Have you felt it too? It is strong, isn’t it? And repeatedly we are being told by wise men and women that we should change ourselves not the people around us. I believe in that too. Only sometimes I think it can be overrated in the sense that I confuse it with something else: setting some limitations in order to protect myself (self-defense). Let me give you an example. I used to be exposed to two negative people that I had to visit often. Or at least I thought I had to visit them often, because they told me so and made me feel guilty, if I skipped regular dates. They were negative in the sense...

A friend of mine once said that there are two ways in life: either you work for people or you work against them. The way government money is entering private pockets these days I think I finally understand, why some people feel the urge to gather more and more money. Stolen money is giving them a sense of safety. But not for long. Soon they have to steal some more. Why? Because the feeling of safety is false. They will never feel safe, no matter how much money they acquire with fraud and extortion. Hence they have to get more of it. Over and over again. It is a vicious circle. On the other hand people...

I had a good plan at the beginning of December about Christmas cards for my relatives. I wanted to draw them myself. I managed to come up with a sketch of a skiing dwarf and I thought I would draw variations of that dwarf with color pencils. That was the original plan. It turned out quite differently. I used to prepare paper and color pencils several times a week, but week after week they just lied there on the table. I never started to draw. I felt horrible about it for almost a month, until it got too late to make Christmas cards myself anyway and I bought some instead. It was only in January this...

There is no recipe, how to grow old with someone and still hold hands in a park at the age of 80. Each couple has to find their own way through life. However, I would like to point out some general guidelines that I personally find useful: Never compete with your partner, but cooperate with one another. Do not let other people tell you, when you should have kids. Find an answer in your heart. Plan. You are not too old at the age of 40. Not too old to become a mother and not too old to start a career. You are not too old to start a career at 50 or 60 or even 70, except for some professions like pilots...

I noticed near a school that an architect designed an octagonal bench and even planted a tree in the middle of the octagonal to indicate the way of sitting on that bench. The bench is a closed circle, which means that one would automatically sit down showing his/her back to all others that might also care to sit down. The tree planted in the middle of the circle was making absolutely sure that the bench-users would ‘get the message’. Now, the architect forgot that kids are very natural in comparison to adults and being social is one of the natural characteristics of human beings. The first...