Gaining side in the game of emerging economy

How do one appear on the gaining side in the game of emerging economy? How many times expats have been tempted by this question, hearing stories of success back in the their homelands while themselves residing in the developed countries and being just part of the hearing. Temptation is rising to join the game, fear is appearing to loose that precious something one have worked so hard to gain. The stories are great when words are heard from far away.

You do know the other half, the unsaid, misunderstood, looked over by passing travelers in pursuit of a story. The real cracker is inside, inside the life of emergence. There are sides in the furnace of emergence, - sidelines, hardcore and anything in the middle. The chaff pushed to the fringes is the mess you so desperately tried to escape, - the unavoidable battle to survive, the daily hurdles of trying to make it, the system that is not, the family network that is lubricated by envy, the odds that are always against. Then there is the hardcore, the gleaming bright core of the emerging market, - the sticky one, which glues all the best and as a parasite feeding itself on the process of shafting blurbs of destitution to the sides. This IS the emerging economy, potent, rising, erupting in the proneness of the moment. You do want to be there, shining in the glory of achievement. But you do know that there is middle ground there, millions of middle grounds, not settled in being middle class but desperate to get to the top, jealous to the bare bones of human attitudes. This middle ground is not in favour of systems, they do not care - their frenzy feeding the top lair of the furnace, self-destroying the fabrics that could have build the harmonious society of the neverland, frenetically shoveling masses off the development ladder, down to the misery of own defeat.

When you are settled in the just and self-conscious middle ground, failed back on the security of knowing systems, debating things of daily matters, - why, why, why you would just off the cliff to the furnace? You aren't a spider hooked on the thread of your own passport, ever ready to jump back to own beloved security. You are not given a chance. You are a particle in the system that builds the prosperity for those not of your choosing. And all too good you know that the furnace is getting hotter and your body is not adjusted anymore to the hellish temperature inside.

The gusto has been laid to rest, marbled in the paperwork of developed world. And you have lost, the game, the life and yourself. You did not give yourself the chance of high-speed development, rocketing up and gushing down, swinging from gold to dirt, obliterating attempts and holding on to the winners. You have missed it. Just because you were afraid not to be on the gaining side in the game of the emerging economy.

Collaboration

When you see corned executives, directors of organizations that long ago have lost any importance bar self-importance, institutions and companies without any value beyond a small fenced scrap of a market on the outskirts of the single European market, one asks a question what is wrong with collaboration in such a place? Why people cannot join forces together to grow, to learn, to reach the scale, to force alliances and simply enjoy company of each other?

Perhaps a deeply rooted sense of lost trust to anyone and anything is a reason. People underwent through a painful process of cowboy capitalism, when survival instincts were sharpened and immediate benefits meant cash on the table and nothing else mattered. Yet there were Orange Revolution, there was a time of economic growth when managers became managers and loyalty of staff crept to the execs vocabulary.

Another reason could be that collaboration is not seen as a drive of business value. None has explicitly put value on having good links to other institutions, no business school made a good case study on how having collaboration with suppliers, researchers, government helped someone to sell business with a higher valuation. Funding (subsidies, programmes etc.) is not being allocated to those who are in the collaborative networks, but rather based on back-door acquaintances and kick-backs. Even on a personal level collaboration is of no help. Why to collaborate with your neighbours when you can buy permissions and your friends are always around - no need to get new ones.

How to move beyond the distrust towards a mere notion of collaboration?

Probably the first step should be to demonstrate a tangible benefits beyond either means or capabilities of those who are enticed to collaborate. Getting 1 mln euro together where one cannot get a single cent, preparing together a concept where one cannot put two word coherently in a required way.

Secondly some un-learning must be done. Desire to test a new approach and readiness to undertake a measured yet tangible risk is a driver behind collaboration. Dwelling on the tangible benefits of such collaboration (where is my money) will not make the process valuable and even less sustainable. People need to un-learn short-term thinking and develop their ability to learn long-term. Squabbling in the process of collaboration will not help parties to reach the ultimate aim they put for themselves in the first instance.

