When I look through my pics, these two carry me away to the fairy tales... There are two points I liked in the fairy tales. The first one is that the strong moral values stand out, heroes sacrifize & fight for what they believe is right. The second thing that made me cry in childhood while reading fairy tales is that after all the trials "the heroes lived happily ever after..." I USED TO PICTURE TO MYSELF HOW WONDERFUL THE WORLD WOULD BE IF LIKE IN FAIRY TALES WE COULD LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER... But it is impossible since people have very much freedom & influence on each other & very often they/we use it for egoistic reasons...
Like in the famous Russian cartoon "The cat with shoes", manhood selfishness is very well illustrated while dividing treasure:
-To me, to me
-To Daniel
-To me, to me, to me
-To Daniel...
Funny? Or sad?
Happiness is of course, a very abstract word & probably, people put different meanings into it.
But as I reflect upon what I see & upon what many people shared with me in their times of sorrows, I dare to conclude that happiness is very much related to our social life: more specifically, to our relationships...
The priest & doctor of social studies Paškus, to my mind, very to the point defined modern society as "the society of broken relationships".
As a psychologist I can picture to you what happens. We have (if we are lucky) family, friends, groupmates, colleagues in work & mates of some club we attend.
I will not draw to you here the social circles in which these people fall to you.
But the thing is that THE CLOSER PERSON TO YOU IS, THE MORE HE CAN HURT YOU, SIMPLY BECAUSE HE HAS MORE INFLUENCE ON YOU.
So, family, close friends, boyfriends & girlfriends influence us most emotionally & behaviorally.
The pattern that is most prevalent is simple & also it captures us in the vicious circle.
The pattern is like this:
Person Agnes Person Martien
her expectations & beliefs his expectations & beliefs
towards their relation =/= towards their relation
/ \
mostly unspoken mostly unspoken
/ \
influence her behaviour =/= influence his behaviour
Let's take the simplest case now: usually what happens is that two people's expectations and beliefs about the same friendship or relationship are different. Then the partner's behaviour fails her or his expectations & beliefs, that hurts emotionally.
The vicious circle begins when it doesn't matter who made it first, but for example, Martien hurt Agnes, then as she feels hurt, she either consciously or not hurts him & he responds in the same way & it is never ending.
Thus, what I learned from my own & other people's lifes, hurting each other is inevitable. We do it even without knowing it. Of course, the degree & level of damage done differs.
What is beautiful about Christianity is that it offers ANOTHER WAY. IT STOPS THE VICIOUS CIRCLE OF TWO PEOPLE DISTANCING FROM EACH OTHER.
It is powerful by introducing love & care for people as opposed to egoistic & egocentric motives of behaviour & teaching us to forgive.
Thus, after all, looking deeper, we can say that CHRISTIANITY IN THIS WORLD IS LIKE A FAIRY TALE: true Christian stays faithful to his/her values, fights for his/her values & finally overcomes all the obstacles & ... lives happily ever after in HEAVEN...
P.S. If you are interested where I have this pic from, guess which century or period in art history it represents & I will reveal the secret to you :)
The vicious circle begins when it doesn't matter who made it first, but for example, Martien hurt Agnes, then as she feels hurt, she either consciously or not hurts him & he responds in the same way & it is never ending.
Thus, what I learned from my own & other people's lifes, hurting each other is inevitable. We do it even without knowing it. Of course, the degree & level of damage done differs.
What is beautiful about Christianity is that it offers ANOTHER WAY. IT STOPS THE VICIOUS CIRCLE OF TWO PEOPLE DISTANCING FROM EACH OTHER.
It is powerful by introducing love & care for people as opposed to egoistic & egocentric motives of behaviour & teaching us to forgive.
Thus, after all, looking deeper, we can say that CHRISTIANITY IN THIS WORLD IS LIKE A FAIRY TALE: true Christian stays faithful to his/her values, fights for his/her values & finally overcomes all the obstacles & ... lives happily ever after in HEAVEN...
P.S. If you are interested where I have this pic from, guess which century or period in art history it represents & I will reveal the secret to you :)
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