Patience

"He that can have patience can have what he will." - Benjamin Franklin 1706-1790, Inventor, A Founding Father of the United States of America

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To wait for something can be very difficult. Jumping into something irrationally is much simpler but can have drastic consequences. To be patient is to look into the unknown and have the faith that whatever we are looking forward to, will come. That is very difficult to do because at any given moment, there is no guarantee that our desired event will come. Some things can be foreseen by those who have the experience and when their wisdom believes whatever we are waiting for will come, then we really should consider heeding their advice. Be patient - it will come.

Smile

"I've never seen a smiling face that was not beautiful." - Author Unknown

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Look around us. There are a lot of unattractive people, not because they are ugly, but because they are missing smiles on their faces. I am just as guilty of this as any other person. I often find it difficult to smile because of all the doom and gloom out there today. But what I have noticed is that when I do smile, there is an inexplicable sense of beautifulness in me, that inevitably radiates towards those around me. This causes more smiles and more beautifulness, and even the doom and gloom turns to bloom.

Dead End

“Corner a dog in a dead-end street and it will turn and bite” - Chinese Proverb

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At a psychological level, all conflicts in this world stem from the feeling of one or all sides (usually all) that they have been cornered and have no choice but to react. This reaction then leads to and intensification of the feeling of being cornered on the other side, leading to more reaction, leading to more bad feelings, leading to more reaction, and so on. This will go on and on until one side devestates the other(s), one side is devestated, or all sides are devestated. Usually all sides get devestated in some senseless way. The result is a dead end for all, figuratively and literally.

What if all sides were to give each other some breathing room? As the saying goes, "throw the dog a bone." If we treat all sides as parts of a whole and each side makes a bit of compromise and contributes to the whole, the resulting sum of all the parts must by necessity equal to something greater than all the original pieces.

Easier said than done obviously because there is too much pride, too much pain, and too much history.