The funeral of one of the people I helped look after was today. It can only ever be bittersweet. It's so sad that the world has lost another wonderful person, but when our health is failing us and we are shadows of our former selves, we can only hope that those concerned now have some peace and rest. A good friend of mine said not long ago, a quote from his Grandfather, I believe, "you can spend your life worrying about keeping people happy but the turn out at your funeral will be mostly dictated by the weather". Forgive me if I've used that quote before, but it's a personal favourite. I thought it was sad today that only 30 or so people were there to say goodbye to someone popular, well traveled, good hearted and known. People can be so fickle.
And mean. People can be mean.
We all like a laugh, I know my sense of humour is darker than most people's and I have inherited my father's gene for being a total misery guts/bah humbug type, but sometimes I think we could all learn a lesson from Thumper Rabbit's Mum. "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all". And don't air your dirty laundry in public. NEVER air your dirty laundry in public.
We all have skeletons, things we don't talk about, things we aren't proud of. Most of the time, things happen to us in our lives, whether we like it or not, and the very best thing we can do is simply make the best of a bad job, put it down to experience and move on. Relationships start and end, always in the same ways. They might have different circumstances but they are all, in essence the same. No one ever gets into a relationship with someone they dislike, and no one ever breaks up with someone they adore. Sometimes people make decisions that in time prove to be wrong, people sometimes aren't entirely honest with other people, so promises made can no longer be kept in the light of truth.
If it's not your business, don't bring it up. If someone needs something being said to them, never do it in front of others. It stops being about "that thing" and becomes an ego boost and show of force for you, and it will only ever inflict pain and suffering. Conflict is the very worst way to address anything. Conflict NEVER solves anything.
Patience, caring and kindness achieves everything.
This is a quote from John Harris from the website http://www.tpuc.org/
Always entering into conflict or at least being willing to enter into this element maintains in me that this element is always present, which has resulted in one inevitability – it has become even harder to release myself from its grip. But I now realise through studying subjects such as history that it is very apparent that this element has to be maintained for the world as we know it to function effectively. History maintains without doubt that nothing has ever been sorted out without some form of conflict, so dictates by default that nothing ‘will’ ever get sorted out without conflict being involved. This to me seems that we are always presented with a negative approach called the ‘what if’ syndrome which is now called the ‘precautionary principle’ which has always been the engine of the legal/law systems over centuries. It is quite obvious that if you wish to maintain control through negative elements, then you need the negative elements to be maintained. This creates another default that manifests within those who wish to go against the control, being they - by default - try to use the same, because they are relying on a version of history that tells them this – a fact that has been very much relied upon. Although I can only speak for myself I have now determined that all history we are taught is not a true account of events, it is in fact an account written to deliver a very specific version, without doubt to maintain the negative element, which in turn maintains conflict.
A little "high brow" for what I'm on about, perhaps, but in essence, it just means that because everything in history has been achieved through some form of conflict, it does not mean that it is the only way. In every one of those conflicts, people have died needlessly. Conflict only ever guarantees one thing. Pain to someone.
In 2010, it still astounds me that we're all still learning how to be nice to each other. I think Freud had rather a lot to say about egos, I wish I knew more about what he did say about them. But next time you catch yourself saying or doing something mean, ask yourself what your motivation is. Not very many people deliberately set out to cause others pain, so you'll probably find that it's to do with massaging that most evil and selfish of aspects of ourselves, our ego.
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