Thirdly, some die-hards should be thrown, squeezed out, eradicated from the market ruthlessly. There are individuals, organizations and companies built upon and inherently sticking to the rules of submission, refusing to collaborate and always eager to steal ideas, do everything on their own and undermining efforts of others to cooperate. Plotting behind your target's meagre ability to foresee a chance that will swipe them into oblivion is a skill that is as unique as a visionary. It is a responsibility too, - the one to be applied with a homeopathic accuracy.

Ability to collaborate is a skill, which is hard to acquire, hard to develop and even harder to implant.

On competence and gumption

Lately I found myself asking a question "what is a competence" on multiple ocasions. What does it take to make competent people and should we make them or are they rather to be found amidst the ordinary sames? Can one nurture competence or provide an enabling environment for person`s talents to flourish and translate into competencies? Can the environment inflict competence on a subject of the process? Are there competenences that can be discovered or are they aquired by persistent training and sold to the one willing to pay more?

The notion: It does drive a lot of respect to see a person performing tasks or delivering results beyond one`s expectations and abilities. True, specialised skills and jobs require certain verified abilities beyond the scope of this analysis. Then there are those managerial competences, so scarce and yet so valuable.

Understanding: competence is the ability to put yourself in the context of the counterpart, to analyse the expectations, discern the mental process and capture semantics of the meaning, no matter where and when you speak, should that moment relate to the professional duty. The
ultimate disgrace for me is to engage in the discussion with someone who does not master the understanding. We call it *they do not listen* I guess.

Lucidity: if soundness of judgement is not translated into lucid form, if a person does not master ability that language provides us with, the very competencies I am talking here about, are not to be identified. Suave talk cannot hide lack of understanding if there is none, yet sweating over a couple of sentences to speak or repeating the nonsense is the disgrace to avoid.

Gumption: abilty or a competence, - whatever we call it - gumption is behind every competence, daring to achieve, desire to explore and to hasten the acquisition of knowledge. It brightens the day when I see a person with gutts, daring and gearing. To reach the point of conspicuity, one needs to demonstrate the gumptious attitute, and rather soon.

Match: the context, the knowledge, the resources - the ultimate competence wields itself in the match of circumstances and those characteristics I rumpled about above. When there is no match between one`s interests and tasks to be performed, any competences are actually useless.

Same does apply to me. I am trying to master the competencies, - to master the silence and tame the predatory mind.

On West and the rest

The need for stepping out of the box and looking for other perspective has become a cliche. So much the same for the need to constantly re-invent the society, the fabrics of the economy and the way of living. In times of crisis Western economies increasingly looking elsewhere for solutions, - being it consumption in BRICs or cash from the Middle East, family businesses in Southern Europe or strong government in administered democracies. Give it some time, and the failing economy will again become a stronghold of capitalism. There is a certain beauty in the ability of the robust market economy to re-invent itself.

Reading *Empire of Knowledge* by Vinay Lal, a book I picked up in a bookstore in Mumbai, makes a good point in that the notion of time has become hi-jacked by the West. Time has a Western connotation in a sense, - time is precious, there is no time to waste and we shall move at a faster pace. Other notions of time have no space in the ontology of development. Too bad the book later goes on a rampage of anti-Western self-pitiing propaganda. Could have been a good one.

Societies that manage to create spaces people are craving for are the most successful ones. Either materialistic, or with attractive live styles, picturesque or secure - whatever meaning a space is able to radiate to make itself attractive, - this is a notion of success. Spacial war for perceptions, - that is what global competition is.

Creation of wealth at a massive scale is one business process to be mastered be successful nations. True, Western sense of wealth is long associated with assets, but notion of assets is a shifting one, esp. over the recent 20 something years. It opens opportunities for other countries to provide own notion of assets, and respectively wealth. Will we see countries putting right price on what they deem as a true assets in their own understanding? Fear of doing so is a major drawback in changing the world order in 21 century. Price is just a value put on virtue as considered by a local market.

