A Valuable Lesson For A Happier Life

[Uncle Al]

Some people don't understand this concept

A Valuable Lesson For A Happier Life

Uncle Al

[Gordon]

That is good and something that each one of us needs to remember. But it is hard to do sometimes.
Meir Kay has more videos on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/user/kalmy16/videos

[crfriend]

Some people don't understand this concept

In the darkest of dark days in 2015, when my closest friends were very, very, worried about my overall mental state I had a rather interesting conversation with one of them who is more "spiritual" than most (we're mostly hardcore analytical types) who, when I described the path I was "walking" remarked that my "path" had quite a lot in common with Zen. In order to preserve what little sanity I had left at the time, and simply out of self-preservation, I'd consciously decided to focus all my energy on the things I could actively change and stop worrying about the rest (which included things that could have brought about my death). My rationale was, "If I cannot change the thing I might as well not waste energy worrying about, or even pondering, it." There was a bit of astonishment from both sides of the luncheon table.

As history has proved, I emerged from the darkness bruised but alive and am better for my brush with my version of Zen and which I continue to now embrace. Put your energy where it can produce meaningful change in things and let the rest wash over you. Fighting the overwhelming tide of cr@p that the world is throwing at us is futile. Change what we can and bend as best we can in response to the rest. There's a bit of Jedi in that as well.

[hoborob]

Too put that another way that some may relate to better, "If you catch hell don't hold it, If you're going through hell don't stop!"

[Pdxfashionpioneer]

I like your quote Hoborob and I certainly agree that sometimes it is best to focus on what you clearly can change. I expect I would agree with your posting Al, but I didn't feel like going onto Facebook to see what was on Meir Kay's mind.

However, having lived through the Civil Rights Era, the Vietnam War and everything since, I have to say I am glad and grateful that there were people back then brave enough, oblivious enough and maybe even crazy enough (Martin Luther King put himself in that last category) to try to change some of the things that looked for all the world like the inevitable "way things were."

If, when I was an undergraduate and much later, somewhat had said I would live to see a black man elected President of the US, after I said, "One could only hope," I would next ask for some of what they were on. And yet it happened because some Southern blacks took on the inevitability of Jim Crow.

Similarly if someone told me someday I would go to work in a Fortune 500 company in skirts and dresses, they would have gotten the same response. But here I am, doing just that because some drag queens in New York City decided they were mad as hell and weren't going to take it any longer. By standing up and fighting back against police oppression, they launched the Gay Liberation Movement that's opened the door to men wearing what they damned well please to work in a number of states and, sooner than any of us will believe, across the country.

Support your local Human Rights Campaign!

[Caultron]

We all (or at least most of us) wish more progress had been made.

But we should never underestimate the progress we have made.

Nothing new has ever been done before.

[Sinned]

Carl, I think you more or less quoted the Serenity prayer - God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.

[crfriend]

Carl, I think you more or less quoted the Serenity prayer - God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.

I think the subtle difference is not to "accept" the things one cannot change, but rather to ignore them -- to not waste energy on them. Acceptance grants validity to the abhorrent and unjust; simply putting up with them doesn't. Just because one bends doesn't mean that he breaks, and it may become possible to do something about said injustices later on if one survives the current crisis.

[crfriend]

Who reads the forum? I'm not precisely sure how many humans do, but at least one robot seems to and managed to pick out a comment I made earlier on in this thread and sent me (as barista, botching the logic) a LinkedIn connection request from "CRISIS PHONE COUNSELOR at LOVE LINES CRISIS MINISTRY CONNECTION" in Minnesota, MN/USA. What a strange, and sometimes marvellous, world we live in!

To the 'bots in the audience: I am not "at risk" for suicide; I'm actually doing pretty well, thank-you-very-much.

[Kirbstone]

Carl,

I learned some time ago that the people who drive Linkedin are poisonous. I was encouraged to register my name in this orgnisation by one of my rowing friends, as it would 'enhance my professional business', or words to that effect. To my dismay, within days all my E-mail contacts including my German ones were contacted and encouraged to join !!

Fortunately a mechanism existed which enabled me to extricate myself and erase my details. They haven't contacted me since and it's been a few years, now.

Tom