Expect a Miracle

Too often we expect the worst and that's exactly what we experience. A business deal doesn't go right. We lose faith and patience. Our trust in the transaction is lost. Then, a partner says let's give it one more chance. There is no need to rush to litigation according to our partner. Against our better judgment we wait just a little longer.

Then out of the blue the unexpected happens. The other party to the transaction actually performs as mandated by the contract. And, rather than spending the next 18 months and who knows how much in legal fees pursuing inadequate remedies, the deal works.

So the lesson is have a little faith, have a lot of patience and choose to expect a miracle. Sometimes the outcome is positive.

How much time and energy to we waste day to day choosing to expect the worst?

Why not choose to expect to be pleasantly surprised. Why not expect a miracle?

What really do we have to lose?

Peaceful Easy Feeling

Imagine all the energy we collectively waste in trivial pursuit of real and imagined sleights, hassles, insults, feuds, grudges and political disputation.

All this was brought to the Rainmakers immediate attention yesterday afternoon by a close encounter while ambling across a street in a cross walk with a small red car being driven quite recklessly by a young man on a cell phone in Arlington, Virginia. Evasive action was required before the obliviously distracted driver realized he had a helpless pedestrian in his sights.

The surprising thing isn't that the heart got a good old fashioned aerobic jump start, or that there was one quite contrite driver once awareness kicked in. The surprising thing is the emotion experienced by your pedestrian writer. Rather than road rage or even anger the reaction was one of giddy relief at escaping injury or even death. It was a momentary celebration of staying alive that has lasted overnight and well into the next day, reminding the Rainmaker of the old lyric by Rare Earth, "I just want to celebrate another day of living."

This reaction obviously surprised the concerned driver as well as several passers by who found the lack of anger wholly unexpected.

All this leads one to recognize that forgiveness is indeed a virtue and that having well and truly forgiven those who offend us, do us wrong or make us angry for whatever reason leads to a, with apologies to the rock group the Eagles, "Peaceful Easy Feeling."

That isn't a bad place to be. In fact it is infinitely preferable to a hospital or worse.

We Get What We Ask For

An alternative title for this blog is Visualize World Peace. Many of us hate war, poverty, hunger, waste, paper money and taxes. Depending on our particular emphasis we pick one or more of these to actively oppose. We become anti war or anti poverty or tax resisters. Most of us probably wonder why if we want peace we still have war. Especially when most people agree with us. There is a clear majority in America for peace. There is a clear majority in the American Congress for peace. Around the world there is a consensus that peace is better than war. Yet war persists. American defense expenditures are more than the all rest of the world collectively spends. What's wrong with this picture?

The same can be said for the other issues listed above as well.

The reason is that by being anti war or anti tax we buy into the reality of war and the reality of tax. Being opposed to something locks us into the reality in which that which is opposed must necessarily continue to exist to facilitate the opposition.

Thus neither the War on Poverty nor the War on Drugs can ever be won. When bad economic policies precipitate a crash, it makes no sense to repeat those policies with even more money to alleviate the crash, yet that is what has happened in the past few weeks.

To attain world peace or anything else we must move beyond war. Resistance is futile. If we want change we must, as Gandhi said, "Be the change."

This is why The Rainmaker boldly predicted that regardless of the outcome of the upcoming election, nothing much will really change.