By Charles Leyman Kachitsa
In life there are things that seem obvious and basic yet not most capture their essence. Take for example the importance of practising or training what we want to excel at. A much better example is one wanting to be good at a particular sport like football, they would set abundant time to train themselves trying all the manoeuvres and tactics that they believe would make them a great sportsman or woman. Yet the same person wanting to be good at another thing other than sports will not take time to train or practice, say one wants to excel in business.
The above is not only in relation to intensive practice or training on those things we want to excel in. It also relates to the discipline required. To be a great sports person requires observance of certain things for instance dietary issues in content and scheduling.
Just like in sports most things in life require us to observe some discipline in defined areas. Yet if it’s not the sports, most people would not take time to comply with necessary requirements to the letter.
Of course like in all things in life some people like to take short cuts albeit to the detriment of their reputation and or own personal health. Here things like performance inducement drugs in sports could be mentioned where some take such as short cut in conditioning their body to have supernatural strength than would be acquired by training or practice alone. If we go to work or jobs, most people believe in training only once, believing that as they do their work it’s practicing itself, which is true to a point but you still need formal training or exercise once in a while to learn new tricks from current standards. We all need training and practice. Even the soul or mind to be in the habit of love and kindness needs to practice and train regularly before getting into the playing field of actually doing.
The quotes this week are from a book which one commentator in describing what it portrays, suggested it shows how cultural factors influence the individual behind his back, without his knowledge. I am sure that the selected quotations from the book given below will enlighten you to one or two life lessons, read and enjoy:
THE SILENT LANGUAGE by Edward T. Hall
“The Voices of Time – Time talks. It speaks more plainly than words. The message it conveys comes through loud and clear. Because it is manipulated less consciously, it is subject to less distortion than the spoken language. It can shout the truth where words lie….. —– Different parts of the day for example, are highly significant in certain contexts. Time may indicate the importance of the occasion as well as on what level an interaction between persons is to take place. In the United States if you telephones someone early in the morning, while he is shaving or she is having breakfast, the time of the call usually signals a matter of utmost importance and extreme urgency. The same applies to calls after 11:00 P.M. A call received during sleeping hours is apt to be taken as a matter of life and death, …… “
“After years of performances such as this, no white man in his right mind will hazard a guess as to when one of these ceremonial dances will begin. Those of us who have learned now know that the dance doesn’t start at a particular time. It is geared to no schedule. It starts when ‘things’ are ready!”
“……. Honest and sincere people in the field continue to fail to gasp the true significance of the fact that culture controls behaviour in deep and persisting ways, many of which are outside of awareness and therefore beyond conscious control of the individual. When anthropologists stress this point they are usually ignored, for they are challenging the deepest popular American beliefs about ourselves as well as foreigners. They lead people to see things they might not want to see.”
“People of the Western world, particularly Americans tend to think of time as something fixed in nature, something around us and from which we cannot escape, an ever-present part of the environment, just like the air we breathe. That it might be experienced in any other way seems unnatural and strange, a feeling which is rarely modified even when we begin to discover how really differently it is handled by some other people. Within the West itself certain cultures rank time much lower in over-all importance than we do. In Latin America, for example, time is treated rather cavalierly. In Mexico one commonly hears the expression, ‘Our time or your time?’ ‘Hora americana, bora mejicana?'”