Hela's Rules
- #1: Life. Live as if I could take you tomorrow. If
you weren’t going to live out the year, what would your priorities be? Live
that way at least part of every year.
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- #2: Happiness. For a human being to be happy every
day is not the proper state of affairs. Despair and pain are also sacred
states, or you don’t properly appreciate happiness. Whining malcontentment,
however, is never sacred.
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- #3: Waste. As in, Don’t. Use it up, wear it out, make
it do, or do without. To throw something away because it is ugly or imperfect is
waste. You too will be ugly someday, and perhaps someone who cannot afford the
best would be grateful for the imperfect. Give away and recycle everything you can. Throw away only what would be
rejected even by the desperate.
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- #4: Power. To have is riches; to be able to do
without is Power.
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- #5: Desires. Anything that you both strongly desire
and yet ambivalently resent, you are better off giving up entirely. Make
yourself contentedly at home with the fact that you will never have it. Once
you have done that, you will be able to have a clean relationship with it and
you might have a small chance of it coming as a gift unlooked-for.
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- #6: Needs. Humbly accept your needs and do what you
have to in order to fulfill them. Be willing to part with your desires, if
necessary. Hold no illusions about which are which.
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- #7: Illusions. They are never kind. They are never a
good thing. The sooner that they are ripped bleeding from your soul, the
better. You never need them to get by. You only think you do.
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- #8: Possessions. In the end, you own nothing. No
exceptions. And this is not necessarily a bad thing. See Rule #4.
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- #9: Healing. It hurts. That’s how you know it’s
working. Pain means that you’re still alive.
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- #10: Compassion. It is not the same thing as empathy.
It has nothing to do with your emotions. In fact, when you are doing it
properly, you will be putting them entirely aside.
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- #11: Judging. You will be judged not by how you
behave towards those you love and respect, but by how you behave towards those
you hate and hold in contempt.
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- #12: Eternity: All is impermanence. Nothing lasts
forever. No exceptions. Fortunately this applies to bad things as well.
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- #13: Rebirth: Nothing lasts forever, but if you wait
long enough, things and people tend to recur. The trick is recognizing them on
the next pass.
