Watch your tail swing!
It's a small label you sometimes see on the driver's side visors of those larger size rent-it-yourself moving vans you can get from U-Haul, Penske or a similar company.
It's basically a cautionary notice to the driver — who's likely not familiar with the turning characteristics of a large van — to be aware of the fact that what's going on in front of you often has a bearing on what's going on behind you when you're turning the vehicle.
But it applies — metaphorically speaking — in many situations in life.
My dad never liked it when my mom was watering our vegetable garden when I was a kid. He typically insisted on coming in there and taking over the job because my mom was very good at watering the garden but she only really watched what was going on in front of her and was oblivious to the destruction that the dragging hose was causing behind her.
Watch your tail swing!
Consciousness and Awareness in Public Life
We can probably come up with lots of ways and daily life in which "watching your tail swing" is kind of an important part of moving consciously through your existence.
Consider that watching your tail swing can often also be applied to such things as opinions and ideologies, particularly within the field of politics.
Politicians and ideologues are particularly adept at charging ahead with their grand plans while being totally oblivious to the destructive wake they leave behind, caused by the execution of their plans. Except, of course, they are always very aware of the destruction caused by other politicians' plans as a result of their actions.
Awareness of both the give and take of situations is often beyond people's grasp...
It may be wonderful and even appropriate that you have a plan to help this particular group over here get out of their repression, but if you have a giant cognitive blind spot to the fact that your determined efforts to help 10% of your population is going to start a wave of bankruptcy and famine among the other 90% you're clearly not watching your tail swing!
Maybe I'm just very old fashioned because I was raised to always think through the possible outcomes and corresponding consequences of every decision I made in like. "Consequential thinking," my father used to call it.
Sadly, many — and sometimes sincerely well-meaning — people in power see watching your tail swing as a weakness and rely instead on asserting that radical self-reliance rules the day, while blatantly ignoring the whole tenet of "Do no harm."
And then they will argue that those others are doing them harm and we invariably end up in this tit-for-tat struggle that ultimately has no resolution. Don't believe me? Just look at all the ethnic struggles around the world, some of which have been going on for centuries or even millennia!
It seems unlikely that we'll ever be able to create a better world if the predominant viewpoint — regardless of which side of the equation you are on — is that we need to get our way and to hell with what happens to everybody else!
I look at all this, and it's one of the reasons I've never been able to get behind taking a particular political stance and why I don't identify with a particular political party. I look more at the entire spectrum of politics and ideas in terms of asking "are you part of the ME party, or part of the WE Party?
Lest that comes across as my being an apologist of communism, let me assure you I am not. I just want to know that the people I'm allegedly putting my faith in are capable of thinking with compassion about those who do not share their perspective.
Well, that's enough soapboxing for now... time for me to catch some zzz's!
Thanks for visiting, and have a great remainder of your week!
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Created at 2023-07-18 23:59 PDT
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