Loizos G. Loizou, Head of Cyprus International Action Plan for Children with Cancer at ELPIDA Foundation for Children with Cancer, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“My dear friends,
I still remember the first research I did in my life.
It was 1968, the last year of elementary school. I was 12 years old at the time.
The Principal of our school, the Primary School of Prodromos in Larnaca, the late Andreas Papadopoulos, had asked all the students of the sixth grade to prepare an assignment, with the promise that the best one would be awarded.
I thought then that Cypriot proverbs – which already fascinated me from a young age with their wisdom and the way in which, with a few words, they condensed deep meanings – were an excellent subject to explore.
So, I took a notebook and a pencil and started writing down proverbs.
My source? Every house in the neighborhood, every store I knew, every person I met and could ask.
I collected too many. I learned so much.
The prize came – but the real profit was elsewhere.
I deeply believe that this experience was decisive for the later course of my life.
And to this day, every time I face a difficult or special situation, a Cypriot proverb comes to my mind like lightning – so clever and always timely – which in a few words corresponds exactly to what I am experiencing and offers me immediately, almost spontaneously, a unique wisdom on how to deal with it.
I’m now thinking of a simple, but extremely timely example of our current training of the mind – or, better, of the continuous cultivation of the basic values of life:
‘Other words and good’ and
‘The many words in the flesh’.
Stop for a moment and consider how many great people, throughout history and today, from the great philosophers to modern thinkers, from academics to experts of our time, analyze and formulate with extensive and often elaborate texts exactly the same message.
And yet, popular wisdom has already rendered it in two simple phrases.
In closing, let’s keep something essential:
Every word, every concept we express needs to be carefully weighed, with the aim of offering real value to our fellow human beings, but also to ourselves.
Not just talking for the sake of talking. Not because we are in a hurry to answer instead of listening.
Let’s learn to listen carefully, to reflect on the message we are receiving and, only then, to humbly express our own point of view.
With the awareness that we cannot know everything and that it is not possible to always be right.”
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