog was fat and the other skinny. One day, while searching for food, they inadvertently jumped into a vat of milk. 

They couldn't get out, as the sides were too slippery, so they were just swimming around.

The fat frog said to the skinny frog, "Brother frog, there's no use paddling any longer. We're just 
going to drown, so we might as well give up." 

The skinny frog replied, "Hold on brother, keep paddling. Somebody will get us out." And they continued paddling for hours.

After a while, the fat frog said, "Brother frog, there's no use. I'm becoming very tired now. I'm just going to stop paddling and drown. It's Sunday and nobody's working. We're doomed. There's no possible way out of here." But the skinny frog said, "Keep trying. Keep paddling. Something will happen, keep paddling." Another couple of hours passed.

The fat frog said, "I can't go on any longer. There's no sense in doing it because we're going to drown anyway. What's the use?" And the fat frog stopped. He gave up. And he drowned in the milk. But the skinny frog kept on paddling.

Ten minutes later, the skinny frog felt something solid beneath his feet. He had churned the milk into butter and he hopped out of the vat. 

Author-Melissa D Zartman 

“If you are going through hell, keep going “- Winston Churchill.

Relationship.

It was the coldest winter ever. Many animals died because of the cold. 

The hedgehogs, realizing the situation, decided to group together to keep warm.

This way they covered and protected themselves; but the quills of each one wounded their closest companions. 

After a while, they decided to distance themselves one from the other and they began to die, alone and frozen. 
So they had to make a choice: either accept the quills of their companions or disappear from the Earth. 

Wisely, they decided to go back to being together. 

They learned to live with the little wounds caused by the close relationship with their companions in order to receive the heat that came from the others.

This way they were able to survive. 

The best relationship is not the one that brings together perfect people, but when each individual 
learns to live with the imperfections of others and can admire the other person's good qualities.

“Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike.”  -J.K.Rowling.