A few days ago I received a Tantra. You know. This was a nice one, although after reading the first sentence I got the picture which took away most of the fun. In fact it was not funny at all. It started with the impression of a man, mesmerized by a little package that was lying there in a drawer. Untouched. She would open it on a special occasion...

The Tantra was used to influence the reader. Stop thinking about the future and live now. The interesting aspect about this message was the fact that indeed to change something you should focus on this exact moment. Now is the time. A change will not have effect in the (near) future if you do not start now. This urgency is somehow needed. So far so good.

However the message was not very trustworthy. Not for the fact that it was a sort of literature - the man hypnotized by the moment when he gave this present to his girlfriend - leaving us in tension what would happen. No, the exceptional incident is what you should be skeptic about. If it is about accepting an advice. Especially if the advice is about change.

Take for instance this story.

A manager had always dealt with a lot of stress, never time for nothing, always busy and absent when we was at home, already preparing for the next day. You need to learn to manage your time better, others have said more than once. But the manager didnt (change).

Then one day this man gets a slight hart attack. He felt before that there was a strange and unexplainable movement in his body, but it didnt alarm him. By that time. His health was never a problem. Until that day, that he ended up in a hospital. And all of a sudden, it became clear to him... Luckily enough, the man cured very well, and little after he got back to his job. Now indeed something changed. During his stay in hospital he realized that his life needed a new direction...

And it did. He started with a nine-to-five schedule and amazingly enough he realized the same if not more in less time. He improved his methods, he said NO when he had to and lived without stress. And... people started to appreciate him (even) more.

A change that would otherwise not have been possible. Or would it?

But still. Not a story that serves as an example. If you want to change it should be because of a wrong balance that you want to set right, not because of an incident that could happen to all of us. If you want to influence people you should picture a better life, not an incident in which they may loose everything but for which the chances are very unlikely.

2006 Hans Bool