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Things Learned The Hard Way

1. Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.

2. If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be "meetings."
3. There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness."

4. People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.

5. You should not confuse your career with your life.

6. Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.

7. Never lick a steak knife.

8. The most destructive force in the universe is gossip.

9. You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight savings time.

10. You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests that you think she's pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment.

11. There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday. That time is age eleven.

12. The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we ALL believe that we are above average drivers.

13. A person, who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person. (This is very important. Pay attention. It never fails.)

14. Your friends love you anyway.

15. Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark. A large group of professionals built the Titanic.

Celeste Kendreyl wrote:2. If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be "meetings."

When I used to work as a salesman for a certain kitchen cutlery and utensils manufacturer, I remember my district manager would have all of his sales reps get together for meetings AT LEAST four times a week without fail. This is not counting the many times I would have to stop by the office to pick up/drop sales forms and those annoying little 'enter-a-contest' slips that we would have people fill out as an added incentive for purchasing our products. I was so sick and tired of our weekly "business" meetings that by the time I quit working for that company I must have had so bad an attendence record that had I not quit I probably would have gotten fired eventually (I'm perhaps exaggerating since I never knew of anyone that got fired).

Nevertheless, those meetings, as annoying and intrusive they were to my working schedule (I had to schedule sales appointments AROUND our stupid meetings because--to my manager--they were as important as making sales), I must recognize they did do a lot in building up 'team spirit' and encouraged us to keep working as hard as we could ("Johnny managed to sell FOUR homemaker sets since our last meeting, ain't that amazing!"). Somehow, there seems to be a certain element of collective motivation and encouragement that would have been lacking without those weekly meetings. If your team partners are averaging 6-8k in sales a week and you're only doing 2-4k then you're either going to feel like such a loser that you're going to want to quit or strive to do better. Either way, the company wins.

Meetings, assemblies, gatherings, whatever you want to call them, they are an essential element to the healthy development of any social or collective entity. If you want your organization to remain "together" and grow, you have to have meetings. Of course, meetings cannot take the place of direct action. Meetings are only useful so long as they produce positive results. You can have all the meetings you want--plan, theorize, discuss, argue the minute lil details till your ears bleed--but unless you eventually carry on with that plan, turn theory into fact, and make use of the discussed material in working out your plan, all the talk in the world is not going to do you any good.

Conversely, if you supplant a clear plan of action (presumably the result of a collective agreement reached at some point in your many meetings) for an idealistic but vague vision of what you think you want, your enterprise is doomed to failure before it even began. Meetings also help people decide-as group--what is it that they want. The only way a successful company can have set goals that are achievable is if everyone can agree to pursue the same goals. If the members of your company each have their own way of doing things, their own personal vision and goals they hope to accomplish, you're going to end up with a divided and ineffective group. You either agree to work as a team, or have no team at all.

So meetings have the potential to do a lot of good, but they can also be a waste of time. Meetings alone won't effect action. But without meetings action could end up being counterproductive. Oh and Celeste, even God has meetings

4. People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.

But that doesn't mean they won't listen anyway Actually, if we must get real technical here, no Christian should ever NOT want to share his or hers religious views. I mean being a Christian automatically equals being a person who is going to want to share the "good news" of the gospel because, well . . . they are good news! If you've ever met someone who professed to be a Christian but then refused to discuss the topic, even when asked, then that person has some serious doctrinal problems or is not too sure whether he/she really believes in Christianity or not.

I may very well believe Brahmanism is pure nonsense but as a consciencious Christian there's nothing preventing me from listening to what the other person has to say. Only people who are not sure what they believe (or have doubts) would feel threatened by some other person's religious views. The example of Jehovah's Witnesses is a great case in point. Why are they taught NOT to listen to what other people have to say about their religion? Are they so spiritually and doctrinally weak that they cannot stand even minor criticisms?