“What we leave behind is not what is engraved on stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.”
Pericles
“Our death is not an end if we live on in our children and the younger generation. For they are us.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Questioner: How to deal with people?
Maharaj: Why make plans and what for? Such questions show anxiety. Relationship is a living thing. Be at peace with your inner self and you will be at peace with everybody.
Realize that you are not the master of what happens, you cannot control the future except in purely technical matters.
Human relationship cannot be planned, it is too rich and varied.
Just be understanding and compassionate, free of all self-seeking.
Questioner: Surely, I am not the master of what happens. Its slave rather.
Maharaj: Be neither master, nor slave. Stand aloof.
One area that deserves more focus, and agreement, is the need for boundaries. Not just legal boundaries but those informal boundaries that help to bind us together, that allow us to live well, in a cohesive society, even when we disagree.
We can’t enforce boundaries, except by enforcing our own behaviour. They help guard against the misuse of power.
JANET ALBRECHTSEN
Five spectrums of behavior –
Openness to experience: from curious and inventive on one end to cautious and consistent on the other.
Conscientiousness: organized and efficient to easygoing and spontaneous.
Extroversion: outgoing and energetic to solitary and reserved (you likely know them as extroverts vs. introverts).
Agreeableness: friendly and compassionate to challenging and detached.
Neuroticism: anxious and sensitive to confident, calm, and stable.
James Clear
Everyone has a plan ’till they get punched in the mouth. – Mike Tyson
EVERYONE NEEDS a strategy. Leaders of armies, major corporations, and political parties have long been expected to have strategies, but now no serious organization could imagine being without one. Despite the problems of finding ways through the uncertainty and confusion of human affairs, a strategic approach is still considered to be preferable to one that is merely tactical, let alone random. Having a strategy suggests an ability to look up from the short term and the trivial to view the long term and the essential, to address causes rather than symptoms, to see woods rather than trees. Without a strategy, facing up to any problem or striving for any objective would be considered negligent. Certainly no military campaign, company investment, or government initiative is likely to receiving backing unless there is a strategy to evaluate. If a decision can be described as strategically significant, then it is obviously more important than decisions of a more routine nature. By extension, people making such decisions are more important than those who only offer advice or are tasked with implementation.
Strategy: A History
Sir Lawrence Freedman
“I think as one grows older, one is appallingly exposed to wearing life instead of living it. Habit, physical deterioration and a slower digestion of our experiences, all tend to make one look on one’s dear life as a garment, a dressing gown, a raincoat, a uniform, buttoned on with recurrent daily (tasks)….for myself I found one remedy, and that is to undertake something difficult, something new, to re-root myself in my own true faculties….for in such moments, life is not just a thing one wears, it is a thing one does and is.”
WILLIAM MAXWELL’S “THE LETTERS OF SYLVIA TOWNSEND WARNER
when you’re too focused on your historical wardrobe—rather than the person inside those clothes—you lose track of the authentic and special gifts you have to offer..
ONE TUSK 