Before her majesty

Title is a reference to a Puscifer song: Green Valley.

Had a thought earlier today that I'd like to share. Simple premise really, I was thinking about those little situations you have with people, those tiny circumstances that you forget about literally seconds after, situations like when on a side-walk trying to figure out whether or not to turn left or right, when you're at a restaurant table and trying to figure out how much money to pay for your share of the meal, when trying to determine how many slices of pizza to take that falls within acceptable limits of etiquette.

At the time, these thoughts completely take over your mind, sometimes they're uncomfortable, sometimes they trigger negative emotions that you'd rather not deal with. And yet you have to, otherwise you freeze, you deadlock a situation and the situation goes from something really minor to something much bigger. Most people don't have problems with these types of situations, but most people, I've found, do succumb to various anxieties, fears, and de-inflated feelings of self worth that work to truly color our attitudes about the world and those around us. These almost always feel as if we're working actively to cripple ourselves, and people almost always don't like it, but don't know how to move around it.

I find that 'deadlock' is a good way of explaining these situations. Successful people, and I use that term loosely to define virtually any situation that you walk away from with a feeling of accomplishment, seem to have an innate understanding of how to circumvent these situations, and I've come to theorize that the only way to truly walk away from any situation with any degree of success is be malleable. To be able to go with the punches. To be able to walk around obstacles rather than mull over why they're there in the first place and why that's so unfair.

In short... success is determined by accommodation. Judo, usually associated with the martial arts, actually means "The gentle way", and its core philosophy is to follow the path of least resistance to victory, never to be impeded. Alan Watts actually wrote a very interesting article about this philosophy which you can read over yonder. Also, if you want to have an innate understanding of how to achieve true mastery and victory over obstacles, and especially if you want to know more about the principles of group coherence, go read The Art of War... just do it.

The world's an ever-changing place, it's quickly heading towards a technological event horizon, social networking is finding ever creative ways to increase inter-connectivity and exponentially increasing humanity's collective knowledge and capacity for understanding. The business world is currently fighting an earthquake, where the bigger buildings are throwing as much money as they can at securing their foundation, but in the end, the newer buildings will pave the way to a brighter and ever more lucrative future. I can't imagine a more unstable future if I tried, and I certainly can't imagine a better time to learn the principles of malleability.

Anyway... exciting times, hope we can all make the best of it.