I once traveled on a train with a very intelligent and educated passenger. It was a 5 hours trip, Verona-Rome, Italy, and after the first hour and our first stop in Bologna the conversation unwinded into the very active debate, and the passenger revealed himself as a general of the Italian War force.. Since then, I have never met such a disaster of a human being anywhere .... a dramatic cocktail of high intellect and deep conviction that by killing they can bring harmony into the world... I am still horrified by this meeting while being thankful to have met this type of person and to have been offered a possibility of free and deep discussion, it has dissolved all illusions- those people need a cure, not weapons in their hands. It will be even cheaper for our budget.
It's funny, sometimes you can read people's comments and you can almost see where they live, what their lives are like, just based on their opinions and what they say, how they see the world. The highest correlation about how someone will vote in an election is no longer race, gender, poverty, etc .. it's where people live. We live in a country divided along a line that runs straight through the suburbs, with urban people on one side of the divide, and rural people on the other. It's no longer about policy, it's about lifestyle, about culture. Half of the countries population simply considers the other half ... unfashionable.
I don't know what harmony has to do with it, really. How many people do you know who are in harmony, happy, etc, who ever actually accomplished anything ? Stress is the natural outcome when you are breaking new ground, creating, fighting, etc, it just comes with the territory. Anybody who is completely stress free and in total harmony with the Universe has too much time on their hands.
This is what always was in my life experience-every time I was meeting a successful person, it was always a gift - musician, trader, painter, yoga teacher, businessman... retail business owner, artisan, no matter what k occupation was, once they were successful they are always in harmony. In my mind coming the metaphor of aircraft taking off. It can be thunderstorm, snowfall or just beautiful weather - once you aircraft above the clouds the weather is always calm. I in that Mr. Leo Melamed has accomplished it all and he is in total harmony. I met Mrs. Eva Schloss, who survived all the horror and she is in complete harmony. I believe that every new stage will become stress-free as soon as you can accept it as a new and wonderful step on the path to discover your true and better self. And once we traders, all will be there, the world like existed between Mr. Melamed and his people will be anywhere - if one fell another is helping, if one action needed all together will pull and accomplish. There are beautiful speeches of him and the trader's poem. This is my dream, but not only mine and in 1971 John Lennon immortalized it.
Maybe I'm just out of step with the times I live in, but I really don't care about this kind of stuff, to me it is vain and self-centered. I know my contemporaries all think that discovering ones true purpose in life, expressing themselves and their unique qualities to the world, and all of that is the norm, but to me it's just .. whatever, cultural masturbation, and I'm not interested in it and have never been interested in it. These assumptions that so many people make about life in general that they use as premises for all of their arguments about how people should live in the modern world such as that our goal should be happiness, or contentment, or to find inner peace, etc, it's all lost on me. I don't see what having a happy life matters one bit once you're dead. To my way of thinking all that stuff is like drug users looking for their next fix - the only difference really is that they've become smart enough to realize that sex, drugs, and rock & roll is only short term happiness, or shallow contentment, and that they have to work harder to find a more lasting happiness and contentment. It isn't that most people in the modern western world don't totally agree with the goals of drug users, it's only the strategy and execution they disagree with. Today instead of dropping acid and using heroin to find contentment and Universal understanding like they did in the 1960's, they've moved on to meditation, philosophy, and et cetera, to reach those same goals. As a lifestyle choice, I simply reject all of that outright. If you want to be a unique, contented individual who exits this world at peace with a John Lennon's Imagine playing in the background, more power to you, it's a free country, but don't try to sign me up for that stuff, I'm not the least bit interested. Happiness, in my opinion, is incredibly over-rated.
i wonder how many trade with emotions i think most look for rationality for reasons to buy and sell therein lies the rub