Of course the cure came with the sobering pill of over borrowed, over stretched and out of time. But life went on despite the hopelessness of the situation. In fact in relative to recent history, like seventy five years or less, these are still the best years of our lives despite this latest recession.
A world perspective: Most people today were too young to have been drafted or even born to go to war in 1939, the daddy of all wars where over 60 million people died in trying to kill each other, which does not include the appendages of the children left without fathers or the young women without their partners. Mortgages were not seen to be that important as life itself did not seem to be a good bet that you would be around to have one. Still the world turned.
To put into another perspective, the twin towers atrocity would have been a quiet day on the western front during that war. In fact the practise of being happy is all about perspective, and it is that view that will make or break you.
Take common sense. It would be great if it was that common but it is not. What should be obvious if not simplicity itself rarely is unless we are ready to accept it. It is the barriers long practised that refuses to let us see the bigger picture for people are pre-occupied looking out rather than looking inwardly to see why the optics they are looking through are so blurred.
For example, take your voice. Rarely does it sound as good to you when you listen to a recording of it as it may sound to another. When we talk naturally without guard, when that is played back in the same way, the instinct is to change the pitch and tone if not the very words itself because ‘that was not when you really meant to say’ even though that is what you said.
Visual this scene: Two men are standing on the outermost edge of the cliffs of Moher in County Clare. One man looks down at the crashing waves and jagged rocks hundreds of feet below him and casually munches on a bar of chocolate, while the other man finds his heart rate has just gone up a notch or two and stands back wrenching and reeling while admonishing himself for being so stupid for standing at the edge of the cliff in the first place. Thats perspective at work. It is correcting the optics of that perspective a little and adjusting and tweaking the angles a bit more is when it can become more clearer. When we are ready to begin this workout is when we become our own best students which shows, if nothing else, that the student can only really learn when indeed they are ready.
Another scene: In the movie Unforgiven, one of the last scenes in it is where the character Will Munny (Clint Eastwood) has his shotgun trained on the morally skewed and already badly wounded sheriff, Little Bill Dagget (Gene Hackman).
For Bill to be shot at all was more than a surprise for life seemed destined and promised to him, at least in his mind, which made his dying declaration to Munny this: “ I don’t deserve this…..to die like this…. I was building a house.” Munny replied: “Deserve has got nothing do with it.”
Dagger then said bravely: “I’ll see you in hell William Munny”. To which Munny dryly replied “Yeah” then cocked the shot gun and fired point blank at what was left of Dagger. This was again perspective at work: Dagget’s self belief of what was reality against Munny’s belief of what really is. Who was closer to the truth of what that means?
Barry Clifford
To be continued……….
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