In the wisdom that comes with age, reflection and positive intent, life can become a self-weeding garden, where one can be at peace and contentment. Plant-happy readers will think what a grand idea, yet, like all good ideas, a self-weeding garden comes with conditions.
Underpinning the notion is interior discipline to wait a moment, or longer, before reacting to what has been said or done before too whole-heartedly embracing a new acquaintance, idea or opinion. Or conversely, just as whole-heartedly writing off someone as an idiot or worse, an opinion never to be revisited. It could ultimately be to our detriment at a personal and political level.
Of course, first gut feelings may turn out to be accurate. Time will tell. However, in the discipline of waiting, controlling emotions, reserving opinions, leaving space, much emotion and bother can be spared. By waiting, the person or challenge may move into our life and on from it on their own, sparing the bother of having to deal with them. The garden of life thus weeds itself.
Power of Patience
Factors contributing to, or distracting from the power of patience to ‘wait a moment’ include, and are not limited to:
- Flexibility, a task of adolescence that must be refreshed throughout life. A person, rigid in opinions, ideas and behaviour makes for difficulties at every age. Whereas openness to new knowledge, experiences and friendships expands outlook and contentment.
- Self-assurance, self-confidence in one’s own worth and values that may be challenged by new or different information or opinions yet allows one to remain implacable while processing challenge.
- Pride of sensitivity, which precludes honest discussion as anyone engaging with the sensitive must walk on eggshells lest communication degenerate into hostility and hatred. Facts, the only basis on which genuine relationships can be built, tend to be subjugated to sensitive feelings of the one always offended. Best to limit involvement or allow them to move on from life’s garden. Appeasement merely feeds the crocodile in the garden pond, hoping it will eat you last, but eat you it will.
- Humility is a trifle old-fashioned concept that still has tremendous value today if given a chance. Humility is the foundation of openness to communication from which one can grow and learn. Being full of pride, believing one’s own opinions are the only ‘right’ ones, that one’s firm judgement is final, over-speaking all others, is a fast track to a dead end, literally and metaphorically. Most individuals hold valuable knowledge of some sort; we just need humility and patience to allow it to emerge.
Waiting a moment makes a difference
The media plays a large role in influencing opinions, given the imperative to gain attention, clickbait for financial viability and journalistic fame. Unfortunately for reasonable people, most of the media are Left leaning acolytes, graduates of Leftist education from kindergarten to university.
Time is of the essence, so in-depth research that brings truth and clarity to an issue is ignored in favour of opinions based on journalists’ existing knowledge of a topic (which may be limited), filtered through the inclination for Leftist bias. Rarely is allowance made for benefit of the doubt.
Building on the same narrative over days, weeks, months or years, bolstered by Leftist politicians and bureaucrats with their own agendas, means truth becomes the first casualty unless one is prepared to dig deeper to understand context and facts of an issue from different perspectives and sources. Reality may appear only when layers of deceit are exposed, days, weeks, months or years after relentless public opprobrium without basis. Still, some have become rich and famous in promoting misjudgement and misinformation.
Prominent Judgements Misplaced
In Australia in recent years there are three major cases in which initial damning publicized judgements proved flawed as truth was exposed by closer examination. They are Brittany Higgins, Cardinal George Pell and Ben Roberts-Smith VC.
A further significant matter is that of President Trump, whose name can only be spoken, as columnist Janet Albrectson says, when walking alone in the forest or when talking to the dog. So violent and reactive is the frenzy of vitriol and hatred cultivated by the media and the Left, as their vigorously created oppressive, dishonest woke DEI culture is being demolished. In the meantime, people so biased cheer for the apocalyptic death cult of Iran against Trump and against benefits to their own country. Very Orwellian.
Brittany Higgins:
On the balance of probabilities, in the early hours of one Canberra morning, Brittany Higgins was raped in the office of Minister Linda Reynolds by a work colleague with whom she had been drinking. Once the Minister became aware of the circumstances, she and Fiona Brown, her chief of staff, empathized with Brittany, encouraged her to seek counsel and advise the police.
Labor leveraged the unfortunate incident, casting it as the Coalition having a problem with women. Higgins was complicit in public statements in news and TV features, falsely accusing Reynolds and Brown of being unhelpful, at the cost to their health and careers. Labor won the election carrying the malign banner of Coalition’s “women problem”, rewarding Higgins with a $2.4m payout in recompense.
So many who fell for the lie then probably still believe it, although Reynolds persevered to restore her reputation, winning a defamation case against Higgins and $300K payout. Justice may never be properly settled and Labor continues to lie with impunity. People are waking up to the scam. If only the media they fed had waited a while, much angst could have been spared.
