Rising to the Challenge
There is no good or bad news -- except how one responds to those challenges. One can go into a irrecoverable downward spiral, or use it as a springboard for getting where one has never gone before. In that way, every crisis is a challenge to be the best one can be -- based on everything else they've ever done before. Thus the present implies the past -- as well as indicates the future. It is not just one more thing unrelated and unconnected to every other. That is the context of every meaningful and successful action -- and not as a lot of failing people think, that they'll be the million in a million. The million is the success -- proven time and time again.
Nevertheless, it is difficult for a few to believe that there is a reason things happen as they do -- rather than the majority is always wrong, and they alone, know all the answers. Most of life knows all the answers -- and those that persist in their stubbornness, usually aren't around for very much longer. Eventually, they just run out of chances. That's why it is so important to get it right the first time -- and every time, in everything one does -- because that alone, qualifies them for the next.
But if they just fritter away their opportunities, invariably they run out of options, choices, decisions -- and then have everything dictated to them, as the only way it can be. You don't want to get to that point -- when all the choices and opportunities are behind one, and only a certain rut lies in front of one. That is also burning one's bridges behind them -- so they have nowhere else to go. On the other hand, the wise tactician, multiplies the possibilities and options before them. They grow their life -- rather than killing it, and do so until the day they inexplicably perish. But that is not part of the plan -- to bring about their own demise, destruction and death.
Those are Darwin's losers; the winners find a better way -- even if they have to create it themselves. When those individuals do, the whole of the species is advanced -- and not just the one over every other -- in a brutish struggle for scarce resources and survival -- as the only way they think life can be. At best, it is just a repetition of the past -- and never breaking any new ground. Of course, such societies have no future. They have to create it -- and not just repeat their glorious past.
That is the challenge of life and living: one must get better. The alternative, is to only get worse -- and it does not matter how many others one drags down with them, or exploits for a better position. It is still a sinking ship -- no matter how they rearrange the deck chairs. The challenge of every individual, is also the challenge of civilization -- with the fate of humankind hanging in the balance. But all actions are not created equal. Some matter much more -- because that is the spirit and understanding they are undertaken with. Others think that nothing they do matters -- and is of consequence, and so they live their lives that way -- without any significance -- "sound and fury, signifying nothing."
It's not even a good game. Life is just one entertainment and diversion after another -- or they are interminably bored -- mostly with themselves. Every opportunity is lost. They rise to no challenge -- and pretty soon, it is all over. Those challenges don't have to be big things; they are more likely to be personal challenges and milestones -- that they fail to answer, time and time again. But life is no other. It is entirely personal -- and not about what somebody more important and well-known does, or does not do.
When one is only talking about what others do and don't do -- as the reason for success or failings in their own lives, all is lost. That person has lost the significance and power of their own action. They are the pawns in the game of life.
Sometimes the Worst That Can Happen...
-- can be the best thing that ever happened. It is moments like those to force one to go beyond themselves -- to where they've never been before, or even imagined possible. Particularly so if what they think they have, cannot get any better -- and there is only worse, which surely cannot be all there is in this expanding universe. But any loss, is regarded by the status quo, as a threat -- even if it represent an opportunity to improve and get better -- often, infinitely better.
That is the progress and evolution of life -- if one merely goes with that flow, rather than demanding that the whole world stop, and maintain their particular status quo -- or status. Life doesn't work that way; it waits for no one, as much as we are singularly pleased with where we are -- and thinking it should always remain this way. The test of any life is not that it remains one way "forevermore," but that it relentlessly moves forward -- largely by overcoming what seems like insurmountable obstacles.
Even the bad news, is just information for what one has to do now -- rather than dwelling on the good news of how things used to be great at some imaginary and wonderful time in the past. That will serve one no good purpose -- but waste their valuable time reliving the past, when obviously, the present challenge is the only hope for a better future that may be only realizing how the world has changed for the better -- since one last assessed these things.
The present crisis forces them to look -- at the other ways of doing things, and not merely doubling their efforts in ways that are no longer working. That invariably means change -- for the better, rather than the worse they convinced themselves was the only alternative to what they are presently doing -- often with disastrous results, that predictably, brought them to their current crisis. At some point, they have to wake up -- or go into irreversible decline. That is the law of nature.
Those for whom that is not true, will increasingly withdraw from engagement, and retreat to their memories of better times -- insisting that nothing better is possible, and the future only dire -- and growing more so daily. That's obviously not a mindset that will flourish and prevail -- but predictably shrinks along with that vision of the world as a shrinking pie -- with all the good pieces already taken.
But if one lives long enough in this world, it is obviously getting richer -- and even those things that even the richest and most powerful in their time could not have -- is what is readily available to most, if not all. "Money" is somewhat of a limiting factor -- but even more so, is the refusal to consider all the options -- including and especially life as we've never imagined possible for ourselves. That may be exactly what we have to do -- but dismiss off hand, and obviously if we do that, nothing else will make much sense.
That is frequently the explanation of the most troubled and hopeless people on the planet -- that they dismiss the most obvious, and then develop elaborate explanations and justifications for continuing to do what they are doing -- with such disastrous results. That is the dysfunctional lifestyle and adaptations -- hoping for a different result. Of course it will end badly -- often tragically. These things don't just happen -- but are made more likely to, and then the reporters will depict it as a random event.
It's not so random -- just as good fortune is more than just winning the lottery -- that frequently turns out to be the worst thing that ever happened for those unprepared for that windfall. Within a short time, they are even more impoverished than they were before -- because their problem was not money or the lack of it, but their inability to manage any amount effectively and intelligently. In that way, it is like any other resource -- time, money, energy, thought and exercise.
It doesn't just happen. Life is what one makes of it. It can be better or worse. But first, one has to find out what is out there -- and not be content to think that everything they knew 50 years ago, is everything there is to know -- and that is what they wish to return to -- as the best of times. The world is not like that -- anymore.
