Tom Hagen: Your father wouldn't want to hear this, Sonny. This is business not personal.
Sonny: They shoot my father and it's business, my ass!
Quotes fromThe Godfather (1972)
It's pretty hard not to take it personally when someone shoots your father (or HRs you for a comment they didn't get). Nevertheless, that's what this diarist advocates. Wonder why? Read on.
Your ego serves a useful purpose; but, to make real progress, at some point you need to recognize that life is not all about you. The philosopher Nietzsche wrote,
"But if we could communicate with the mosquito, then we would learn that it floats through the air with the same self-importance, feeling within itself the flying center of the world."
You, like Sonny Corleone and Nietzsche's mosquito, are overinvested in your own identity. Of course, so am I. But, as john de herrera, in response to this series commented succinctly
ego kills relationship and understanding; understanding gives way to peace and harmony.
In the first of two previous installments, I shared a list of maxims I call Sundiata's Rules of Wisdom and explained how I've found them helpful. I followed up with a diary discussing five maxims concerned with a process for developing an understanding of ones experiences:
Stay awake
Seek the truth.
Keep an open mind.
Learn from everything.
Don’t jump to conclusions.
The maxim for today Don’t take anything personally points toward the humility and acceptance that form central pillars of an understanding that comes from seeking the truth. Sometimes a person's life is ruined by one devastating event, the death of a child or the failure of a cherished project, because the person who suffered the loss can't get past the fact that it happened to me. For some, it's a long series of losses and abuses, an alcoholic parent or repeated tours in Iraq. Not that it's easy to come to terms with any of these things; but, the truth is there are no entitlements to freedom from defeat or trauma or having to struggle to stay afloat for any of us. Refusing to get past a loss or a period of stress and trauma is to retreat into a defensive state of narcissism. As the consigliore replied to Sonny Corleone,
Tom Hagen: Even shooting your father was business not personal, Sonny!
Failure to heed this sage advice cost Sonny his life.
Next up: Maxims regarding the Attitudes of determined truth seekers