Friday 29 June 2018

As always, the choice is entirely yours....



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Our needs make us vulnerable....

...Our desires undermine our ability to be objective, independent or even authoritative. If we could only care a little less, we could probably accomplish a lot more. The trouble is, we like what we like. We know what we fancy and we are never easily persuaded to change. Whether these are honourable or despicable is neither here nor there. 



Firstly, it is not for us (or anyone else) to judge. Secondly, whether our motives are fiendish or angelic, they compromise us all the same.


Change will never happen when people lack the intelligence, ability and the courage 
to see themselves for what they are.




Sometimes we have to go....

.... right round the world before we recognise what's in our backyard. That's not because we are blind or ignorant, it is because we are learning. Appreciation is everything. Understanding is a precious commodity that has to be earned. 





You can't say, 'I found out the hard way' - for you do not ever know that there was an easy way. You found out what you needed to know. That's all that matters. Look forward with faith, not back with doubt.










Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.



Thursday 28 June 2018

Keep watching....







The finest things are not....

....necessarily the most expensive. People pay a lot of money for brand names and reputations. In the process, they often overlook alternatives that are actually of a higher quality. Champagne, for example, is a region of France that actually produces a lot of unexceptional wine. Some wonderful stuff comes from there, too, of course, but... well, you see my point. 


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Be careful not to get taken in by appearances. Don't make assumptions. Don't accept empty reassurances, just because they are being made in a seductively familiar tone of voice. Use initiative. Dare to be different. 


We are twice armed if we fight with faith    (Plato)




Minds were made for changing....

....The only people who form an opinion and then maintain it for the rest of their lives without ever questioning it again, are bigots or idiots. (Yep, know a few of them.)  Strangely, though, we often feel a little ashamed about confessing that we have come to see a situation differently. 
We should, though, feel proud that we have developed enough wisdom to outgrow a previous position. 

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Although, if we are truly wise, we will not be proud, just quietly humble! 



A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.  (Thomas Carlyle)

Tuesday 26 June 2018

We don't win arguments by....

...shouting the loudest, or just by being doggedly petulant. We win by being wise, by standing back, holding back, thinking carefully and choosing our words well. If we really want to win, we transcend our fear of losing. We give way when we can and seek compromise rather than conflict.


Hollow victories are easily attainable. Meaningful agreements, though, while they may be much more difficult to arrive at, will always prove infinitely more rewarding.





If you don't want a tail of a monkey to touch you 
then don't attend the monkey dance.      (African Proverb)

What is it that all of us know?....


.....Actions always speak louder


Monday 25 June 2018

Far be it for me....

.....ask an easy question.  So, who invented you? Did some great cosmic designer sit at a work bench, late into the evening, cooking up smart schemes until they eventually found a formula that produced your unique personality? How do you think they felt when they'd finished? They must have been pleased. 



Except, of course, that they didn't ever finish because you aren't finished. We are all works in progress. We are developing and evolving, even as I type this. And for all we know many of us could be making spectacular progress.




Only two ways to live life. One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as though everything is a miracle.
(Albert Einstein)

Sunday 24 June 2018

The world is full of people....

....who feel that they have something to prove. People who just are not comfortable in their own skin.  It is hard, when you find yourself in such an environment, not to let it influence you. If, though, you set out to make a point or force an issue, you may well create unnecessary tension. You don't need to prove anything to anyone. Nor do you need to judge your progress by your ability to make material gains. (Well, you can, but you can't get any more shallow than those who do solely that.)






It's our ability to inspire and uplift others that matters, not our ability to outdo them.










What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, 
but what is woven into the lives of others.

Please allow me to think back....

....to something I was exceptional at.  Horse racing - backing those that didn't win used to be my forte.  Had it down to a fine art. 
Anyway, think of two horses which have run neck-and-neck to a photo finish where one is seen to have beaten the other by a nose. Is that really the way of the world? We can have only one winner? Actually, such a belief system is for losers! Real winners, surely, would have come up, long ago, with a more refined, sensitive and intelligent way of evaluating success or failure.






Isn't the competitive culture terribly antediluvian? Don't go the way of the dinosaurs - uphold a value system based on something smarter than silly numbers.













You can stand tall without standing on someone.  You can be a victor without having victims.    (Harriet Woods)


Saturday 23 June 2018

The next chapter or.....?



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None of us....

....is entirely without shame or blame. We all have skeletons of some sort in our closets. We are not obliged to take these out and wave them around, but every so often, we do need to take a private look at whatever it is we are hoping the world will look away from. 




If we don't, we may start to tie ourselves up in a web of self-deception or develop psychological 'blind spots' that lead us to repeat old mistakes.


The time is always right to do what is right.    (Martin Luther King Jr)


So, decide wisely and compassionately.....



