It is always easier to go downstream than to go upstream!
But have you thought about the true meaning of those words? What It tries to tell us is that we shall live our lives in an easy, non-struggling way. We shall never make life harder than it has to be. Life in itself is easy, but unfortunately many of us seems to think that life must be hard, we must earn good life through hard work, pain and suffering!
That is NOT the way life is meant to be!
Imagine a little brook running down a forest slope. It will certainly encounter rocks, trees, all kinds of obstacles in it's way. How does the brook handle that? Well if the obstacle is small enough to push away it will be pushed away. If the obstacle is too big, too strong for the brooks power then it simply floats around it. The brook simply seeks the easy way!
There is no need to feel pain at all. Sure, sometimes you get into trouble; illness, loss of love, friends etc. But that is only exterior circumstances. What counts is how you deal with hardship and difficult situations. We cannot change or affect the outer circumstanses at all, but we can, and shall, always control our own reactions to those exterior circumstances. Regardsless of what situation we encounter it is our responsability towards ourselves and others to make the absolute best of that particular situation.
I willl give you a simple but good real-life example. I was once on a business trip to Shanghai. A friend and myself where out late one evening and decided to take a walk back to the hotel. None of us were very sure about the direction, but we started off happily along the deserted streets, We walked for half an hour before we confessed to each other, Hey I am completely lost! Well so am I....
Now what to do? Streets were deserted. We had no map, there were no taxis in the street, noone to ask for assistance, no telephone number to the hotel. After some time we met three patrolling policemen. We asked them for directions but quickly found out that they spoke absolutely no english. So no help to find from the Shanghai police force that night! So here is the situation: We were tired, we were lost, we wanted to get back to the hotel, the streets were deserted.So how to react to the situation? Run in circles and cry? Here is what we decided to do: We simply started to walk again, but agreed that whenever we came to a street crossing we should always follow directions from the green men, i.e. simply cross the street when there was a green light! Crazy, eh? Well crazy or not but it worked! We followed this scheme strictly, walked for one more half hour and then recognized some buildings and some shops and understood that we were only a few blocks away from the hotel!
Celebration! Time was well after midnight but of course the bar on our neighboring hotel was open...
My advice to you is to start follow the green men in your life! Live like a brook, when obstacles grow to big in your way you simply make a turn and elegantly float beside it.
Author by Tomas Tilver
http://xango-t2.blogspot.com
Follow the green men