Cardinal George Pell:
In his book The Persecution of George Pell, historian Keith Windschuttle forensically analysed the thirty-year campaign to prosecute the late Cardinal for the sins of the Catholic Church. In that era, like other institutions, quite wrongly the church shuffled pedophile priests around instead of dealing with them and reporting them to police. Media, especially the ABC piled on, looking for a scapegoat and settling on Pell, creating a climate of hatred and vitriol towards him despite the fact he was the first in the world to condemn the practice and set up a facility where complainants could be heard, receive counselling and seek compensation.
Presumption of innocence was foregone in charges canvased publicly by Victorian Police. Pell was sentenced to jail, where he spent 400 days, based on testimony from a young man’s recollections of two incidents allegedly occurring as an altar boy at St Patrick’s cathedral some twenty years earlier when Pell was Archbishop. An appeal to the High Court exonerated Pell, 7-0, stating improbability given how busy the Cathedral was when incidents were alleged to have occurred and time frame for doing so was impossible. Nevertheless, so many who invested in Pell’s guilt still maintain the fiction, indicative of the lack of humility, flexibility and openness to new knowledge raised earlier in this piece. Hatred fanned from a fortress of ignorance. Should have waited a moment.
Ben Roberts-Smith VC
Fourteen years after completing six tours of Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan during which he was awarded the Victoria Cross, Australia’s highest honour for bravery, SAS veteran Corporal Ben Roberts-Smith was charged with murder of alleged non-combatant villagers in Oruzgan Province. A very public arrest at the airport in front of his partner, children and media, like Pell, intended to imply guilt before due process.
Charges arose from complaints from other soldiers, some resentful of his award and profile, enquiry of Afghani villagers prone to Taqqiyeh (deceit, especially of infidels), compensation payments to villagers and investigation of battlefield conduct by Major General Paul Brereton (The Brereton Report).
Though coming from a highly distinguished military family, Brereton had no battlefield experience, having attained prominence and rank through the army reserve, especially in training school and university cadets. Schoolyard rules do not translate well into the heat of battle when split second decisions are being made on life and death. Mistakes will be made, especially when the enemy abides by no known rules.
An Afghan army deserter murdered three Australian soldiers in a green on blue attack, while the soldiers were playing cards at a forward operating base. BRS led the search for Hekmutullah, the murderer of his colleagues. Incidents in Ben’s charges in an Australian court relate to events that occurred in the search. Hekmutullah was eventually captured, spent time in prison before being freed by the Taliban. Fourteen years later, Australia humiliates and imprisons the veteran who sought justice for his comrades. $300million has already been spent by our profligate government on hunting down for conviction those who served our country, including BRS.
We will have to wait more than a moment till the matter is resolved, already fourteen years in process. Journalists and media milk the fray to prosecute the hero before a court hearing.
Donald J Trump
TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) is a contemporary phenomena identifiable in spontaneous vitriolic hatred, willing Trump’s death. When those experiencing TDS are asked why, they have little to offer except superficial comment on his appearance (orange man bad) and what he says (crass and offensive).
Trump is a business person, not a politician, who approaches policy with a business perspective. His fortune was made building towers in New York City, where he dealt with tradies, councils and workers, so he speaks within a limited vocabulary range understood by common people. Common people amongst his followers tend to look beyond the often crass and simple words, offensive to elitists, to the substance of Trump’s intent. They are prepared to wait a moment.
Negative judgement of Trump has not recovered from the false “Russian collusion” allegations eleven years ago, and since debunked as lies propagated by Hillary Clinton to advantage her campaign in the run up to the 2016 presidential election. Media and Democrats pile on relentlessly negative (CNN registering 98% negative), many urging his death.
No wonder that Trump talks himself up, demonstrating self-assurance essential to one prepared to “wait a moment”. Heroic of him to have persevered to win a second election to pursue world-changing initiatives to make America great again, while also inciting the rest of the world to become great again by leaving behind failed mass Immigration, Net Zero, woke and DEI constraints on initiative, productivity and national sovereignty, such as that lost by Australia.
Still commentators and media belch forth immediate negative judgements on every Trump move or statement, unwilling to explore the history, context or intent, expecting instant returns. Of course, Trump makes mistakes and says things that offend, like expecting nations of NATO, Canada and Australia to pay their share and pull their weight in their own defence and to be fair in trade.
As I write, the war in Iran languishes awaiting surrender to a better international order no longer dominated by the world’s leading terrorist country, Iran. Just wait a moment. We may have to thank Trump for sparing us from domination by communism or a global death cult which has already sullied our shores with murder, mayhem, marches and discord.
While waiting I won’t hold my breath waiting to see gratitude from the willfully ignorant.