Hello! I wanted to share this passage below from a daily reading web-site I subscribe to because it offers a powerful description of the 7th Power…how easily it can be lost…and, therefore, how easily it can be found…
“One of the most common ways in which we imprison ourselves is by comparing ourselves to others and, upon finding our situation inferior, placing blame — on circumstances that we feel are unfair, on the people we believe are responsible for those circumstances, or on some abstract element of fate we think is at play. The self-defeating catch is that we often end up judging our circumstancesagainst others’ outcomes, forgetting that hard work and hard choices are the transmuting agent between circumstance and outcome.
Joseph Brodsky captured this with piercing precision in the greatest commencement address of all time, cautioning: “A pointed finger is a victim’s logo… No matter how abominable your condition may be, try not to blame anything or anybody: history, the state, superiors, race, parents, the phase of the moon, childhood, toilet training, etc. The menu is vast and tedious, and this vastness and tedium alone should be offensive enough to set one’s intelligence against choosing from it. The moment that you place blame somewhere, you undermine your resolve to change anything.”
Luna touches on this perilous tendency as she considers the origin of Should:
How often do we place blame on the person, job, or situation when the real problem, the real pain, is within us? And we leave and walk away, angry, frustrated, and sad, unconsciously carrying the same Shoulds into a new context — the next relationship, the next job, the next friendship — hoping for different results.”
Here is the link to the full article…
Thank you for being you! Wopila Tanka!
Kevin