Ability to broaden the limits of human knowledge is a major value of the economy. The spheres of knowledge are multiple and there are many borders to be pushed, and many more yet to be discovered. Society that is able to strive for knowledge, that is recognising the need for knowledge is ultimately a front runner in the global competition. Once we stop wanting something big and unknown in our lives, once we stop wondering at immense discoveries or become indifferent to new paradigms (or gadgets for this matter) - we are stepping back in our own development. Nations able to leap ahead are the ultimate winners, ceteris parubis.

Observations of an Entrepreneur

• Being in a much lower-speed business environment, it takes an effort not to roll back into the local habits and even more effort to explain to the collegues why low productivity is not justifiable
• Delegating responsibilities comes with a responsibility for proper induction and creation of learning opportunities
• Bottomline is a bottomline, no matter how socially responsible it is
• It requires a lot of patience to work with the clients stemming from the NGO environment, - and ocasional harrassment to explain what a meaning of time is
• A difference between a company and an agency is that later lives from one project to another while the former has a business model behind
• In EU an entrepreneur develops his company, in Ukraine - the whole environment around, it takes a lot of patriotism not to desert to EU
• Job becomes a burden on life when there is no learning involved

Digital Nomad in Ukraine

Recently the Economist posted a story on digital nomads, - those knowledge workers who work from anywhere with Internet connection. I can eagerly associate myself with these species. The last 8 years I have spent away from Ukraine have transformed, - and should I have spent them in Ukraine, the time would inevitably transformed me too, - I embraced the nomad lifestyle, I could see that I am attached to goals and objectives and hate the routine of office lifestyle. If I am not that productive in the morning, what is the point of sitting in the office at 8am half-dead? I cannot stay in one place geographically for longer than 2 weeks, getting restless. It is totally fine working from a cafe, or a park, or even from a dodgy Warszawa Zachodnia bus station. But there are two issues.
Firstly, as I am now a manager, would I be able to transmit the benefits of the nomad lifestyle to my teammates, without catching them in the vicious cycle of pressumed freedom from responsibility which is so easily attached to being a nomad? Work is there to be done, - no mater how nomadic one is. And do I have the right to impose my lifestyle on someone? Is it my responsibility to adapt to the habbits of the team or to lead by example?
Secondly, nomads are not always welcomed in the "digital countryside" that Lviv certainly is. Despite having thousands of labourers in outsourcing companies, there is still stigma attached for a digital nomad lifestyle, - stigma of not being serious enough. It takes strength of the character to ignore stereotypes (after all, I do not need to prove anything to anyone over here). However, it is slightly more complicated with friends and family, - after all, my mom still believes that my work is "to stare in the empty screen all day long".
Resume - with a right to lead a nomadic lifestyle comes a responsibility to educate, preach and convert, responsibiltiy to be humble and responsibility not to loose your cultural roots in the cyberspace.

A New Chapter Has Begun

Humans need to take steps forward, toward unknown, dare to live in accordance with rules of their own making. I have done just that,- the decision that was brewing in me for some time has materialized in January 2008. This year I will be working on setting up PPV Knowledge Networks, - a professional services company in Lviv, Ukraine. Building the team, developing service offering and breaking stereotypes that great things cannot be done from the middle-of-nowhere Eastern Europe.

Aiming to develop networks, where knowledge is created and collaboration strives, I will try to do my best to shift the mindset in organizations and companies, to add value to people and society. Taking the best that world has to offer and looking beyond the physical borders. Making the middle of nowhere a centre of it all.

I hope the story of times continues, - a new chapter has begun.

On acting and life

There are certain pre-defined roles in life we are presented to take on, - of a career-minded manager, a hippie, an entrepreneur, a wousewife etc. - all coming with the ready-made sets of characteristics, raised expectations and die-hard stereotypes. A rebellious anti-establishment youth eventually takes on a respected slot of pre-alloted cells in life. Sure enough, there are plenty of those to choose from, and there is a unabashed vigour in the selection process on display. We happily stream into cells, spreading all over, smoothening the tireless wheel of economy. Interestingly, even those daring to suggest new forms of social engagement, are eventually becoming incorporated into ever-expanding role play. The system simply adds on a couple of new cells, somewhat oddly shaped but in several years totally normal. You think you are different and fine out own combination of social activities - there will always be thousands of others with the same list. Social innovation with the consequences of conquering China, - the winner ultimately dissolves in the Chinese mass. There is a great point in trying though. Societal surfing. The faster - the tenser.

