"Life is filled with opportunities to be empathic. Try it with all your friends, with new acquaintances, with your lover, with co-workers and supervisors, and it will absolutely flabbergast your parents. Also, don't forget to be empathic with people you dislike or with whom you are having a conflict. Empathy not only calms the other person but you will discover that every human being, even the very worst, is understandable when you see the world the way he/she does."

"A true friend is a person to whom you can pore out your heart, grain and chaff together, into his/her patient hands and know that he/she will faithfully and gently blow the chaff away, then see clearly the essence of what you meant to say."

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Life is a unique gift and we should use our time wisely! Hear everyone's point of view but learn how to listen to your own innner voice - first, foremost and always! Just because everyone is doing it - it does not mean that it is the right thing to do. To conform is to lose identity."

"All of us should insist on being treated fairly; we have to stand up for our rights without violating the rights of others. This means tactfully, justly, and effectively expressing our preferences, needs, opinions and feelings. Psychologist call that being "assertive," as distinguished from being unassertive (weak, passive, compliant, self-sacrificing) or aggressive (self-centered, inconsiderate, hostile, arrogantly demanding)

Because some people want to be "nice" and "not cause trouble," they "suffer in silence," "turn the other cheek," and assume nothing can be done to change their situation or "it is our cross to bear." The rest of us appreciate pleasant, accommodating people but whenever a "nice" person permits a greedy, dominant person to take advantage of him/her, the passive person is not only cheating him/herself but also reinforcing unfair, self-centered behavior in the aggressive person. That's how chauvinists are created.

Purposes? Assertiveness is an antidote to fear, shyness, passivity, and even anger, so there is an astonishingly wide range of situations in which this training is appropriate.
Factor analysis of several assertiveness scales (Schimmel, 1976) has suggested several kinds of behavior are involved.
• To speak up, make requests, ask for favors and generally insist that your rights be respected as a significant, equal human being. To overcome the fears and self-depreciation that keep you from doing these things.
• To express negative emotions (complaints, resentment, criticism, disagreement, intimidation, the desire to be left alone) and to refuse requests.
• To show positive emotions (joy, pride, liking someone, attraction) and to give compliments. Accept compliments with "Thank you."
• To ask why and question authority or tradition, not to rebel but to assume responsibility for asserting your share of control of the situation--and to make things better. You are no one's slave.
• To initiate, carry on, change and terminate conversations comfortably. Share your feelings, opinions and experiences with others.
• To deal with minor irritations before your anger builds into intense resentment and explosive aggression.

Times are getting tough in Serbia, that's what makes me worry. Slowly but certainly this country is sliding toward another political and economy crisis which will most probably lead its further decomposition into smaller regions. It's very sad and humiliating to see that in the end it's getting more and more obvious that it is heading to become the most underdeveloped point of SE Europe. There are symptoms of serious insanity shown through some outrageous happenings like for instance introducing the name for Serbian language which is to be called just "native" (instead Serbian or any other) at the school system of country of Montenegro. Of course the term 'native' just as the adjective here is explaining nothing not even regarded by common sense not to talk about introducing it in official use at schools and many people rioted about that issue, but nothing could be done, because there's practically no state mechanisms to take care about things like that.

The northern region of Vojvodina is going slowly and maybe even not so peacefully segregate. The relations are getting more problematic daily because they obviously think they are not interested to be the part of what was left of xYugolavia, current state union of SCG * (that stands for Serbia and Montenegro) where Montenegro is already another completely separate state in a flexible union with Serbia and where Kosovo, another part of Serbia on the south is undergoing tough times regarding its economical, political and ethnict conflict prone ambience under protectorate of KFOR and other forces with so little Serbs left there living endangered in their enclaves practically out of donations because there's not any normal sign of economy development there for 5 years, and even if any of them, Serbs, would open a bakery or held a school for example that would be only for their "gheto" and Serbian customers from there, no one else or very rare are those who would not (dare) to step in. Some projects of TV station with mixed staff Albanian and Serbs exists but that's all we could see. The issue of Kosovo independence has been postponed at US Congress last week.

I'm so sad about all that. It feels like no one except God can really help to make things better as the things are now going worse despite so much energy people gave into bringing back this country into normal life. We're living in the dead country, completely disfunctional system, a shipwreck where Robinson would have more chance to survive leaving it and making his home on the nearby island. I was so sorry to hear about one of my favorite stars, the man who made alive 'Superman' passed away the other day, as he was such a great person who gave and suffered so much. I felt the same for this country although no one is telling the truth about it actual 'death', and remembering what I've been through make me start to think and worry for America.

I know I have just a small life to live, but this world is shrinking daily in its opportunities to live peacefully and on the other hand it's being each minute more and more jeopardized by extremistic misconduct and overall leadership crisis. Why don't the kids take over? Aliens? Anyone? Why don't we all admit we're wrong and say let the world be ruled by people UNDER 18!!! You all others step back! Because it seem that currently we live in the world where majority of people would not listen and follow and choose the better only worse. Are we so much brainwashed, generally speaking? What a shame to discover it in my age of 44! When I was 18 I knew that something was wrong and had to live so long just to learn what was that. Oh friends, I'm so desperate today. Everything is OK, but I feel like crying when thinking of us all. Who's going to protect our love for the others, our basic human sanity, our life and peace and our friends if we don't do it ourselves? We're always so alone in our small private lives, the strings that pull the destiny of the planet are somewhere else and can direct and strangle us.

