The Lies Humanity Tells Itself 2/4
There is beauty in age – no more no less than anywhere else!
When it comes to physical age, the boom of Botox injections and plastic surgery are the strongest denial of this consoling lie!
Staying away from physical beauty, which clearly doesn’t increase with age, do older people become more beautiful in their minds and souls?
This might happen when the older person is surrounded by a lot of love, affection and attention from their children and grandchildren and they are receptive and sensitive to the tenderness of this love. There are cases where the elderlies were so extremely mean when they were younger that any older age improvements remain unnoticed and drowned in a sea of meanness.
So, to be fair, there might be beauty in age, but it is, very often, very hard to find!
People are passionate about “work” – that’s exactly why they get paid for it!
I know a garbage collector who, every evening at 7pm, goes to sleep with a huge smile on his face in expectation to another glorious day of passion in collecting the filth of people and their domestic animals. His huge salary had nothing to do with the relentless passion he feels for his job!
Passion and work cannot be used together in an affirmative statement. When passion starts, work ends and when works starts, passion ends. This is an evidence for any average intelligent person, but leaders across the planet refuse to accept the obvious and continue their false propaganda about the key role of passion in the work environment. If I am passionate about a woman, I don’t expect to be paid to spend time with her or to make love to her. Or if I am passionate about my children, I don’t get paid to raise them, play with them, help them with their studies…
Maybe it is not the same “passion” we are talking about. And here lies the problem and the ambiguity of this lie. This ever-increasing phenomenon of using one word to express a different meaning than the original one is creating confusion and allowing a lot of abuse in our communication. Passion is one of the biggest victims of that abuse. Other victims are words like emergency, importance, awesome, outstanding, … but this is another story for another time.
Back to “passion about work”, if it is not “Passion” that we are taking about, then let us not use the same word to express it. Let us be more authentic and choose the right word to describe the feeling of liking the work we do! I don’t necessarily know what is the magic word, but I am sure that many creative people, with enough determination and time, will find it. How about enthusiasm?
You are my brother from another mother – if you say so!
As long as I am providing you with what your brother is not or cannot provide, then I guess I am your brother from another mother, and it is quite understandable! If that becomes less, or I start behaving as if I am your brother, and you start giving me, as much as to your brother, then you will reconsider. Your declaration of life brotherhood will become a bit more burdensome, and it will be uttered less often and lived even less.
Beyond these tactical considerations, the sentence itself holds the proof of its fallacy. “Brother from another mother”, when things go wrong among brothers, it is the mother (the blood) that brings them back together, no matter how long it takes for this to happen, as blood is thicker than water and more vital than feelings of brotherhood! So, when it is “from another mother”, then which mother will bring the brothers back together?
Harmony is our purpose – but we are lost or it doesn’t really exist!
The long string of killings and deaths taking place since the formation of earth are a clear illustration of the undeniable fallacy of this naively optimistic statement. If this is not enough, then think a bit about the strict self-control each person needs to impose on one self in order to avoid picking up a fight with almost every person they meet in their lives. Harmony doesn’t exist anywhere! Not in nature, not in the animal kingdom, and surely not in mankind. It is a nice dream and a beautiful illusion. We love to talk about it, to think it might be happening to someone somewhere, but deep down we know that the strongest enemy and the most effective annihilator of harmony is reality, and until further notice this is exactly where we live!
To Be Continued ...