Once, folk drank a little coffee now and then. Now, we are all edgy caffeine addicts, juddering and jiggling round the cappuccino counter. Well, some of us are. Others prefer energy drinks. Fizzing fancy potions designed to keep us all ‘alert’. Alert, perhaps. Agitated, restless and slightly paranoid… for sure! Where’s the cup of clear refreshing inspiration, drawn fresh from the fountain of wisdom? We think we need something extra. Really, we need less of all we think we need, more confidence in what we already have. And in who we already are.
We make agreements with each other. Sometimes we spell out terms and agreements. We sign documents. We shake hands. Sometimes, we do it all on a nod of the head and a look in the eye. It makes little difference. For as long as there’s the will to keep an arrangement alive, it will succeed. As soon as there’s doubt, change will swiftly follow. As with maintaining relationships, so with forming them in the first place.
It is never a good idea to make a commitment that you cannot keep. Sometimes, though, no matter how much integrity you have or how carefully you make your promises, circumstances change. Factors that you could never have allowed for arise. Then, what are you supposed to do? Force yourself to live a lie? Try to reconcile two opposing imperatives? Or just question your reality? No human being will ever manage to live their life without some degree of inconsistency. There’s no shame in changing.
If it were always easy to do the right thing, then why would anyone ever do the wrong one? The trouble is, not only is it often hard to be morally and spiritually correct, it is even harder to know what on earth those terms actually mean. Once we get away from extreme and obvious examples, we find many definitions of ‘the right thing’ and they could all be equally misguided to become “that wrong thing”. Without the wrong side, we can not define what is that right thing we always need to do. Sometimes we might end up doing the wrong thing for right reasons.