Category Archives: Archived Articles

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Empathy

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18

Empathy isn’t sympathy necessarily. It’s the ability to recognize the presence of an emotional state even if you don’t understand why it’s present or what caused it. A society, a country, a world cannot grow closer together if the parts that create it don’t come to recognize what makes it. Empathy is a great beginning to making that growth start.

“That’s not my problem.”

“Those aren’t my people”

“Why should I care?”

These are the thoughts that counteract the very action required to start to care. We should care because we are human and in many cases if we can replace the object of scrutiny with our own image we might begin to see why it matters.

But that’s hard to do for various reasons. It’s not an easy thing to take ourselves out of our own comfort zone and to force ourselves to be uncomfortable for a second. Sometimes that second is all it takes to learn a little bit of empathy.

To realize sometimes what’s really important in the moment isn’t always about ourselves.

-Opinionated Man

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Checks and balances

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6

Life really isn’t about checks and balances, at least not to me. I view it more like an actual board game and sometimes the only move is to check and check and check till it’s a stalemate and you get some time to breath.

People often think being overly aggressive or always on the move is a bad thing. For many of us that incline to this nature it is more about not finding ourselves stagnant and comfortable. It’s when you get comfortable and think that nothing can touch you that the storm normally appears.

I’m finding that applies a lot to my current work life. It’s a forever game of catering to the idealism that I need to constantly prove what I’m worth. It’s a tiresome weave of doing and proving you are doing that really wears most people out. Some might say that’s corporate life, but I believe it’s really about how that corporation wishes you to live. You cannot thrive and grow in an environment where you are always wondering if you aren’t good enough. Eventually you lose the checks and balances mantra and start to only go one way or the other. Then it is either retreat or check, check, check till you are checked out.

One begins to wonder if it is worth it.

-Opinionated Man

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She

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4

She’ll cry a thousand cries but never shed a tear.

I’ll wait for her a million moments or maybe just a year.

It’ll come, will it come, our time just to be.

Away from what takes us away, our love will never flee.

We dance the night, come stay the night, laying fears to rest.

I hold her hand, we finally hold hands, and find our very best.

Come stay with me and we’ll finally be better than an unshed tear.

Looking back, don’t look back, walk forward just to be.

-OM

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