Near enough is God enough

If God is in the detail then I have absolutely no chance of meeting him or her.  I am a big picture person, always have been since I was a child.     What does this mean?   Well I have good ideas it's just the execution of them that can be very dodgy.   Recently, my dog bit a hole in a boot from a pair that I'd left out of my bedroom cupboard.  I was heartbroken as I'd only just mentioned to my sister that they were the best pair of boots I'd ever bought.  One morning I had a brilliant idea.  The boots were an elastic suede type so I cut them down with a pair of scissors to be ankle boots.  When I took them to the boot maker to be sewn around the scissor cut he was surprisingly impressed.  He complimented me on my lateral thinking but he did have two suggestions for next time.  First of all he recommended that it would be easier for him to sew them before they were cut and then he suggested I use sharp scissors.  Okay, so in my excitement I used the only scissors I had which were blunt. Also I didn't measure where I made the cuts so one is slightly higher than the other but who would notice? I don't.  For me the enjoyment is the idea and the overall look of the boots, I absolutely love them and wear them at every opportunity. 
Unfortunately, it's this sort of attitude which has made me a bad employee. I once worked for a man who was a perfectionist in every sense of the word but the day he went ballistic screaming and shouting because there were three types of white flowers in the vase instead of one I knew it was time to leave.   I can't get that worked up over a display.  When I walk into a store I want the shelves to be clean and the product to be fresh I don't care that each jar is exactly half an inch apart. In my last job I  sometimes helped organize dinner events.  Once  I was given the job of doing the name tags for the table.  Unknowingly I printed the name tags on the wrong type of paper so when I arrived at the dinner that night the boss was screaming blue murder at me  saying that the tags were tearing instead of separating.   I thought she was going to have a coronary.  While she glared at me waiting for an answer or deeply felt apology all I could think about was where has the sense of priority gone in our lives?  Are these details really important?   In a moment of madness I told her to use a pair of scissors, it made sense to me at the time. 
We are all now working longer and longer hours but how much of our time is taken up with incidental details, ones that serve our vanity and not humanity.  I'm still looking for a job  but in the meantime I've started doing some volunteer work.  I feel as though it's the jolt of reality I was looking for.  Real people with real needs and real work.  Not a single vase of mismatched flowers to be seen.

Listen up or meet the "Inner Warrior"

Let's not mention the job today because I have a cold.  Being sick has given me time to think about what  happened at Tai Chi last week.  It concerns the art of  listening. Only this week I read that the sexiest most popular person at a party was rated the one that listened intently and asked questions.  I wish this research had been around when I was younger  because listening and asking questions was my 'shyness tool' at parties.  My approach was to walk in to a party, grab the first amiable looking person and start asking them lots of questions.

Last week at Tai Chi  my "Inner Warrior" was outed.  In a nutshell, the group wanted to go to park to train but one of us didn't.  This person said she was happy to come back next week because she didn't like to exercise in the park.  It seemed a clear and simple explanation. Suddenly she was being pressured to explain: was it too cold, too windy or too far to walk to the park?  She was put on the spot and started to apologise for being disagreeable.  I didn't think she was being  disagreeable she just didn't want to go to the park. Next moment I could hear a voice above the others say "she doesn't want to go to the park - that's it". It was my inner warrior voice coming out to help and support her.

Our Inner Warrior is that primeval mover and shaker that surfaces in times of trouble and danger.  It's selfless and instinctive and is represented in all measures not just in extreme circumstances which we usually call heroism. I was first aware of my Inner Warrior when I was sixteen. A teacher was questioning a fellow student in class about why she had failed a test.  The girl in question was quietly crying and unable to answer.  I pointed this out to the teacher and suggested he see her after class in private. It made him stop but I have to confess I had trouble with that teacher for my last two years of school. I never regretted doing it as it gave me a feeling of real strength in my life.  That amazing feeling was the risk I took of fronting up to a foe that was bigger than me with the real possibility that I may lose out in some way. The Inner Warrior doesn't think, it acts and in extreme circumstances it will take you to the brink of death to give help to those in need.  

So, the next time you see a dog locked in a hot car, or somebody being belittled or bullied you'll know what that creeping feeling is, it's the Inner Warrior preparing to do battle.