People have a wide variety of ways of taking advantage of each other. We prolong pain and punishment. We ignore, we refuse, we insist, we force, we guilt and we take. There are so many ways and they happen everyday to all of us, but the one that gets to me more then any other is seeing someone's kindness or generosity taken advantage of. Ignorance can often be the culprit in these cases, but its gotten to the point that more and more I see willful ignorance as the true criminal.
When we choose to ignore or pretend something is or isn't true we are in affect changing the story to suit ourselves. Ofcourse it's easier to believe your actions couldn't have yielded such outcomes, "its just a coincidence", or perhaps an exaggeration, it's certainly not the result of an extensive list of actions that led us inexorably to your front door.Ofcourse not. Mindfulness isn't a virtue we openly value in business and therefore we hardly know when to look for it elsewhere. Why should YOU listen, when others won't? Why should we accept responsibility when we have so much already on our plate? It happens everyday, we're all guilty of it and receivers of it, but it's getting worse and there's only so much of it I can stand personally.
We see it with the politicians and the bankers, the police force and even the protesters themselves. The news reporters, bloggers, and media in general offering few apologies and accepting limited accountability. We expect people to stand up for us and when they don't we wonder where the justice has gone?. When a few demand more, we think they are making a stink. We've been raised this way. It's on the small scale and the large scale. Your boss takes advantage of your willingness to work for less, your lover takes advantage of your eagerness to please, your kids are being raised to realize that giving you answers you want to hear is better then being honest and all along were all pretending its NO BIG DEAL. Well it IS a big deal and quite frankly I'm tired of being taken advantage of. I don't like feeling under-appreciated, or taken for granted. I don't think anyone does, but maybe what you don't already realize is you do it all the time too and the only way it's gonna stop is when you stop. Stop pretending your actions don't effect others. Stop pretending your doing your part. Stop pretending you like it the way it is and stop pretending its everyone else's (or someTHING else's)fault.
You're pretending to be a corporation and the corporation is pretending to be human. Neither work. Go back to being human, because your polluting the air we breathe and we need a breath of fresh air every once in a while. No..actually we need it all the time.
-JF
