friends

Civility

No matter how much we may try we will run across people that we do not like. There are probably many reasons for this, but no matter how much you might believe that it is your duty to be liked or like, it is not. Lying about it will only last so long. All facades fail eventually.

It is better to embrace the truth. Face the reason(s) head on. Be honest with yourself, and if necessary with the person that you do not care for. Nothing new may come of it. Nothing may change, there is a chance of that, but truth can provide some comfort.

What is important is civility. Civility does not require us to like everyone or even most people. It does require us to be courteous, it may require us to minimize the time spent with these people. But no matter: be courteous, be polite, but be honest.

Civilization is not based upon amiability but it is based upon common courtesy.

Those Things We Do

“You know what you’ve got.” a friend once said to me. Such a statement is not an epiphany. It is a process that takes time and understanding, understanding what is actually important rather than what we want to be important.

We all have a finite amount of time. What we do with this time is up to us. But in order to realize this takes time. It is a puzzle-play if thought about but if ignored we often find ourselves at a lost and surprised at the end of the days, weeks, and years that we’ve lived.

“Where did time go?” we might ask.

So how do we go about not wasting the precious time that we have? The things that we have should afford us the best use of our time. The things that we think we need should help us understand our time better. And we should experience as much as possible with the time that we have. All the while we think we have time but we don’t know how much time we’ve got.

The answer is fairly simple. We need to rid ourselves of those things, those acts, and those people that waste our time or are not worthy of the precious time that we have. In short,

To “know what [we’ve] got we must get rid of those things that we don’t need.