“BURSTING WATER BALLOON” by Nigel Donald

You can’t change people’s minds. Not intentionally, not forcefully, not willfully. You can only do what you have to do, and wait for the result or move on with your life. Action does not guarantee happiness, I read somewhere once, but there is no happiness without action.

What do you do when you’ve wronged someone, however very little or very much? You ask for forgiveness. You seek to set things straight. You know there will be pain either way, but your experience also tells you that pain, like pleasure, may come in doses. It’s the same reason you don’t go ahead and give yourself left and right at whimsy for the sheer pleasure of the moment; you save yourself, your heart, your soul, your emotion,your love, your very being, for someone special. You postpone temporary pleasure—shallow and dull, or solid and fleeting, however you choose to live it—in return for a promise of a more permanent, more real (in your opinion) happiness. Just so, then, you raise your chin and choose to undergo pain NOW –pain in this life for compensation in the next, pain in this moment for reprieve in the next, pain in this day for peace tomorrow.  Ironic in its paradoxical nature, isn’t it? I suppose all those philosophers spoke true. Pain and pleasure are what make the world go round. And before you disagree, think about it: isn’t love the truest pleasure?

Perceptions are a funny thing. I could go on for whole books about perceptions. Because no two are alike—just think about your perception of yourself, versus everyone else’s (whom you know, whom you think you know, who you don’t know but they know you… etc…) perception of you.Wild, isn’t it? What I’m trying to say, and trying to grasp my mind around, is the fact that you can’t change or even KNOW someone’s else’s full and real perceptive on any issue, particularly a personal and emotional issue (the trickiest, most gray-zone issue of all…). Think of just thing: someone may see you in a light that you never saw them seeing you at all—a light that never even existed for you, because from the very first day you had told them (whether they believed you or not) that it was daytime and not night.

And so what you do is you do what you feel you must do. You do the thing that causes others the least pain—NOW—knowing that it will cause them some pain. The pain is inevitable, remember: the key is to provide others with more pleasure than pain, but always keeping a long-term view, a worldly view, a here-today-and-here-tomorrow view. That takes wisdom, and patience, and maturity, and—no, I didn’t forget—pain.

Do you have what it takes? Do I? One can only hope. To do good, and to sleep and wake with a clean conscience is, I think, a sign of a life worth living.

~Angreek87