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Friday 22 June 2018

The meaning of life....


.....Well, one of them -



Often we have to take chances....






Some people will say....

....or do almost anything if they think that it will gain them more money, more love or more respect. It's all rather sad, to say nothing of counterproductive. Money earned through insincere action is soon wasted on unnecessarily indulgence. Love attained through a false promise is soon lost. Recognition given to an empty gesture is rapidly replaced by criticism.






If there is ever pressure on you to lower a standard or to compromise an important principle, the apparent reward is probably not really worth having.















We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.  (Martin Luther King)


If memory serves me correctly....

....the first set of traffic lights in the UK were outside the Houses of Parliament.  Now, many road junctions are governed by them. When they turn red, cars must stop. When they are green, they must go. Every so often, those lights fail, motorists are left to make their own decisions and the traffic invariably flows much faster. (Well, in many places they do.)
Those lights are not intelligent, they do not see what is coming or going, they just give out arbitrary instructions on the basis of a timer. Yet we follow their orders without question. Out on the road that is sensible.





But the thing is, in your life are you sticking to a questionable rule? 










Loyalty to a petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.   (Mark Twain)





Monday 18 June 2018

Are you standing on....

....the shoreline of surrender, expecting to be overwhelmed by a wave of inevitability? Are you resigned to a future full of compromise and repetition? Then wade further out. Fashion a board from the fabric of faith and prepare to surf on the tide of serendipity. Build a boat of hope and start sailing the sea of possibility. 




Don't just sit there telling yourself there's nothing you can do - reach for the most obvious opportunity that you have and stop worrying about the drawbacks.



If this was the last day of your life, would you spend it the way you’re spending today?



Any fool can go through life....

....just doing what they've always done. Avoid confrontation, shy away from challenge, keep change at bay, stick with the tried and tested, stay in the comfort zone, retreat into old habits and patterns... What's difficult about any of that? 



We didn't come here, to this planet, to wallow in the mud of familiarity. We came here to grow, to learn, to go beyond our boundaries and fill our lives with magic. 


Once you label me, you negate me.  (Soren Kierkegaard)

Tuesday 12 June 2018

It is said that....

....every genius is also a bit of an idiot. If they are, and I suspect that this is true, does every idiot have the potential to be a genius? Instinctively, we want to answer 'no' to a question like that. Surely this is not a law that applies equally, either way round. Yet, as Samuel Beckett once said, 'Any fool can turn a blind eye but who knows what the ostrich sees in the sand.'

  

We must always be very careful before we start judging the wisdom, or otherwise, of others. We should be even more circumspect before making such assessments of ourselves.



We are never more discontented with others than when 
we are discontented with ourselves.      (Henri-Frederic Amiel)

Convention in polite society....

....is that we don't tell each other our troubles. We may say, 'How are you?' But the expected answer is simply, 'Fine thanks, and you?' It is a social formality. It is not intended to give rise to a long list of complaints.


These days, we don't uphold this protocol so much. We whinge too easily. We are not so shy to share our frustrations. In the process, we sometimes give them more currency and significance than they truly deserve.





Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'   
(Martin Luther King, Jr).
  






So, go and create....






Monday 11 June 2018

Here's somethiing which none of us....

....can deny - We all begin life as babies. But we do not all end it as elderly people! (Well, I'm guessing that nobody's denying it.)  Even if we live to a ripe age, we can stay young at heart. By kicking complaint and criticism into the long grass in favour of tolerance and appreciation, we can avoid growing sour, stroppy and set in our ways. This in turn will keep us looking and feeling fresh and attractive.


Foster your most childlike qualities and you'll easily cope with any potentially draining difficulty. Resentment will make matters worse. Innocent trust will make them better.


The most important trip you may take in life is meeting people halfway.       (Henry Boye)




A difficult starting point....

.....but maybe the best one - 



Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, 
and do it with no thought of any reward. 




Your life will never be the same again. 
(Og Mandino)


Saturday 9 June 2018

I would not be able...

....to sleep tonight if I leave you feeling deprived, so let's have a 'they say....' moment.
Don't push your luck. That's what they say. But are they are right? (Well, if 'they' are, I wish they'd told me 30 or so years ago.)   A gentle push can create momentum where none might otherwise have developed. It is possible to push your luck too far, but there is a greater risk in not pushing it far enough.



Ideally, though, you don't want to push your luck, you want to put yourself into a position in which your luck can push you. You want to be open, flexible and ready to roll with an opportunity if or when it arises.



If a window of opportunity appears, don't pull down the shade.

If we're truly honest....

.....we wouldn't want to publicly go into depth about the mistakes we've made in the past and/or any embarrassing situations we got into. We would most likely want to see and feel discretion and sympathy. 


