Wednesday 26 June 2013

'You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if two drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.' So said Mahatma Gandhi. Back in his day, the seas were not quite as polluted as they have since become in some parts of the world. But even now, the vast majority of those oceans remain unaffected. Coming events will restore whatever faith you may have lately lost.When people say, 'Oh, I don't mind how things turn out. I'm easy-going and relaxed.' This isn't always true. It may be better heard as a statement of aspiration. They may be saying, 'I wish I could develop a more laissez-faire attitude. Or it may be that they feel socially awkward about expressing deep desire and determination, so they try to cover it up. 
Success involves refining the ability to distinguish between what someone is saying and what they really mean. Be sensitive.If your car keeps getting stuck in traffic jams, is that a reason to take it back to the store and trade it in for a new model? If someone keeps alerting you to the existence of very real issues and difficulties to which you might otherwise be oblivious, are you better off keeping the company of a person whose conversation is more cheerful? It is necessary now for you to be circumspect about the attribution of blame. 
Something very constructive can now be done about a problem - but only if you identify the true cause. People who are trying to sell us things are not our friends. If they act friendly it is because the more they gain our trust, the easier it will be for us to buy, or do, or agree to whatever they are proposing. So we should remember to be slightly wary of overly affable people and that if we have a need to persuade anyone of anything, we should make a special effort to be charming. Fulfilling the promise of a better future, now involves seizing a real opportunity and seeing through a somewhat staged presentation
Many people report more emotionally intense experiences. Some are swept away by stronger passions or more profound anxieties; others say they feel a greater affinity for and empathy with the ones they love most.
Does it have to be one thing or the other? Are the options mutually exclusive? Why are the rules so cut and dried? Have they really been made that way? Or is that how someone is choosing to interpret them? Don't you get a choice in how they are interpreted? Maybe you are making things harder than they need to be. How did it go? 'You just call out my name and you know, wherever I am, I'll come running...' I'm quoting it for you now, because you've got a friend. Not necessarily a new friend, nor even a friend without flaws and failings. But then, we've all got those, haven't we? Yet we also know, that in this woefully fickle world, loyalty is a rare and wonderful thing.
 You are about to see proof that you have support in an area of life where you had been feeling isolated.How easy it is to become tense and apprehensive. There is really no great skill or effort involved. Just consider a situation and then question it a little. As soon as you introduce an element of doubt, it begins to unravel like a sweater that has been pulled by a hanging thread. It doesn't matter how carefully and cleverly key ideas have been knitted together, they will start to unravel just the same. So what's the solution? Avoid challenging anything, ever?
 You have no option now, other than to embrace challenge and change and really must be careful not to raise unrealistic expectations, and this definitely will bring a change of emphasis to a key area of your world. You will rightly perceive this as an improvement. You will feel that things are getting better - which they will be. But you won't solve all your problems at a stroke. There will still be much work to do and several less-than-ideal situations to endure, for a while at least. Even so, the longer we live, the less we can be sure of. 
Just think about technology. We are surrounded by devices and machines that experts used to insist could never exist. Consider, for example, what your mobile phone is capable of! Social protocols have also changed. What was once okay is no longer okay. And vice versa. (Who would have thought that one day, world leaders would all take their ties off when they met each other?) Now, what are you currently seeing as impossible? Are you really right about this? When we put two and two together, what do we get? You learned how to do that sum at a very early age and the answer hasn't changed in the meantime. The same techniques work in the same way. 
You might waste a lot of time if, whenever a simple mathematical formula needed to be followed, you went right back to the drawing board and started all over again. So why, somewhere in your world now, is there a set of factors that somehow don't add up? Perhaps you've got more than you think of one thing and less of another.Never apologise, never explain.' This was once the rule of leaders and politicians. To say sorry was to show weakness. To articulate a set of detailed reasons for making a choice was to invite someone else to come up with an equally detailed set of counter-arguments. As all this might undermine the position of authority, it was generally felt better to rely on bluff and bluster. You can't be quite so dogmatic when dealing with the people around you now, but you can still ask for their trust if you feel sure of something.
Though they say that life has few certainties, there are many processes where the outcome is so reliable, that we can treat them as predictable. Without this, we would find it very hard to function. We make a lot of assumptions that turn out to be right. I am stressing this point before I issue a little warning, about 'automatic expectations'. In most areas of your world, it is absolutely appropriate for you to have these. But where you have now got a sneaking suspicion that something is wrong, don't ignore it. 

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