This was the day I made sure to find as much to do as possible outdoors so to enjoy this preciously beautiful day. After about three hours out working in the sun, I’m probably going to look a little more pink in the morning. Wicked me happened to notice a businessman Downtown who’s only seen me in my real estate togs. I purposefully stopped and walked over to him just to see what his reaction would be when seeing me in my grubbiest of work clothes. I know he was a little shocked but didn’t want to say how different I appeared in a gardener’s work clothes. When you stop to think about it, most of our first subliminal impressions are based on superficials.
While our doing my manual labor this morning, I began thinking about some of the people I’ve known over the years and how some have changed for the better, and others for the worse. I then began analyzing several of those that’ve grown more whole as well as those that have become more fractured. The threads of similarity I found were a bit disturbing. Those that’ve grown more whole seem to have come to the realization that money and their so-call legacies are not everything. They’ve pretty much placed their families and friends on the same level as the rest of humanity. I’ve also found that when they give to any forms of charity, they give freely without any fanfare or calls for recognition. Most of all, in these times I give them a great golden star for being able to resist the pressures and temptations of selfishness.
As always there must be the opposites, so on the flip side, I see people justifying nearly everything imaginable in their business as well as personal worlds to lift up themselves along with their “chosen” families and friends. Every time I hear someone talking about the legacies they’re building for their children, my stomach turns. Like one of the old writers once said, “Inheritance should be abolished.” In reality, many selfish people use legacy as an excuse for greed. Once a long time ago an erratically eccentric woman yelled, “I’m protecting the legacy I’m building for my children!” Wow! If she only could see perhaps one year past her death. That’s when the proof will be in the pudding.
Over these long years of working with the public, there’s a commonality of friendships within each of these groups. So if you really want to gain a little insight as to which group a given person belongs, look past their immediate circles and there you’ll find others of like-mindedness. Like the old saying goes, “Birds of a feather flock together.” Are people hard-coded to be in one group or another? Absolutely not. We are all in a constant state of possibilities. There’ve been those that’ve have crossed over to opposite sides, and it usually happens when there are intervening circumstances where a strong player or two arrive on the scene. We must be diligent in making sure that what we wish for is really what we want, because poorly thought out wishes and goals can be disastrous in the long run when they suddenly become manifest.
