Page 46 - November 2021

COURAGE
I am Speaking for myself here, and for no one else.
😲 I have been reminded lately about what courage is or is not, and I have been giving a lot of thought to it as a result.
Things are not always what they may initially appear to be. Before one charges off and makes up ones mind about someone else’s actions, it is always wise to consider circumstances that you or they may not consider, at least consciously.
In any case........
We all start out in life at the same place, but our decisions more than anything else decide where we end up, and those decisions also either improve or impede our ability to make free decisions later down the road.
By the way, it is seldom your circumstances that determine where you will be in life. Many people want you to believe that...it makes you a victim and it puts you at risk of being controlled by someone else...never be a victim always know you cannot control what happens to you, only how you react.........By the way this may not apply if a piano falls from the sky onto your head...then I think it does not matter what you do, you can only react in
one way!)😵
I say this from a point of view of having had a lot of very difficult situations in my life, some of my own making and some maybe not so much, but in every case, I and I alone had to make decisions which I had to live with for the rest of my life. Sometimes these decisions only affected me, but more often then not they affected a lot of other people. Sometimes I was well equipped to understand the consequences, and sometimes I was not, and did not realize what some of the outfall would be ahead of time. That is life!
FEATURE ARTICLE NOVEMBER 2021
I believe I can say with some confidence that, mostly, I made decisions that left options open to me in future. I made decisions that did not make me too dependant on someone else’s arbitrary decisions about me. Believe me, some of those decisions were extremely difficult, and had life long consequences.
You see sometimes decisions are not always about having courage or not, but what we decide also hinges on what we perceive the consequence of that decision might be, at the time we make it. What I mean is, if you are highly dependant on something or someone else who is not equally dependant on you, then you are subject to their whims and they can control you without any consequence for them.
What the heck am I talking about.
“WHAT THE HECK AM I TALKING ABOUT”
I getting to that.
Let’s say you go the the corner store, to buy a loaf of bread. Well the store keeper is sure nice to you, he wants your business, and you are sure nice to the store keeper because you want his bread. See, mutual dependance. Now think about if the store keeper was being forced to give you the bread for free. Do you think the store keeper would care about how nice he was to you, how would you feel, and act toward the store keeper who is giving you this “free” bread. Now we all know exceptions to this little story, there are those angels out their that have a higher calling and they do act differently, but most times they do!
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