Actually it feels good. Life is so unbelievably diverse with the diverse bumps on the one's life path. You attach yourself to the place but the place kicks you off and you are back to being detached. You embrace a topic and fine it whizzing through your arms asif in the sandwatch. A stage is awaiting you in the places you least expect and you must deliver on the spur of the moment. Places are relative, emotions - eternal, life - boundless. Life presents you with smiles, - on faces around, when birds start singing in your backyard and on the pages of the economic newspapers. It is a quest for a smile. Somewhere on the bumpy road ahead.

Basic needs

I want a place, with wooden floor, access to the world, open for friends, chaotic and yet pieceful, a place to gain a piece of mind.
I need my freedom, of discovery and experimenting, freedom to be and freedom to choose, to provide and to learn, freedom of shelling own self and re-inventing the core.
I need my responsibilities, responsibility to listen, responsibility to tame the inner wilderness, responsibility to love, and to care, responsibility to leave a positive change and to smile all the way.
I need my path, wild and random, yet paving the way for those daring to follow.
I need my story, the one I have never intended to write, and the one waiting to be discovered.
Place, freedom, responsibilities, path and story - my basic needs, my stick in the ground, knock on the door and keys to the world.

Fundamental transformation

The point when one understands that he moves into a new chapter of his life, is when the understanding comes that one is capable of pursuading others with own ideas, having firm believes and opinions on the direction of the development.

Observations on net-generations

Net generation coming to top level of management is inclined to make drastic IT decisions, - changing platforms, meshing and mixing new mediums of pushing the message, blaming the predessesors, top management, suppliers etc whilst embracing something they are aware of from studying times. The problem with such new net-leadership is often an old one, - inability to accept inevitable change of habits of generations to come after, thus making same mistakes as those before. With the speed of technical change, collaborative tools and platforms are becoming a yesterday increasingly faster, habits of those joining workforce - increasingly more up-to-date than those in decision-making positions now. The real meistershaft is when a current team can make their vision span back into past as well as further ahead in time and define a smooth way to accommodate conflicting needs, habits and learning curves of different strate of net-citizens.

Economy engineering

It is fascinating to see plentiful of connections possible in the economy, - between borders, across disciplines, through different business models, among people of different tastes and opinions. The resilience of economic structure could be eventually succumbed and new structures created in its stead. It is essential though to remember that whilst we are preaching for changes, we need to be very sure and careful that people, individuals with their lives and hopes, could find their places in new structures. The knowledge economy, the information society, the network economy, the bio-economy, the green revolution .... - all the buzziness should protrude the places for people to take in the new order of things. It is the very responsibility that gets often shufted away - the responsibility to provide meaningful places of work. The connections should have places to connect to.
This is something I actually want to do - connect ideas, places, networks, people, thoughts. Mesh and create meaningful jobs.

