Alain de Botton’s ‘list for life’
1. Resilience: Keeping going even when things are looking dark.
2. Empathy: The capacity to connect imaginatively with the sufferings and unique experiences of another person.
3.Patience: We should grow calmer and more forgiving by being more realistic about how things
actually happen.
4. Sacrifice: We won’t ever manage to raise a family, love someone else or save the planet if
we don’t keep up with the art of sacrifice.
5. Politeness: Politeness is closely linked to tolerance, -the capacity to live alongside
people whom one will never agree with, but at the same time, cannot avoid.
6. Humour: Like anger, humour springs from disappointment, but it is disappointment optimally
channelled.
7. Self-awareness: To know oneself is to try not to blame others for one’s troubles and moods;
to have a sense of what’s going on inside oneself, and what actually belongs to the world.
8. Forgiveness: It’s recognising that living with others is not possible without excusing
errors.
9. Hope: Pessimism is not necessarily deep, nor optimism shallow.
10. Confidence: Confidence is not arrogance – rather, it is based on a constant awareness of
how short life is and how little we will ultimately lose from risking everything.
http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life/the-10-commandments-for-atheists-20130205-2dw83.html