Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Accept life as it is or do the impossible

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I will start with this: “An optimist is a person that has insufficient information.”
This quote contradicts in a way what I would try to say later.

We live in a society that follow different rules…and one with tremendous power is money. If we think and over think everything; I mean absolutely everything on Earth can be translated to money. To the point that we come to realize that certain things are not right. On the other way you may wonder – how is this possible to live without money. Historically speaking money were a great invention that eased the consumption and trade in our human world. And then we started to quote everything in money. You may not do so yourself, but on a global level that is the trend. 

Someone told me a story about a sheik from Middle East related to him. They haven`t seen each other since they were kids, since my acquaintance family immigrated to North America. When they left their country both families were goat shepherds and don`t imagine a farm of goats but a few to bring the family some food. Now my acquaintance is a fairly normal person, working to sustain his family, while the other guy became a sheik. How come? That guy that didn’t have a chance to immigrate discovered an oil well, he sold it to the right people (that means the Americans) and became rich.
When my acquaintance got the chance and visited him, he was living in a huge, huge palace. My friend was saying he has never seen such opulence, and yet the level of culture and civilization was little changed from the goat shepherd. And he gave me a few examples related to the basic needs of eating, sleeping and hygiene. Anyhow, what surprised him the most was a special room – for money! “Imagine a hangar or a warehouse where one would deposit money! And I mean literally deposit money! Cash! There were probably billion of dollars there! What was bad…” my friend was saying “is that the room was full already and the money were deposited there for many years to the point that those at the base were rotted. When a new series of money were coming paid people would come in, take the decayed papers out and burn them!”

As you can see from this simple story money (as material) had no real value for those people. My friend was saying that on a small calculation a fair price for the barrel of oil would have been a maximum of 3 dollars. That amount was a fair amount to allow a family there to have a wealthy life style. Imagine the rest!
On the opposite side of the world my friend was saying that he has a hard time buying organic foods because they are way too expensive (bought with the same paper money that were rotting in his relative house).
But, I’m not going to talk about money! I’m going to talk about the choices in life.
Having as example the story above and these two types of societies…

What happens when the standards of these two societies collide into each other? If we take the best that is to be shared, that is also simple: 
You have access to natural, but you are restricted by money; you have access to comfort, but you are restricted by tradition. So, what do you do in this case? It is already clear to you what the best choices are, but they seem unachievable by the standards of the society you are living in. So, what do you do?

  Do you accept life as it is or you do the impossible? 

The most reasonable choice is to take things as they are – meaning following tradition, but giving you only a certain comfort; and following money, but giving you whatever that money can offer. (I left those two words in bold, so you can make the connection with the examples above - traditional habits and organic foods.)
The other thing that you can do is fight. A fight, no matter for what, is always taking you out of your comfort zone. A fight means that you can lose everything and win everything. And then it comes to what level you are willing to take this fight. Usually people fight till they start to lose, and when they start losing they give up!
It may seem now that the examples above are inappropriate; it is not a matter of life and death. So, if it is not a matter of life and death, why not fight? Every situation has its pro and cons, so when you do your situation’s pyramid see what weights more. On a career counseling session I have done a while back – they asked me to complete a form that helped identify my ideal career (all inclusive – location, field, position, money and benefits, environment, work time, colleagues etc).  At the end after two pages of utopic career, there was one simple question.

What are you willing to trade if you will get all this?

Think about this every time you chose to fight for something.
And I return to the first quote: “An optimist is a person that has insufficient information.” Are you boiling in optimism or in negativism…Or, what are you? That depends on the level of information you provide yourself sincerely every time you have to make a choice.

1 comment:

Serenia said...
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