By Dr Charles Leyman Kachitsa
The sitting pattern on any gathering indicates the type of meeting taking place. Where everyone has equal freedom on where to sit in the meeting, usually denotes a meeting of people at par. It can also be arranged such to indicate mutuality and sharing of the objective of the meeting as well as comradeship.
Even in remote villages, meetings sitting arrangements are made purposefully to denote the type of gathering taking place. A sitting plan for a sombre meeting would be much different from a celebratory one. The most interesting is night meetings usually conducted around a mellow fire burning and warming those around where stories both fictious and factual are shared.
In modern times which would have been a thing unimaginable by past generations, meetings are held online using internet platform. Though there is some resemblance of order especially for one wanting to speak where hands are electronically raised, these types of meetings have no sitting or staring arrangement. However they give freedom since one could be anywhere on earth and styill be able to attend a designated meeting. Freedom for man has the tendency that the more we feel it the more we add things to bind us as human beings. The hope is that meetings held in Mars will be more civilized perhaps.
The quotes this week are a final extraction from a 1926 classic book which accordingly serves as a talisman through its renowned collection of Babylonian parables for those seeking financial wisdom and stability in life. Its powerhouse of time-tested principles on how to gain and retain wealth has been inspiring those who read it for several generations now. I am sure the few selected quotations listed below from the book will enlighten you to one or two lessons to enhance your life. Read and enjoy:
THE RICHEST MAN IN BABYLON by George S. Clason
“Youth, never having had experience, cannot realize that hopeless debt is like a deep pit into which one may descend quickly and where one may struggle vainly for many days. It is a pit of sorrow and regrets where the brightness of the sun is overcast and night is made unhappy by restless sleeping. —— Yet, I do not discourage borrowing gold. I encourage it. I recommend it if it be for a wise purpose. I myself made my first real success as a merchant with borrowed gold.”
“Where the determination is, the way can be found.’ Dabasir replied. ‘I now had the determination so I set out to find a way. First I visited every man to whom I was indebted and begged his indulgence until I could earn that with which to repay. Most of them met me gladly. Several reviled me but others offered to help me; one indeed did give me the very help I needed. It was Mathon, the gold lender. Learning that I had been a camel tender in Syria; he sent me to old Nebatur, the camel trader, just commissioned by our good king to purchase many herds of sound camels for the great expedition. With him, my knowledge of camels I put to good use. Gradually I was able to repay every copper and every piece of silver. Then at last I could hold my head up and feel that I was an honourable man among men.”
“How can you call yourself a free man when your weakness has brought you to this? If a man has in himself the soul of a slave will he not become one no matter what his birth, even as water seeks its level? If a man has within himself the soul of a free man, will he not become respected and honoured in his own city in spite of his misfortune?”
“That man who keepeth in his purse both gold and silver that he need not spend is good to his family and loyal to his king.’ —- ‘The man who hath but a few coppers in his purse is indifferent to his family and indifferent to his king. —– But the man who hath naught in his purse is unkind to his family and is disloyal to his king, for his own heart is bitter. “
