About Management of Lifeà
As summer sheds its last tear before vanishing for another year, fate keeps
sweeping through life, surprising us in areas where we did not expect any
change. Friends, celebrities, enemies and strangers are with us today,
inhaling the anticipation of a dawning fall, not realizing at all that soon
they may receive their call.
While we wander around through a stuffy town on a sunny day, many of us
recognize the refreshing laughter of children in playgrounds, and most of us
are unable to escape the feelings of envy when witnessing flirting couples
on the beach. A few of us cherish the warmth while it is still within reach.
And we let it overcome us: the world situation in which the rich countries
are still domineering the poor ones with their imperialistic policies; the
business climate in which mammoth organizations gobble up smaller ones
without even standing still at the thought that they thereby oftentimes
destroy a well-oiled, smoothly running company culture by relentlessly
exchanging it for an impersonal hierarchic system; and the societal climate
in which class, status, and success are measured through a favorable
combination of color, gender, and heritage.
And all of that in a world where the same sun rises for everyone; the same
cold sets in there, where seasons are the normal trend, and the same natural
disasters trouble all those living in the same geographic area. But that
does not seem to make any difference for our civilization, because we refuse
to learn from the animal kingdom. We perceive ourselves as standing at least
one step higher than the multiple-legged ones, and we therefore insist in
establishing unnatural standards of which we know very well that they
disrupt the entire ecosystem.
Now, when following the international news broadcasts we have a choice: we
can either laugh out loud or bawl for a while when analyzing the actions of
leading players in the global arena. The United States, for instance, has
ceased to educate upcoming generations about the necessity of participating
on the global forum. Business undertakers have therefore stared themselves
blind on the local market in the past 50 years or more, and never looked
outside, so that they have turned into a na´ve crowd today when it comes to
exploring new markets, and whereby the country is now looking at an
embarrassing import-export imbalance.
When considering global interactions we see that the countries that are
receiving economical support are usually those, which are either located
strategically for the better situated ones to achieve their economical
goals, or offer an abundance of cheap resources or labor to these very
shrewd rulers. If they cannot offer these advantages the chance is big that
they will always remain in a lower ranked position on the world forum, and
remain repressed from an honorable place in the line of the distinguished.
The people that are eligible for moral, financial, or material support,
finally, are also those that are "blessed" with a certain set of
pre-formulated criteria, rather than those who need the support and want to
do their very best for it. That means, thus, that if you donÆt fit the pre-
formulated picture you will either never achieve anything, or you will have
to develop an enormous dosage of willpower and personality in order to get
where you want to be. And when that happens, the world has transformed yet
another inhabitant into a merciless player who will have no empathy for the
weaker ones because no one had any empathy for him or her when he or she was
on the struggling end.
In a disheartened moment one can wonder if the hell we are so often scared
with is not right here: you have to fulfill your assignments and, depending
on your behavior you will either rise up to a higher dimension after your
departure, repeat your last level of existence, or return in an even lower
dimension than before. Oh well, I guess IÆm just rambling here as I canÆt
possibly know what itÆs all about anyway. I just recall ever reading
somewhere that a best-selling author suspected some highly civilized
societies from the past, that are known to have suddenly vanished from the
face of the earth, to have been elevated in their entirety into a higher
dimension.
But all theories aside, some facts unchangeably keep presenting themselves
to us: days are still turning into nights; seasons keep following each
other, developments keep progressing, whether we experience them as positive
or negative from our specific point of view, and everything keeps dying off.
The fate of a leaf, an insect, or a human being, is in great lines similar:
it represents a road from birth to death: sometimes short, sometimes long;
sometimes exciting and turbulent, and sometimes calm and borderline boring.
The most important perception to hold on to in the management of life may
be, that we should know when to measure with different standards and when to
measure with only one. People are equal: they deserve equal treatment and
equal chances. However: the way to approach an individual, a work
environment, or a potential market necessitates different approaches, since
characters, organizational cultures, and country customs vary: Look before
you leap.
Joan Marques, Burbank, September 12, 2003
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About the Author:
Joan Marques, holds an MBA, is a doctoral candidate in Organizational
Leadership, and a university instructor in Business and Management in
Burbank, California. You may visit her web site at www.joanmarques.com
Joan's manual "Feel Good About Yourself," a six part series to get you over
the bumps in life and onto success, can be purchased and downloaded at:
http://www.non-books.com/FeelGoodSeries.html-----------------------------------------------------
