No disclaimers, please.

I'm in the process of building my business. I want to take it from a one-man operation and turn it into a respectable establishment, i.e. I want to graduate from being a sole trader to running a serious legal entity that will stand on its own even when I'm gone.

My primary motivation is money. I want to make enough money to be able to do certain things. I want to be able to hire the best minds to work with, to access the best tools and to deliver the best solutions/products to my clients and customers.

I also want to sweep some rubbish from the house that I am, that I have built and I need an expensive broom.

One of the things I've learnt about doing business is that when you're perceived as a small fish, you'll spend an unfair amount of time fighting for everything from an honest job to a fair price,  a shred of dignity and your own fucking money. It's not fair, it's not just and equitable and demands of you, if you're going to get by in such a manner, slightly more than your fair share of ass licking.

I want to stop kissing some ass. No sir, not me, you can go 'eat it'.

*

You know what a contract is? It's a formal agreement between two or more parties outlining the various ways in which each party is going to fuck up the other and what they're all going to do about it after that. Human interaction is based on contracts, most of them unspoken but expressed in one form or another.

I made a deal with myself a long time ago that I would take all the happiness I could from this life and then some; I promised a younger me that we would be everything we wanted to be, that we would never be afraid to take the stage and dance, for ourselves, for the songstress, for life. It was a binding agreement, a life contract, a marriage of will and spirit.

I have found myself standing in front of him, that me of yesteryear, making excuses, issuing disclaimers when he tried to egg me on, to remind me of an ancient contract signed in undaunted will and shining spirit. I have felt shame, guilt and the impotence of inaction.

I shall feel them no more.

**

"Please don't fall in love with me."

"Why?"

"I don't think I can reciprocate."

I have said as much to someone else and in my thinking then, I was doing them a favour but of course I realise now that I was only afraid of being remotely responsible for another's happiness, however fleeting. I did not feel capable of giving as much and I can only imagine how many doors I left unopened in the chambers of my heart.

***

O ye of noble spirit, rising with the dawn, look upon the deeds of this man and find your brother.

****

If I say I shall, then I shall will the spirit and you will have all of me, nothing less.

Being You: Soul, Spirit and Body

“Life has loveliness to sell...” so goes the poem Barter by Sara Teasdale.

Sometimes we forget what is around us; when life gets a little tight as it is bound to do, we have the ability to see only the negative things affecting us. Everything that happens in the realm of human experience can be put in a context that can be understood by even the most simple minded; shit happens, deal with it!

Everyone has a choice in what they do, and what anyone does is simply follow a path in life. On this path, you will encounter things and people; you will witness events, and from all this you must find knowledge that is both useful for everyday life and most importantly for nourishment of the self. Each and every one of us feels that there is a part of them that is different from every other person on this good earth, that I imagine is what many of you call the soul, and knowledge of that is only truly personal.

You will all do and feel things in your life but what matters most is the spirit in which you do them. I have been taught that a “spirit of brotherhood” should guide my actions towards my fellow man and methinks that’s not a bad thing to do. I am a million faces and voices, I am legion but I come in peace and brotherhood and there is no trickery in me. J

Your body is the temple of your soul and the spirits that live within you; it is the only physical thing over which you have any degree of control. It has been called the greatest instrument at your disposal and it is up to you to choose how you treat it. It is the only medium through which you can interact with the world and it speaks a language like no other, for one smile can lift many a cloud and one frown break a heart.

We all desire love and respect for the thing that we call “the self” and if we truly believe that charity begins at home then self respect is the first step towards earning respect from any other human being.

“Surely you know that you are God’s temple and that God’s spirit lives in you! So if anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy and you yourselves are his temple.”

There is more meaning in that verse than in the countless empty words you will come across in life. If you profess a belief in God, then take one day and live as if his spirit has come alive in you, let all your actions be judged by your glimpse of him and discover what lessons can be learned from that.
Have dignity and self respect; that is where it starts.