Fighting men photo by Bimo Luki.
Bartgrinn’s words are written this way.
Nerida’s words are written like this.
Be patient. Try to slow down with things.
Try to reverse things. Try to find different solutions for problems. Sometimes your thoughts are too complicated in trying to solve them.
Sometimes the solutions are very obvious. They’re right in front of your face. If you would have a clear mind you could see it. There is too much distraction around.
Distraction and impatience—these are the enemies of the solution of problems.
Focus on what needs to be done. Focus on what you feel is really important, not what someone says to you is important.
‘‘Focus on what you feel is really important.’ Photo by Martin Adams.
What feel you, deep inside, is important: Focus on it. Make your decisions.
That’s what you do: focus, make a decision. It will help to have clearer thoughts about things.
It can help to eliminate distraction.
The impatience is a different story. It will take a bit longer.
You live in a society that gets more and more impatient. A lot of them think, ‘I need to have that, too. Right now.’
So, a lot of people who were quite patient, get impatient as well because they get drawn into it, almost sucked into it.
We are living in a world that has a fast pace. If you can’t do it right now, immediately, you’ll be left behind. Sometimes being a bit slow, being a bit left behind, watching from behind how the others run against a wall, can be quite consoling.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I would not call it entertaining. That would be rude.
[Laughs]
It’s about, ‘I want to have it all and I want it right now because I can see the ones over there and they have it already. I need it now to keep up with them.’
Be your own person. Work at your own pace. Think your own thoughts. Focus on your own life.
If you’re in trouble, all those others that you try to keep up with, they won’t help you.
That’s right.
Focus on the important things. Spread the love.
Spreading the love will help with the peace.
Yes.
There are some that don’t understand it. And then, there are people who say, ‘You have to give them all the love you have.’
You can’t. You have to keep some for yourself.
‘You have to keep some for yourself’ Artwork from Manhattan. Photo by Renee Fisher.
That’s important.
If people learn to focus on what’s important, they will find out that love is something very important. (I’m not talking about that physical act.)
Love, unconditional love. You should spread unconditional love—but not without limits. People need to learn that this is special and it is important.
If everything’s overflowing with it, people can’t handle it. It’s not special because it’s everywhere.
And then you’ll have the ones that get up and say, ‘I have to fight that. It’s boring. I can’t feel that I’m evolving. I can’t learn if there is nothing but love.’
There need to be some challenges, as well.
You understand?
Yes, I do. Thank you.
Everything is good as long as it’s in moderation. If you spread the love, it can be a little bit more.
But don’t make it all overflow because if you drown everything around you in love, that’s not working, either. You need to be able to see the difference. You understand?
Yes, I think it’s a very interesting concept.
It’s a bit of a foreign concept.
Pause
Is it that conflict is necessary for our growth?
In moderation.
The thing about conflict is: there is a person that has a conflict. And there is another person. So they have a conflict with each other.
But, like, for example, they sit behind their desks and they make other people understand, be involved in their conflict. And they make them solve their conflict.
‘All these people did not have a conflict’. Ukrainian office workers photo by Alex Kotliarskyi.
All these other people did not have a conflict. There are a few individuals that make them feel and see and have the conflict. That’s the problem.
If you have a conflict with that person, you know, you try to solve it. You try to find a solution. But it’s between this person and that person. Or between this group and that group.
You might make others go to solve your conflict. You might even have created it: for the sake of power, status or just the sake of ‘I need to be right, all the time, I will never apologise.’ Even if that person, let’s say, is only twenty percent right and the other is eighty percent right.
The twenty percent person says, ‘You have to fix my conflict with that one.’
And everybody can see, ‘Well, he’s not quite right.’ Or she. Or they. Yeah.
But they have been drawn into it. ‘You are part of my team. You go out and fix it.’
This is not how it works. If there is conflict, or indifference, you can solve it in small groups.
And if you think about peace in the world, you know, back then when there were warriors and tribes: the ones that were part of it, that conflict, or that might have started it, they were in the front row with the others. Fighting it out.
Nowadays, some have a conflict, or an interest for that matter, and they send all the other people. They don’t know what it means to be fighting that conflict because they don’t do it. They get someone else to do it.
They pay them some money to do it. They give them food to do it. They give them status. They clothe them. They give them toys.
I mean the toys you can kill someone with, for example.
And then, you know, some of them are surprised if they have to pay back.
And they pay back with their life or their limbs. Or, you know, with their mind.
Austrian poppy. Photo by Thomas Quaritsch.
They might lose their mind.
They look one hundred percent intact, but they won’t function any more, to put it simply. They’ve lost, they literally lost their mind in the place where they’ve been.
And they have been there, they’ve been paid, to solve someone else’s conflict.
It hits back at them, then. They have to pay with something that’s a real treasure, compared to what they get for it.
And it’s not their own conflict. They just go there because they have to. Someone makes them go.
And some of them, you know, they don’t have to. They go voluntarily because someone tells them about an idea: ‘You owe me. You owe the rest of your community. You’re not worth anything because you owe everybody else. So, you get up and be the one. Show them that you deserve it.’
You understand?
Absolutely. Yep, that’s a good summary of the soldier’s situation.
Well, it happens, I think, in the corporate world, too.
Someone creates a product. Others don’t believe in it. But that person has got enough power or status or whatever and convinces the other people.
‘You have to help me to create that product.’
Same things everywhere. They don’t believe in it. Others make them believe in it.
Sometimes it happens via this paper with the numbers on it.
If you would ask them in a quiet corner, ‘Do you really believe in what you do?’ I bet most of them would say, ’No. But I have to make a living.’
You can live your life. You don’t have to make a living!
You have been given that life to live that life. You can give your life purpose without having to ‘make a living’.
If you are happier with less, you don’t have to agree so much with other people’s stupid ideas. Or conflicts.
[Laughs]
You understand?
Very well.