 Writers' Community! |
|
| Home Page Two Columnists Q&A Submit an Article FAQs Contact Author Login |
Spiritual Interpretations of Everyday LifeElsabe Smit (414)    Elsabe Smit   http://www.mypurpleblog.com How to Love Your RelativesPosted Friday, October 23, 2009 (16 days 12 hours ago.) Viewed 3 times. I come from a family of special souls. We are as different as chalk and cheese. The chalks have beautiful colours. The cheeses have a wide range of textures tastes. Together, we make an interesting, tasty and useful combination. There is nothing that brings out the best in people like a family crisis. This is when we stand together and support each other. We form a wall between us and the rest of the world, and we protect one another's interests. We provide emotional support and at times financial support. We have meals together when we can. We stay in contact, unlike other families where siblings disappear for years without a trace. There is also nothing that brings out the worst in people like a family crisis. This is where we each show our true colours and tastes. Yes, we all have true colours, because we all have some chalk in us. We all have the gritty bits that taste like sand. We all become the piece of dust in another's eye. We also have our own tastes, preferences and ways of doing things. We know who will choose heads and who will choose tails in bets. We know who will complain about the outcome and who will shrug it off and get on with life. Have you noticed how you will tolerate much more from relatives than from strangers? This is because we all intuitively know that at some level our relatives have a special bond with us. As the saying goes, blood is thicker than water. We have very special relationships with our relatives, whether we choose to label these relationships good or bad. The purpose of these relationships is always to teach us something about ourselves that can only be learned and resolved with Love. Our families are masters in the art of teaching us about Love. They either show us love when we need it most, or they highlight the part of ourselves that we know and appreciate least when we do not love ourselves. Some people place a high value on family. They may be seen as busy-bodies by those who place a lower value on family. Where family does not take such an important place on a person's list of values, they may be seen as cold and uncaring. The only way to have a perfect family is to have both the chalk and the cheese, because they both have a purpose. Without that, there will be no balance. No matter what happens, my family are perfect for me. -------- Elsabe Smit is a professional transition coach, helping individuals and companies to achieve their personal and commercial objectives. What is the one thing which is consuming all your energy at the moment? Visit www.elsabesmit.com for a FREE new start audit and a FREE Food for Thought subscription. 
Permalink Comments (0) Shop Assistants: Our New ConsciencePosted Sunday, October 18, 2009 (21 days ago.) Viewed 1 times. Are you tired from work today? Are you putting your feet up and having a drink? Before you take another sip, let me ask you: who gave you permission to have that drink? If you are saying it is none of my business, you are right. However, if I was a shop assistant in the UK, it could easily have been my business. Of course you are an adult and you can decide when, where and how much you want to drink. And chances are that you are a generation older than the average shop assistant. How would you feel if you go to your local friendly supermarket to buy your favourite tipple, and the shop assistant refuses to serve you? Would you go back to that shop? Before you answer: what if the shop assistant is acting on instructions? Would you really want to shoot the messenger? The UK is well known in Europe for having the highest level of alcoholism. For every one person who is addicted to a class A drug, there are six people who are addicted to alcohol. A BBc web page states "There is an urgent need for the government to give as high a priority to tackling alcohol dependency as it does to addressing drug misuse." How does the government do this? Since 2002 drinkers no longer need to finish their drinks so that the pubs can close at 11pm. The pubs can now stay open later because when the law was changed, "Ministers also hope[d] the changes would help "encourage a more civilised culture in pubs, bars and restaurants". No that makes complete sense to me. Take one drunk, aggressive person who knows of no other way to entertain themselves than to get blind drunk night after night. Add lots more alcohol and a very tired publican. Stir in some equally drunk buddies, and voila - problem solved. The result? A "more civilised culture". But at the same time the law was changed to ensure that this drunken behaviour is limited to people over 18. Apparently it is OK to turn 18 and have no experience with alcohol. Not that I am encouraging excessive drinking at any age, but there is nothing wrong with anything in moderation. I just wonder how many 18-year-olds learn moderation from an older generation who is encouraged to spend longer hours in the pub so that they can achieve a "more civilised culture". Of course the same government is hell-bent on ensuring that nobody under the age of 18 gets access to alcohol. Hence the law which ensures that a shop assistant who sells alcohol to anyone under 18 will be severely punished. But it does not stop there. A shop assistant is by law also obliged to refuse selling alcohol to anyone who may provide that alcohol to a person under 18. What is the result of this? A woman and her 20-year-old son cannot buy a bottle of wine for Sunday lunch, because the son, who is with the mother in the shop, cannot at that moment prove that he is over the age of 18. His mother's word is not acceptable to the shop assistant. And what will happen if the son is by any chance 17 years and 364 days old? The shop assistant will get a hefty fine and lose their job. Can the same shop assistant sell the same bottle of wine to the next customer who has her 11-year-old son with her? Of course. In the judgement of the shop assistant, the 11-year-old is too young to drink, and the mother would not give the alcohol to the boy. And we all know that no child would ever steal alcohol and experiment with it at any age. And the moon is definitely made of cheese. Next in the row is the lady with arthritis in both hands. She brought her 15-year-old daughter and 14-year-old niece with her to carry the groceries. Can she buy wine? Of course not. In the opinion of the shop assistant, there is the risk that the lady will force-feed the wine to the two girls, or even offer them each half a glass of wine with their meal, under her supervision. Sorry, madam, no sale. What kind of society allows - no, forces - teenagers to police parents? What kind of government resolves alcoholism problems with longer pub hours? What kind of nation allows a government to put barely-out-of-school shop assistants in a position to be the moral judges of the nation? We created this government. We can create a different government. Do we know what we want from the government we create? Or do we just want to sit back and see what farcical legislation they come up with? -------- Elsabe Smit is a professional transition coach, helping individuals and companies to achieve their personal and commercial objectives. What is the one thing which is consuming all your energy at the moment? Visit www.elsabesmit.com for a FREE new start audit and a FREE Food for Thought subscription.
