Living

Life is like composing music; the masterpieces come from the mistakes.

"The whole life of man is but a point of time; let us enjoy it",Plutarch

Unfortunately society is currently fractured; I personally think advertising had a hand in this. Most advertising is a form of manipulation in an attempt to get you to spend your money. But the form of manipulation exploited is to make you feel you need to be "better" than your neighbour. And it only takes one person to accept that offer and it forces us all join-in for fear of exclusion, and the cycle continues. Everyone is forced to join a fictitious rat race.

The problem with this unrelenting messaging is it encourages people to feel life is about being "better" than others. If you feel "better" than others you're not likely to be too neighbourly, and if you feel "worse" you're not going to get much from those people that think they are better. It's a horrible paradigm.

But how else could hundreds of companies sell the same product? A pair of jeans is a pair of jeans. Companies refer to their image as a brand. Everyone has a brand – it is a marketing expression used to define how other people perceive the public personality of a company. A company with a good brand would be like the popular guy at school. People wanted to hang around with him. It's about making you feel good if you are in the club, and excluded if you aren't.

Of course all this is rubbish.

You actually have complete control over how "good" you are – and it's not about the jeans your wearing. It's about how you deal with relationships – not just sexual ones, but your friends, your neighbours, even strangers.

Life is about relationships. You cannot have a happy life on your own, even with a million pounds and a fast car. It is other people that make your life a good one. The more energy you spend on improving your relationships the happier you will be.