What's in all those people, the leaders of today in general? What are their psychological profiles and the very mindsets of those that run today for the PM of UK, the President of the US or China or Russia? Dragon riders... How close or how far are their thoughts to fight for the cause comparing to any other cause in minds of those we call terrorists one day and maybe forefathers of the nation and revolutionars tomorrow, by the power of historical judgements, by mere words that are to offer the explanation over the truth. Wasn't the destiny of Yugoslavia to be put on the side of good guys and bad guys just the same? Or any other country, Germany? Egypt? Israel? Corea? Russia? What about colonial and slave linching mindsets? And the leaders of this world equipped to kill, bound to destroy instead of support and nourish, sometimes under the very same name of the "action" and "campaign"? How else was NATO campaign in Yugoslavia called but the act of protection for refugees, help to democratic forces to take over the country while the bombs were falling on ordinary people's heads? What makes the war in Iraq not regarded as WWIII when all the countries are involved in it one or the other way? Who gives the names and what keeps us silent? Should I be monitored and disappear after publishing a small article, my free opinion on TIG? Of course not, and what even if I do? What makes them, our leaders, those who operate red phones and red buttons at the first place and what makes them all if anything at all at least AWARE of the power of destruction they will eventually hold in their hands even talking about nice and positive things all the time when the whole game is about money, more money, more powerful weapons and more death and destruction of more humiliated humanity? Why is it going that way? I remember the words of a religious philosopher who wrote after beginning of WWI in 1915 that nothing would be the same after inventing such powerful military equipment that lifes of civilians are even more endangered than lives of those confronting in that war, organized in armies. That was so very true, and for so very long time. We lived few generations through the expanding consequences of that technological advancement in service of military causes absurdly leading even to the possibility of nuclear war. Nowadays that evolved (should I better use the term DEGENERATE our own kind???) to the point that "nuke them" becomes just another common phrase in the streets of global world where even worse slower and more painful dying and dependence developing methods are invented and working as we speak to draw certainly more than a half of poor, disgraced, helpless whether urban or rural human individuals into the hells of non existence.

People in Serbia have been living on the edge of that knowledge for more than 10 years, in this country and its agony I’ve read and maybe even written by my own life each page of it, each insight in each destiny described and so clearly seen from here, but yet more to go, because the edge is not as they may seem straight in their borders, so easy to slide to the side of destruction into the zone of extinction of all values, into the nothingness where the mills of the gods work in the darkness of the total eclipse.

Show me the place in the world where the people are not dying of de-humanization wether by becoming so rich and empty consumerism oriented to forget how truly to help others and to help themselves be really human, not plastic, or being from the other killed around you in the streets, in the war zones we fly over, under the transparent cover of politics, ideas, business and even - the ethics! It’s not the confusion the right word is SHAME! And we are all to blame for. Is future President (whoever he's going to be) of the US or any other powerful leader of this world aware WHAT EXACTLY his power of destruction means on the other side of the whip he holds just by the mere job description of its place? Oh God, whoever they are send them the same enlightening dream tonight, to feel the power of their own dark metaphors, let them whoever they are or might be get to be enlightened just for an instant, take them to the place of the sanity of mind to that spot of crystal clear thoughtfulness where they could see that the dark side is not any special entity but just the darkness caused by lack of care the dark spot of ignorance and carelessness that needs to be cured, erased before it erase us all! Oh, friend, what are we going to do with our lives? Each of us can stay like we are. I can stay hidden like a mushroom in the shade all my life, but I need to touch the Sun even if my wings would burn. Why is it so complicated to enlighten the world, when it is the easiest thing to do? We're born enlightened and that's our natural way to live… IF we are to live, that is!

Comes to my mind how Gandhi said "That would be a good idea!" when asked about Western civilization. Today each toddler from the kindergarten had seen enough to tell us the same! How do you react to that? How those Presidents and the Presidents to be would take that? Hopefully our lives are not to be joked about. The quality of life and its sustainability. We're talking about mere existence AND being human. Why the existence if we are not humans any more? Even more why live if we tend to be quite the opposite? Have we lost any track of the basic values of human life?

I'm so ashamed that we can't make it work, our culture and civilization, western, global, modern, European, American, Christian or what not, for such a long time, for centuries by now! All we ever had was just as it is now – pretending that we do great deals and make the world go on in fact living our lives as mice, hiding in our holes, being afraid of the soldiers, death and both fascinated attracted by the empty tingling of the ‘wealth’ and frightened by the power of the wealthy ones, even being afraid of our own God(s) and our own selves on this planet, on this place full of life, so rich, so beautiful and yes - so friendly just if we are wise cautious, responsible and caring enough to live in mutual love learning with the deepest respect of life.