Falling up the StairsWritten by Dr. Freddy Davis
There have been a lot of really good movies made over last several years. There are a lot of bad ones too. And while I try to simply ignore bad efforts, I like to take lessons from those which have profound messages to share. Among more noticeable movies I have seen lately, have been Matrix movies. And, while I don’t like everything about series, I have been totally fascinated by philosophical questions they have posed. At beginning of first Matrix movie, there is a scene where one of female stars is running away from a computer generated security bad guy. She desperately runs through a building, up stairs, out onto roof and then begins jumping from building to building. All while, bad guy is right on her heels. Then, with nowhere left to go, she spots a very small window in building across street. She suddenly makes a mad dash to edge of roof and hurls herself through air like Superman. Her body flies through air and through small window which is barely large enough for her body to go through. As it turns out, this window is in a stairwell, so when she gets through window and hits ground, she rolls down stairs and ends up at bottom all sprawled out. At that point she pulls out her gun and gets ready to shoot, in case her pursuer comes behind her. He doesn’t, and she jumps up and runs to safety. We have all seen movies, some comical and some more serious, where a person falls down stairs. It makes for very good drama. I remember another movie with a similar scene only this one was a martial arts comedy. In it good guy and bad guy were fighting at top of a set of stairs which ran up side of a mountain. After a furious fight, good guy knocked bad guy down stairs. Since it was on side of a mountain, bad guy rolled and rolled and rolled, seemingly forever. Normally this might cause high drama, but it was a comedy and it was made to look very funny. After a while, bad guy crawled all way back to top of stairs. Unfortunately for him, good guy was standing there waiting for him. At this point, bad guy knew it was hopeless. Without even fighting he simply laid down and rolled down steps again - on his own. It was hilarious! Whether it is for high drama or to invoke laughter, falling down stairs makes for a good scene in a movie. But what does it signify? It typically denotes failure, hurt or humiliation. Do you remember ever seeing a movie scene where someone fell “up” stairs. Not likely! That doesn’t quite carry same kind of impact. Taking this imagery and applying it to life, we can look out in society and see people all around who have, figuratively, fallen down stairs of life. There are those who are very tragic figures, such as homeless, drug addicts and winos. Some of these people were once “on top of their game,” but something happened and they fell. There are others who are not completely hopeless, but still they constantly sabotage themselves every time they get to a place in life where they could move to a higher level. Then there are those who never really take life seriously. They aren’t out on street, but they have no ambition to move forward - you know, couch potato crowd. But, honestly, most of us are trying to go other direction. Instead of starting at top of stairs and rolling down, we start on lower steps and have been striving our whole lives to move higher and higher. We are trying to run up stairs, not down. And if we fall, tendency should be to fall forward up stairs, rather than backwards. We may have periods in our lives when we get tripped up, but if we are moving up stairs, it is easy to pick ourselves up and keep going. If we quit trying, that is when we begin fall that takes us downward.
| | How to Have a Life of Satisfaction. Guaranteed!Written by Dr. Freddy Davis
Satisfaction 100% guaranteed or your money back! That was promise, so you bought product. You’ve been there! You ended up not liking it and decided to send it back. But, when you started return process, you discovered that it cost more to send it back than refund was worth. Ouch! It’s, certainly, bad enough to be dissatisfied with a product that you paid good money for, but it’s even more distressing when dissatisfaction you feel is with your own life. You can’t send that back, even if you wanted to. It’s bad enough when issues you are dealing with make you feel bad, but these kinds of issues affect more than feelings. They affect all of other parts of your life, as well. They affect your relationships, your concentration, your motivation, and even your productivity. Multiply negative things you experience by all of other people around you who are experiencing this same dissatisfaction, and it’s a wonder that anything ever gets done. Now, you can’t straighten up other people’s lives for them, but you can do something about yours. You were created with ability to decide, for yourself, how your life will be. If you are dissatisfied, it’s because you have chosen a path that makes you that way. If you want a new path, you can have it. To help get a handle on this “dissatisfaction” thing, it is useful to understand ways people live their lives. On a basic level we can divide people into three groups. The first group are “scum.” This is not meant to be a characterization of innate value of these individuals. They are not beyond hope. But it is an accurate description of lifestyle they have chosen. Relatively speaking, this is a small group, but they are ones who become criminal element, gang bangers, sexual perverts, and like. No doubt there have been environmental factors that influenced them to move in a direction that brought them to such a low place in life, but no one held a gun to their head and made them that way. There was a point in time when they crossed a line and allowed their life to go in that direction, and they will continue to do so until they decide to go a different way.
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