Facts

My grandma used to make vodka (horilka) in her private house on a stove, my mom - at the gas stove in her flat, I buy branded horilka from supermarket.
1989 my parents could buy a car with their savings, in 1990 they bought 2 TV sets for the same money.
Web site of my University looks the same as in 1995.
Lviv (my city) has app. 2500 employees working in IT outsourcing companies.
In April I spent one day in the Wadi Rum desert in Jordan, next day in Amman I met a Ukrainian prostitute, 4th wive of a local driver.
I do not have nephews because of property prices in Kyiv.
To travel 600km to the West I need to travel twice 650km to the East to get a Shengen visa.
My best friend returned from New York from talks with the NYSE about floating shares of their company.
An employee of one Ukrainian association called me asking how to buy a flat in Brussels for not more than EUR 300K.
I am taking lunchbox to work.
My Columbian friend has just paid her student loan, my Ukrainian one - got second child and built a house, I am thinking about getting a mortgage.
It is not clear who was my granddad on father side.
First time I rode a horse was in Iceland. I was hearding sheep there also for the first time.
My first realized traineeship in Iceland was in IT company for an American student.
I do not know a single Ukrainian manager who is blogging.
Almost all my blogging friends from outside Ukraine are managers.
I have fundraised EUR 150 for Orange Revolution in 2004.
In November 2004, I was demonstrating for Orange Revolution next to Berlamount (Commission building in Brussels).
Summer of the same year I watched EURO Cup in the Irish bar nearby.
In 2005 I attended conference on ICT policies next door.
The only thing I know about new UN Secretary General is that he is from Korea.
An average management consultant I have met has never worked for one company more than 2 years.
I got a CV of a Ukrainian with excellent English whose current position is Executed Director.
An Australian friend of mine who works in London and speaks Swedish has just returned from a tenure in Afghanistan.
A Ukrainian friend of mine with who I went with to Jordan spoke mixture of Ukrainian, Russian, English and Dutch. I spoke mixture of Ukrainian, English, Russian with ocasional French and German. Neither of us spoke Arabic.
A Ukrainian PhD friend of mine working for a French research institute wrote an article about Chinese banking system.
3 Ukrainian friends (incl. me and 2 PhDs) meeting in Paris could not remember for 10 min how to say mint tea in Ukrainian.
Major advantage of a MBA is to get yourself emersed into international environment.
An average senior professor from a business school does not know how to login to a web service.
An average business school has a research center on Knowledge Management.
When European social system was created, pension age was equal to life expectancy.
Majority of French youth does not have a permanent contract.
A doctor from Ukraine came on his jeep to Germany to check health of his son.
Daily allowance for a patient of a Ukrainian hospital is EUR 2.
Ukraine has world's leading implantologists and cardiologists.
One needs to wait 3 hours on average to cross Polish-Ukrainian border.
Ukraine and Poland will host EURO 2012. My relatives refused to speak about Polish-Ukrainian events of 1943 in Volyn.
I got 90 GB of music on my external hard drive.
The most irritated I felt last year was when I could not find access to the Internet.
The most relieved I felt in last month was when I washed myself after swimming in the Dead See.
Several hundreds of new species were discovered in the depth of the Atlantic Ocean close to Antartics.
I got 50 friends on facebook within 3 days.

Facts

I blogged 10% of my life.
Russian, Ukrainian, English, German, Polish, French and Slovak are languages I understand.
The flat I want to buy had price of EUR 17K three years ago. Now it is EUR 50K.
Salary of my mom working in a pharmacy remained EUR 100 for the last 10 years.
Owner of the pharmacy my mom works bought 2nd car and went skiing to Austria with his family.
I was in Himalayas at lake Tapuban and in Vladivostok in last pioneer camp intake.
In May I will run 21km half-marathon for the 3rd time in my life.
I spent 20% in Ukraine, 10% - in Belgium, and 50% - in Lithuania.
I am not in touch with any friends from Lithuania.
My brother went half-grey after being at the scene of Lviv airshow crash in 2002.
I take marshrutkas (Eastern European took-tooks) when I am back in Lviv.
Together with friends from India, Finland, Belgium, Australia I had best in-depth human conversations of my life.
My mom spent 12 years in Siberia, my granddad - 40 years in the States.
First country visited by my brother outside exUSSR was Congo.
In April I need to fix the fence around our plot of land (dacha) and dig out some weed.
I will take a flight the day after.
I need to draft the table of content for a chapter on the professional virtual communities.

Mist of Value

It is extremely trendy these days to talk about fulfilling job descriptions and value delivered and created to clients etc. There are so many individuals who are undeniably happy in their pursuit of individualistic hedonistic pleasures of life. Some are showcasing excellence in putting the right price tag on themselves. Others are nested in companies that have the same propensity. Yet another group consists of those who are hopping from place to place match-making between own self and job places without realistic value of their contribution to any place of work, either previous or future. With time they tend to lay strata of glass and ignorance with the real world and become consultants or experts. Illusion has always produced best results on human brain.

Recently I caught myself observing with joy those at the bottom of the pyramid (yet another buzz word), even here in Belgium. There is a pleasure seing someone happily engaged in a normal basic human occupation, e.g. plumbing, constructing, cooking or driving. Without exuberant salaries, without prospect of fency travel, yet so happy delivering great job to those of us who are in need of it.