Permalink Comments (0) You Cannot See The Picture When You Are in The FramePosted Thursday, October 08, 2009 (31 days 9 hours ago.) Viewed 9 times. Have you ever had one of those experiences where you ask yourself "Why have things gone so wrong for me? What have I done to deserve this?" I have had many of them over the years. When I was still a church goer, the standard sanctimonious answer was "Just suffer through it. One day you will see the reason why God has punished you like this, and then you will understand." It made no sense to me whatsoever that this old man with a beard sitting up there in the clouds would "punish" me with things like a broken leg, a divorce, redundancy, friends who disappointed me and so on. Surely He had other, more useful things to do with His time than to think out these various "punishments" for me? And if He really was gunning for me, then he had his knife in for everyone around me as well, because they each had their own version of "punishment". The funny thing was that over the years I did discover why things had happened to me - and no, it had absolutely nothing to do with punishment for my sins. I discovered that sin had nothing to do with my "evil" nature. For me, sin happens when I move away from my true, loving nature. And guess what? I am not the only person who has a loving nature. The more I looked around, the more I discovered that the world is filled with good, kind, loving people. All of these people experienced their own version of "sin". All of them wanted to know why unpleasant things happened to them. The question I asked my self was: why was it that while I had these bad experiences, I could not understand why or what was happening to me, but later on, looking back, they all made complete sense to me? This triggered my search for the meaning of human experiences. My reasoning was that if we all have to go through these experiences, surely we could expedite them if we knew their purpose? My quest has led me to two conclusions. The first is that there really is a purpose behind every experience - but it has nothing to do with punishment or suffering. Life is one massive experience, filled with a series of smaller experiences. Every single life experience we have are part of a bigger Plan. For most of our lives we are not aware of this Plan. We just get through every day, and we have no idea of what happens to us and how we learn and grow. The second conclusion is that it is easier to find the reason for an experience once you have been through it. For most of our conscious experiences, we have a plan and we focus on the outcome. Once we have achieved the desired outcome, we are happy because we have achieved our objectives. But all of these plans that we consciously achieve are one-dimensional. Whatever we achieve, it is always less than we are capable of, for various reasons. Then we have other experiences that we regard as "bad luck" or co-incidence or other people's mistakes that we have to suffer for. We often feel that these experiences are out of our control. We like to blame other people for them. I have discovered that these "unplanned" experiences are the really meaningful ones. They are multi-dimensional. They are not measured by formulas or outcomes of achieved goals. They are the really meaningful experiences which teach us far more than anything we can consciously plan. For us to have successful lives, we have to go through these more complex experiences. Does this mean that we have to first experience everything and then only later understand the meaning? Initially, yes. It is only much later, when we have learned to decipher and respect the code of life, that we become aware of the meaning of an experience while we are having it. We first have to be in the picture and experience the picture. Only once we know every corner of the picture, do we learn the skill of detachment. Then we can still be in the picture, but a part of us candstep out of the frame and look at the picture from the outside in. This new view helps us to learn our life lessons much quicker. Don't confuse detachment with denial. Denial is a pressure cooker which can boil over at any minute. Denial is a bomb waiting to explode. Denial is something that you need to deal with, and the only way to deal with it is to stay in the picture until you can happily smile and enjoy being in the picture. Detachment, on the other hand, will only occur when you have learned that being in your picture is natural and normal. Once you take ownership of your life, you stop reacting and start responding. That is when you can step out of the frame and see the whole picture. That is when you understand the meaning of your experiences and understand that every single experience was a blessing. -------- Elsabe Smit is a professional transition coach, helping individuals and companies to achieve their personal and commercial objectives. What is the one thing which is consuming all your energy at the moment? Visit www.elsabesmit.com for a FREE new start audit and a FREE Food for Thought subscription.
Permalink Comments (0) |
Archives:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Home |
Page Two |
FAQ's |
Contact |
Terms of Service |
Article Submission Guidelines |
Questions & Answers |
Privacy |
Mission / About
Copyright © 1999-2009 SearchWarp.com, All Rights Reserved - SearchWarp.com is an IcoLogic, Inc. Company