Coming back to haunt you

I think that one of the greatest challenges we face in life is being honest with ourselves. 

We may be conscious of using some deception or attempts to influence the thoughts of other, but somehow we even go to great lengths to avoid the fact that we may be doing

the same to ourselves.

When my children were small, I always attempted to teach them what I believed would be helpful to them in their lives, although I may not have always realized that there was some variance between what I said and what I did.  You may remember the old saw: “Do as I say, not as I do.”

One of the things I frequently would say to my girls whenever they complained that some rule or outcome or event “wasn’t fair”, was “Who ever told you that life was fair?”, or as an alternative I’d say “Fare is what you pay to the bus driver.”

Recently I’ve moved from being an active worker into the realm of the retired, and as such, have felt that my life should be much more relaxed and free from obligations imposed by the needs and desires of others.

My wife, however, decided to take up employment where she was on call, and could be called at a pre-dawn hour to work.  On a couple of occasions I was awakened and asked to drive her to her place of employment, arising several hours before I would have otherwise.

On one of these times I found myself thinking: “This isn’t fair! Now that I’m retired, why should I have to ‘work’ too, just so my wife could work”?

Then, as I was searching for the answer to that question, I recalled what I had attempted to instil into my children … now I have to decide:  Do I live by my own teachings, or do I decide that I’d been wrong all that time?

Technorati Tags: teachings,honesty,values

The Woman in the other time zone

Last night I had a most fascinating dream.

I dreamed I was beginning an intimate relationship with an exotic woman who told me that she, and her entire family lived in a different time zone. She explained that they did this to constantly remind themselves that they were different from the rest of the people around them.

I became acquainted with her when she came to do some work for me. What I didn't know until we began our relationship was her different time zone. In effect she was living one hour different from me. If I asked her to come to work for me at 8 am she arrived on time, but it was 7am in the world in which she lived and while I thought she finished the day a 4pm, she was leaving at 3pm according to her watch.

She told me, that if she committed herself to me, she would be willing to live in my time zone, but if I wanted to really become accepted by her family I'd have to adopt their time zone.

Of course this was just a dream, but it seems to me that the idea could be expanded into an interesting story or novel. If anyone is inspired by the idea, please feel free to use it ... and let me know: I'd be delighted to read what you come up with.