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Monday, January 3, 2011
Monday Monologue
Sickness
Nowhere is pain more objectless than in sickness. Even a mere cold brings aches to the head, pressure to the sinuses, spasmodic sneezing and wretched coughing. Not to mention the general dull ache throughout the muscles that influenza brings.
Perhaps the only thing worse than sickness is treatment. Whether you are in the sterile whiteness of the hospital or under the overbearing care of the relative, treatment always hurts before it heals. Anesthetic can bring relief but only leads to more deadness of the senses and feeling.
Doctors know this, so they avoid anesthetic whenever possible. And so treatment is painful. The homemade remedies, the needles and the vomit, even the body inflicts pain upon itself, as if one could forget that one was sick!
But maybe we would forget. Maybe without the pain we would not know danger. Without danger, what experience could we have? So the seasonal sicknesses humble us, remind us of our fragile nature, and keep us careful. A careless man is a wasteful man.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Thoughtful Thursday
Be Nice to People
At the place where I am interning this summer, many people call or walk into the office while they are extremely angry. For the most part, they have good reasons to be angry. They usually have very real and urgent problems that need a solution. However, anger, on its own, has never solved a problem. Useful anger must spur action.
However, the same anger that brought about action quickly becomes detrimental to success. This is always the case when achieving a goal requires the involvement of multiple people. If your goal is something that you can accomplish by yourself, go ahead and be as angry as you want. However, if you need to convince people to help you, being angry is going to be a problem. People don't want to be around or help angry people because anger always lashes out and hurts the people who are closest.
Instead of being angry, be calm and goal-oriented. If the priority is to achieve the goal, put aside the anger, because it's not helping. Instead, be nice to people! People like to be around and help other people who are nice.
However, it's not enough to act nice. It's very easy to pretend to be nice and friendly while maintaining another agenda that isn't very nice. The problem is that eventually these hidden motives will be revealed and the people who were once on your side will no longer want to help you.
If you are genuinely interested in the welfare of those around you, though, you'll find friends who will stick with you no matter how unpopular you get. Those are the friends worth having and that is a life worth living.
At the place where I am interning this summer, many people call or walk into the office while they are extremely angry. For the most part, they have good reasons to be angry. They usually have very real and urgent problems that need a solution. However, anger, on its own, has never solved a problem. Useful anger must spur action.
However, the same anger that brought about action quickly becomes detrimental to success. This is always the case when achieving a goal requires the involvement of multiple people. If your goal is something that you can accomplish by yourself, go ahead and be as angry as you want. However, if you need to convince people to help you, being angry is going to be a problem. People don't want to be around or help angry people because anger always lashes out and hurts the people who are closest.
Instead of being angry, be calm and goal-oriented. If the priority is to achieve the goal, put aside the anger, because it's not helping. Instead, be nice to people! People like to be around and help other people who are nice.
However, it's not enough to act nice. It's very easy to pretend to be nice and friendly while maintaining another agenda that isn't very nice. The problem is that eventually these hidden motives will be revealed and the people who were once on your side will no longer want to help you.
If you are genuinely interested in the welfare of those around you, though, you'll find friends who will stick with you no matter how unpopular you get. Those are the friends worth having and that is a life worth living.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Poetry Tuesday
Give a hand,
But don't give both.
It helps to give some,
We're all in the same boat.
But to pull someone up
You need one hand to grab, another to hold.
Together we can get
Out of this hole.
Don't look down,
There's nothing there.
Keep looking up,
Salvation is here.
But don't give both.
It helps to give some,
We're all in the same boat.
But to pull someone up
You need one hand to grab, another to hold.
Together we can get
Out of this hole.
Don't look down,
There's nothing there.
Keep looking up,
Salvation is here.
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