And I thought - this what makes me instantly happy - seing busy people at work producing something that is clearly needed by others or busy creating or saving jobs, doing it with pleasure, fun and without puffed-up commercial flavour (with the killer bill at the end). Useful human activity - useful for others. Truly, without hypotetical assumptions of usefullness of the particular activity, without causing problems to the rest of us.

And yet ... what is the correct value and usefullness of an activity? Perhaps even an imitation of useful work could stimulate a demand? Endulging in a world of intangible value - being it in capital markets, in consultancy, in research, in IT or even in NGOs with their social work. And how not to slip to those HR matrix of positions and salary levels trying to equal individuals to a mere dot in their speadsheets' cell? Is the market right? Or is the world emmersed in an illusion grande with those on the top of the pyramid trying to create a mist of value?

Examples of things I am struggling to accommodate:

• People delivering projects in large companies that ultimately will be scrapped because the boss will leave to another position. The boss will never be responsible for wasting someone's time. The employee will never care about next project.
  
• Research that costed a fortune but delivered some irrelevant obscure paper stating "that more research is needed". Researcher got one more published article and chances are he will get another round of funding.
  
• Consultants delivering services without ever working in a real business environment or overblowing significance of their basic experience. Surprisingly, that sells.
  
• IPO advisers who have never created a single job and who care not that employees of the company to be floated on the market get less than 1000th of their salary.
  

Perhaps it is a quest for the perfect society? Shall I read Marx?

Closest to the fair society of my ideal was an Icelandic one. Yes, very expensive. Why? Because every basic human activity has a fair value attached to it. And everyone has their normal human needs, and more, covered. And exuberance of the rich is tamed by the law and public opinion, in a country where pokazukha (offensive showcase of wealth) is frowned upon.

At the end of all this long logic-less nonsense, there is one question to be asked - how to ensure that what you are doing in life is useful and will be useful well after you are done working on this?

Good night.

On questions of legitimacy and listening

Why people do not listen to others ? And what actually does it mean to listen to someone ? To pay attention, to absorb information transmitted, to prepare counter-arguments, to look into the eyes of your counterpart, or is there something else ? I guess as a minimum you would expect to find spurs of your words, ideas and thoughts in the deeds and conversation of a person you had a conversation before. When there are not a singly trace of your ideas, - it means your words just had shaken the air and had not left even a minor impact on a person. He just did not listen. Full stop.

Recently I am encountering so many situations when people do not listen to what I am saying. This happens over extensive period of time, leaving a dire desire to stop talking with these people in the first place. One-way intellectul traffic is good only in autocracy. In other situations it leads to hypocracy, when people do not walk the talk or talk in vain in the talking house.

It is inreadibly easy to build a circle of artifical learning environment based on appearance of coherence, leadership and understanding while in fact it is a false void, autocarcy where all the activities are driven by ego and not by the spirit of collective effort. And the worst, this hypocric attitude of dealing with people is extremely contegious, - it is very easy to catch up as deeply inside us we are all inclined to dominate, as human beings, sitting on the top of the food pyramid. Only hard-won intellectual effort enables us to give up desire to seed power around us, to dominate the environment we are in and truly LISTEN to others, not just make appearance of listening.

Illegitimacy of professionals

Fascinating how important legitimacy is – there are so many pseudo- specialists in anything around, - people that have just talked about things and never realized not a single project from A to Z, projects that have dealt with real people, real lives. Talking house is all over the place [and not only in the area of CSR]. So many people that are not interested in other people’s well-being but in own success, career and pushing the boundaries to own happiness no matter what.
I have learned for myself that before you praise anyone, you need to ask people who worked with the person under consideration, and people who supposedly benefited from this person’s work. And the last source of trust would be media – with journalists hungry for lavish receptions and easy articles and who do not care about the topics themselves.
And to finish on legitimacy – it also comes from the ability of a person to embrace areas of human activities other than his/her own – there are so many specialists in such specific narrow areas but totally useless in anything that lays outside their area of comfort. Being specialist is excellent but to ignore developments in other, often efficiency-enhancing, areas of human activity is at par with ignorance and even certain arrogance. And it definitely becomes a fertile ground for hypocrisy.
There are certain individuals who are willing to accept own illegitimacy, commanding humbleness. Such people generally are open to people, willing listeners and accept opinion of others. And this makes them great partners for intellectually-charged conversation.
But unfortunately there is such a minority of truly legitimate people that sometimes I wonder if so called “developed world” is not in fact an “imagined world with faked identities”, a cluster of brands covering the true stories of life how it is?

