Your Element Is Air

You dislike conflict, and you've been able to rise above the angst of the world. And when things don't go your way, you know they'll blow over quickly. Easygoing, you tend to find joy from the simple things in life. You roll with the punches, and as a result, your life is light and cheerful. You find it easy to adapt to most situations, and you're an open person. With you, what you see is what you get... and people love that!

What's Your Element?

Usolicited advice to no one in particular:
Choices. It's all about choices - making them and living with them. If you are not where you want to be, realize that you made choices to get you where you are. No one dropped your life into your lap. You collected it, configured it, as you went along. Maybe it was passive, you allowed it to happen instead of actively creating it, BUT if so, you chose to be passive. If you don't like it... change it... make new choices. And remember, you can always choose to be content with what you have, where you are, and who you are. That doesn't mean you have to stop changing or making choices. It just means you need to find a comfortable base to work from. If you're not there, get there, make it. Find out what you need and reconfigure your life to get it. If you are miserable, you are choosing to be miserable, because you are choosing not to change what is making you miserable OR you are choosing to feel miserable about your circumstances, whether they justify it or not. Accept it or change it. Either way, the process always begins with you, here and now. Always.

It may be worn out, but it's still wisdom: There are three ways to deal with life and even find your peace in it...
Accept the things you cannot change.
Change the things you can.
Know the difference.

Before the year is out... I believe there will be smoke from a chimney for the first time in 27 years, signaling not only a changing of the guard, but the remaking of the entire edifice. If they want to continue on, they must embrace the reality of diversity, which has been ignored, even quashed, from the time the structure was built. This change is not yet written, but without major rennovation, the old structure will collapse.

This is not only true of the institution in question, but all such institutions. Religious, scientific, and political edifices have all become very frail, though they still seem solid on the surface. However, their structure has been disassembling, more rapidly as time passes. Soon the frameworks will be shown in their true hollow condition, like light through lace, and prove too insubstantial to stand. Their facades will no longer be enough to sustain them.

But this does not bode complete anarchy. Structure has been developing, just not in support of the outdated frameworks. When the facades collapse, the new structures will be revealed, already in existence, already functioning, for over time they have come into being to fill the needs left by the gradual failure of the inflexible obsolete forms. They will work even better when they no longer have to fight 'the establishment'.

There will be debris to clear out from the collapse, but in cleaning up, new connections will be found, further supporting the newer more flexible systems. No longer will we build from stone too heavy to move, nor direct from perches too high to see life on the ground. We'll work more organically, more dynamically, so that change can be made as change is needed, instead of years after it would have been useful.

Religion, Science, and Politics will learn they are all looking at the same picture and will each find ways to describe it so they can understand each other, and allow each other to exist without turmoil, and even work together eventually. This change will of course take much longer than merely a year, but the fire for this has been set and we'll all be better for it... when the smoke clears.

PS - Yes, I am predicting the current Pope will die this year and that his successor will likely be Arinze, the "Black Pope" from Nigeria.

The times they are a'changing....

Best wishes for the New Year to one and all. I didn't make any New Year's resolutions this year. I rarely do. I learned long ago that I don't stick to them very well. The only one I recall being serious about was the one I made when I was 30 yrs old. I vowed not to get married at 30. I was aware that a lot of people go through a life evaluation around 30 yrs old and they sometimes make dumb decisions based on someone else's goals or benchmarks. I was aware that 30 was kind of an old maid deadline. I preferred to stay single than to give in to such nonsense. Damned if I was going to let that sort of pressure get me stuck in a marriage that might or might not be right for me.

I hated being 30. It was like a bad joke. No one is really 30. They're pretending to be 29 or they're something else, but not precisely 30. I was glad to turn 31. At that point, it was like the pressure was off. Anyone who thought I should be whatever by 30 had given up? ;) I however felt like I'd managed to dodge all the bullets and got on with my life!

No idea what got me into that tangent, but such is the way with quicksilver. *grin* You never know where it's gonna flow...