Our April showers should indeed bring fresh May flowers to desktops this coming month. I’ll be looking forward to Lilacs and Irises in bloom as the smell of both of them is quite intoxicating. I’ll always remember the bed of Lilacs my grandmother had and when in bloom I used to go out and kneel down near the blossoms and get my nose as close to them and try to get the maximum scent as possible. A patch I noticed several years ago at a clients house was the absolute most vibrant deep violet. It was as if the color came from one of those color spectrum charts. One must experience a living color like that in person to get the real visual effect. Speaking of plants, I hope everyone got their potatoes and cold crop seeds planted before our rains started. The amount we’ve received thus far should be enough moisture to get them to germinate.
I wish everyone the best of luck with their flower and vegetable gardens this season.
Too many times I’ve heard people use the words, “Let’s move on.” when attempting to get someone to forgive and forget some wrong that was intentionally done to another. I have a very dear friend who lives out of State who shares the same idea about this business of moving on. Some time after the beginning of our friendship we were talking about how some people continue to undermine others in spite of their saying they’re sorry for whatever they’d done in the past. He said, “After forgiving someone once and possibly twice and they continue on their path of crossing that invisible line of mine, I simply cut them loose and walk away for good.” His idea about walking away for good is commendable in that he sets standards and lives by them. When we continue to forgive those who do bad erodes our own standards of how we treat others as well as maintaining our personal self-worth. I thought about this after visiting with a client about someone who made a terribly insulting low offer on a property and used every form of flimsy at best justification for submitting that type of offer. My take on this form of social behavior is that when people do questionable things and get away with them, it gives them the incentive to do even more. Trying to cut people off at their knees in negotiating creates for a feeling of being on a battle field. It’s an attempt to conquer and reap the spoils of war with no regard for the victims of that war. It goes right back to where the real calling, or finesse should I say, of being a good Realtor; it’s work at having an above the table process of negotiation. By now I’d say there are shelves full of books written about the art of negotiation. Some of them I’ve paged through have not given me the least bit of inspiration simply because they tend to encourage the idea of creating an upper hand by manipulation. I really do dislike that word due to it smelling of someone being the controlling taker and the other being the unwary giver. During a late appointment, the young couple across my desk were quite surprised by my candor in saying, “Some believe they can get away with things with me and at times they do, but for some karmatic reason, the movements of the universe always seems to give back to them doubly the injury they intentionally created.
Perhaps there’s an invisible mechanism at work that once an injustice takes place, the machine goes into motion and creates a counterbalancing knee jerk. What do you think?