The rules of life are different. Different for every understanding of life one applies. I am depriving things of mistery and I am tired. No need to deny that to marvel things is better than to understand them. Stripping things naked does not necessarily leaves only bare truth, it also changes view in the vicinity forever.

The worlds of views are overlapping, tiling all over atop each other mounting to the skies to form a mere fabric of life we enjoy. The feel the fickle of beaming instantiations of life is an art worth pursuing. Entangled in one episode, it is so hard to escape a friendly embrace and leave to the bloody good world wide world. You put up one tile, you glimpse into the other version of world and you plan your escape. And then wizzz - you are gone with a daft. There you will be other, free, totally different and unknown, without business card, without burden of past, enjoying present and surrounded by mystery of big things, big there - small here. Big in one version - small in another. Big in their version - small in mine, big for happy and small for tired, big for eternal and small for power hungry ...

Next time you turn your head up, - see differently, look instantly and watch thoughtfully. There are different versions of world overlapping around.

The pain of understanding others

Sometimes it takes a lot of psychological strength, caution and tightened apprehension to de-construct the logic of someone's brain's travails. All too easy to wash certain opinions away by labelling this way of thinking as stupid or redundant. Alas, or rather thanks God, we all got reasoning and non-linear anti-constructivist emotions paving the path in decision-making. To dive into this opinionation process is a challenge to one's intelligence. I have experienced two such dives over the last couple of days and it was not a scuba diving by any means.

The art of change is not in the communication but in the ability to walk along with the person, organization and/or groups of people from one end to another. Gushing through the crowd, elbowing your way to the top is not what makes a lasting impact. Time passes and others will make it to the top. But once the foundations of the top will shake, those stuck there will find it hard to adjust to the other reality.

You might think that acknowledgment of such one-to-one work is essential. In my opinion, - it is not. If you see that the change happened, even though people do not link it to your efforts, - this is great. We are not here on this planet to leave artefacts, we are here to enjoy life and help others in its discovery.

These thoughts came to me while seing all the desperation of crowds of people to put their point across whithout too much listening to what others are saying. Bless the ignorant and ignorance.

The thin line is drawn for you by someone more powerful you have ever imagined. You stretch the arm to touch the glass wall that never existed but which nevertheless powerfully surrounds you from the fate you could have otherwise wished. You saw the line, you felt the glass, you touched the wood - and you went on living.

Live is a powerful moment containing more energy than anything we could experience within lines and walls we carefully construct around ourselves. Live stretches beyond and lies further in the vistas unseen but admired from a distance. Time dvafts in a graceful swing revealing the crack in own ambition. Destiny is beyond and yet it is here. It is outside and yet around.

You can play in a sand box. You take perceptions, pour water of words, mix with the titles and positions, - et voila, the pure joy of own spleandour and achievement starts running through your existance, ever-generating more energy of self-importance. The eternity built on simple recepy. .... and yet ... the wind blows, yet the silver-thin lines remain. Live streches beyond, living construct in a sand box as what it is, - a construct in a sand box, built to last for an instant when a glue of repetetive admiration provides vital energy supply and falling to debris the moment the glue is no more there. Yet live remains there, in a vast step' of swinging grass, with grazing thoughts and elegance of relations, the freedom of harmony and scenery of courage.

When the own self pushes the glass, wants to cut the lines and inject oneself into multiple selves, - the world shall rejoyce! When one more human being dares to experience the world in diversity it represents, - the ignorance retreats! When a thought grazes and not being managed, - the economy should stop! When the feeling is crystal and spin of life needs to be stopped, - breathe! Stretch, open your arms, refresh thought - feels better, much better. Touching the vistas of life.