Two Epiphanies

Two Epiphanies:

1. There are two kinds of people in the world.
2. Synergy is necessary.


Last post, I wrote that art makes things better after people make things worse.

Realized -- something I learned in the past year was this: there are people who make things worse, not better; and there are people who make things better, not worse.

I had never thought about that too much, before. Two kinds of people.

It's like the striking statement in the eulogy for Robert Kennedy: "...a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it; saw pain and tried to heal it; saw war and tried to stop it" -- (or something close to that).

Art is not the only thing that makes things better: the people who Make Things Better, Not Worse also Do.

The People Who Make Things Better, Not Worse
do what Ted Kennedy said:
they see wrong and try to right it,
see pain and try to heal it,
etc. ...

I have learned a profound appreciation and reverence for the People Who Make Things Better Not Worse.

And I have also learned that -- maybe Everyone, or at least most people, including me, need Synergy. People who want you to succeed.
People who help and don't hurt.
Situations that are set up to help you, or at least to allow you, to succeed.

Someone helped me a while ago, and when I thanked the person, they said, "That's what I'm here for." (A very simple statement, yet one I don't think I had ever heard before.)
"That's what I'm here for."

And then I said, "No it's not!"

??!!

What the hell was the matter with me?? Those words just came out automatically, I didn't have time to think.

I thought about that a few times afterward, in subsequent months, and I realized that I live with a very strong belief, or sense, that I have to do everything myself. A belief that I must not depend on anyone else, or allow anyone to help me -- or, look to anyone or anything...I don't know.

And I believed that by sheer hard work and excellence (insofar as I can achieve any) I could -- I don't know, somehow do OK in life.

But when I had this epiphany where I realized I held this belief of having to do everything yourself, another epiphany followed: You need synergy.
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actual dictionary definitions of "synergy":

The interaction of two or more agents or forces so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual effects.
Cooperative interaction among groups, especially among the acquired subsidiaries or merged parts of a corporation, that creates an enhanced combined effect.//-->

(Raising an imaginary glass): "To synergy!"
"To -- better, rather than worse."

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