Loving someone....

..... or knowing that they love you is not a licence to abuse or antagonise them. It is never okay to hurt someone's feelings, just because you suspect that you will be 'safe', even if you do.

 

We all need to learn to show each other more respect and to treat the people we are closest to with the same degree of deference and civility that we might show to a stranger.

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.    (Friedrich Nietzsche)

Why are some people....

....more successful than others? Is it a matter of talent? Not necessarily. Some highly-gifted individuals never have their abilities recognised. Others, with less skill but more self-confidence, receive all the awards. Is it down to contact and connection? Perhaps, but there are failures, even among the famous. And some do genuinely rise from obscurity to reach great heights.

The single most important ingredient you require in any recipe for success is faith.

Things gained through unjust fraud are never secure  (Sophocles)

Imagine that you are feeling....

hungry, and that it won't take too much to satisfy the hunger.  So, you opt for a bowl of breakfast cereal.   But what if someone were to offer you a gourmet meal, cooked to your specific dietary requirements?  Why might you turn it down? Perhaps you'd fear becoming beholden to the supplier of this food or you'd just prefer to accept the simpler, speedier solution.

As with food, so it is with many other pressing needs. At times there's the possibility of exceeding an expectation if you're willing to be adventurous.

To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest.    (Gandhi)

If somebody offered you....

....a glass of wine, at the right time in the right place, you may decide to accept. ( I wouldn't because I've yet to find a wine I like.  Such a shame, isn't it!)  If someone hands you a bottle and orders you to drink it all, right away, you have to refuse, regardless of who they are. Those are the extremes, somewhere in the middle is the grey area. It can often be hard to know whether we are being cajoled or coerced. Sometimes, people play on our sense of obligation. Sometimes, we just trick ourselves into feeling that something must happen because we don't want a fight.

You can't do only what you want to do, but you definitely mustn't do what you feel it's wrong to do.

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

If we are not careful....

....we can spend our whole lives doing the things that others want us to do. If we are sensitive, we can soon tell what others around us need. And if we're kind, we will naturally want to help out where we can. Soon, though, if we carry on in this way, our independence will evaporate.

People don't mean to keep on taking until we have nothing left to give - well, most don't - but unless they are told to stop, they will accidentally keep on.

No accurate thinker will judge another person by that which the other person's enemies

say about him.    (Napoleon Hill)

As if we don't have enough.....

.... to test and try in our daily lives, we have our own imaginations to contend with. These ensure that we can never fully relax. Always, there is something to be nervous of. No matter what the scenario, we are capable of conjuring up negative associations. Or of seeing within it a pessimistic possibility.

Worse, our imagination will often insist that it is not even talking to us - that it is, in fact, the voice of common sense.

To love means loving the unlovable. Faith means believing the unbelievable.  Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless. (G.K.Chesterton)

Isn't it fun to be judgemental

......It is not just our friends and loved ones that we approve or disapprove of. We can even find ourselves glancing at strangers and forming opinions about them. From their looks, their clothes, their body language, we decide what it is that they may be guilty of - or very occasionally, if we are feeling generous, deserving of praise for. But the point is, we don't know. We really don't know.

And when we think we probably do know, that is when we are most likely to be wrong!

Someone is praying for the things you take for granted.