| José Mujica | |
|---|---|
 | |
| 40th President of Uruguay | |
| In office 1 March 2010 – 1 March 2015 |
" To live in accordance with how one thinks... to talk yo the man you carry inside. It's the companion we carry to our grave. Be yourself and don't try to impose your criteria on to others."
I worked the fields, as a farmer making a living, in the first part of my life. Then I dedicated myself to the struggle for change, to improve life in my society. And now i am the president. And tomorrow like everyone, I will just be a pile of worms and disappear.
I had many setbacks, many injuries, some years in prison. Anyway. The routine for anyone setting out to change the world.
Miraculously I am still here. And above all, I love life. I hope to present myself for the final journey like someone who goes into a bar and says to the bar tender, "This round is on me!"
I stand out because my ways and values of life reflects those of the society to which I am honored to belong. And I cling to them. Being the President doesn't matter! I have thought allot about all that. I spent almost ten years in solitary, in a hole. Plenty of time to think...I spent 7 years without one book. They left me time to think. And this is what I discovered. Either you are happy with very little, free of all that extra luggage because you have happiness inside, or you don't get anywhere. I am not advocating poverty. I am advocating sobriety. But since we have invented a consumer society, the economy must constantly grow. If it fails to increase it is a tragedy. We have invented a mountain of superfluous needs. Shopping for new, discarding the old... That's a waste of our lives...And it is pitiful to waste one's life and freedom that way!
What I do recommend is that we stop wasting resources on useless things, on luxurious houses that requires six servants to maintain. What good is all that? None of that is necessary. We can live much more modestly.
We can spend our resources on things that are really important to everyone. It is not the lack of resources. It is the lack of governance. Governments are preoccupied with winning the next election, with who is going to be the boss. We fight for power and we forget people and world issues. The crisis is not environmental. It is political. Our civilization has reached a phase where we need a planetary consensus and we are looking away from it. We are blinded by chauvinism and the thirst for domination, especially the most powerful countries. They should be setting an example. It is shameful that for 25 years since the Kyoto accords we are still dragging our feet to take basic measures. It is shameful!
Man may very well be the only animal capable of self destruction. This is the dilemma facing us. I hope i am wrong. Human nature is constructed in such a way, that you end up learning much more from suffering than from life of ease. This does not mean that i recommend a quest for suffering or anything like that. But this is what I want. To make people understand; you can always pick yourself up again. It is always worth it starting from zero again, once or a thousand times, as long as you are still alive. That's the biggest lesson in life. In other words you are not defeated until you give up the fight. You give up the fight by giving up the dream. Fighting, dreaming, being down on the ground, confronting reality, that's what gives meaning to existence, to the lives we lead. You can't live life when you nurse a grudge. And you can't live going in circles. The grief I have known in life will never be healed. No one can take it back. You have to learn to pack up your scars and keep going headed for the future. If i spend my time ;licking my wounds I will never move ahead , I see life as the road that lies ahead. What counts is tomorrow. I have been told, I have been warned, it's an old saying, you must remember the past or be condemned to repeat it. I know how humans are. The only animal who stubs his toes twenty times on the same pebble. Each generation learns from its experiences, not from others. I do not idealize humanity. What could one learn from someone else's experience? We learn from what we go through ourselves!
Anyway that's my vision of life! I don't any scores to settle.
HUMAN -Interview on You Tube.
José Alberto "Pepe" Mujica Cordano (Spanish pronunciation: [xoˈse muˈxika]; born 20 May 1935) is a Uruguayan politician who was the 40th President of Uruguay between 2010 and 2015. A former urban guerrilla fighter with the Tupamaros, he was imprisoned for 13 years during the military dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s. A member of the Broad Front coalition of left-wing parties, Mujica was Minister of Livestock, Agriculture, and Fisheries from 2005 to 2008 and a Senator afterwards. As the candidate of the Broad Front, he won the 2009 presidential election and took office as President on 1 March 2010.
He has been described as "the world's 'humblest' president" due to his austere lifestyle and his donation of around 90 percent of his $12,000 (£11,760) monthly salary to charities that benefit poor people and small entrepreneurs.[1][2]
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