So let's push to one side all the aspects of the past that it might be more comfortable to forget and greet this new era with enthusiasm. The future is an open book.  Who's to say it won't make for a good read.  After all, it is something we create, it's not something we inherit.




The only thing any of us can be really sure of is that if we do what we've always done, 
we'll get what we've always got.

We're often told....

....that the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over again whilst expecting a different result. But how can we trust people who say this? We don't know how sane, or otherwise, they are.
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Sometimes, when we persistently repeat an exercise, we improve our ability to perform it - and then we get a very different result indeed.



He who sows courtesy reaps friendship.     (Saint Basil)

Thursday 7 June 2018

We always want things....

 ....the way we think they should be. When our plans go awry, we feel let down. We have ideas about what's appropriate, beliefs about what's desirable, expectations about what's feasible. We can't help this. It's the way we are made. We are, though, also made with a little 'switch' in the back of our minds. We can train ourselves to turn off, or at least tone down, certain thought processes. 



Like a valve grown stiff from years of sitting behind a cupboard, never being used, this inner facility is not always easy to access. But if you now want to change the way you look at life, you can. And then it will prove easy to alter life itself!



Hope is like the sun which, as we journey towards it, casts the shadow
of our burden behind us.  (Samuel Smiles)

I think it's fair....

....to say that everyone has a cynical part within them.  Even the most optimistic and open-minded amongst us find that there is a subject, somewhere in our lives, about which we take a cold, doubtful view. That's healthy and appropriate, up to a point. We don't want to become prejudiced and gullible.


But, whenever we close our mind to an idea that a part of us would like to believe in, we risk shutting ourselves off from our own softness and sensitivity.


Improve your spare moments and they will become the brightest gems in your life. 
(Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Wednesday 6 June 2018

Appearances can be deceptive.....

....Sorry to state the obvious, but sometimes, though, we all need to be reminded of life's most basic laws and truths. We get carried away by fantasies. We see whatever we most wish we could see, regardless of what we are actually looking at. When others collude with our fantasy by adopting disguises or adjusting images so that they match our secret desire, we lose all ability to see reality.

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Until, that is, the veil slips.




Patience is the companion of wisdom.     (Saint Augustine)








Inevitable, really....






Monday 4 June 2018

A very very long time ago....

....at the time of Ancient Greece, an aristocrat by the name of Heraclitus, was born.  He may have been born into the aristocracy, but he lived as a hermit and believed that his wisdom stemmed from his loneliness. His wise observation, that change is the only constant, remains beyond question. (But I know many who resist change with a passion that belies belief!!)  'No man ever steps in the same river twice', was his famous statement
Anyway, this aristo-hermit wasn't so smart with his grasp of medicine. He died trying to cure an illness by covering himself in manure and lying out in the sun.



To know some things, is not to know all things. Something none of us should forget. 



An idea not coupled with action will never get any bigger than the 
brain cell it occupied.         (Arnold Glasow)

I have a confession to make....

.....I think that arrogance is a wonderful thing. There isn't really enough of it in this world. Likewise, profligacy. It's such a shame that we are all so humble - and that we find it so hard to spend money that we haven't really got. If only, as people and as nations we could learn to be more opinionated and more extravagant.



Am I being sarcastic?  Who?  Me?  Well, I suppose I am, but there are times when it actually is desirable to be confident, and not be too inhibited.





The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction [that] you give it. (Ayn Rand)







Says it all, really....






Saturday 2 June 2018

A friendly reminder to all....

.....who so generously give.  If anyone seeks money for the running of an orphanage, check it out thoroughly.

Even if you believe yourself to be in contact with a Christian, do a thorough check.  In many parts, this is a tag worn but has little meaning to the wearer.

Don't believe any pictures you may be able to see.

Check out the credentials of the person running it.

If it is a registered charity, ask for the number.  Then independently confirm it.  If it isn't, walk away from it.  Wherever it is, it will be registered if it is genuine.

Insist on a receipt.  It is not a problem for a genuine concern to provide one, but make sure it isn't obviously something hastily cobbled together.

Give in good faith, and you may well just be improving an individual's bank balance.




Remember the old adage at all times - If in doubt - DON'T.



Stealing is stealing. I don't care if it's on the Internet or you're breaking into a
warehouse somewhere - it's theft.    (Patrick Leahy)

Fancy a bit of culture?....

.....Have you heard of Christina Rossetti?  She wrote - 'Who has seen the wind, neither you nor I, but when the trees bow down their heads, the wind is passing by.'
There are so many invisible forces at work in this world. We detect their presence by the reactions they create or the dramas they give rise to. Just because something is subtle, though, it does not mean that it is not powerful.







A small smile or a gentle gesture of goodwill can have an enormous effect - even if it is not fully acknowledged or appreciated.











How far that little candle throws his beams. So shines a good deed in a weary world.   (Shakespeare)