Grand strategy is the art of looking beyond the present battle and calculating ahead. Focus on your ultimate goal and plot to reach it.
Interpretation
Grand strategy involves planning for the long term rather than being distracted by immediate challenges.
This quote emphasizes the importance of having a strategic vision that extends beyond current difficulties, encouraging individuals to maintain focus on their ultimate objectives. By calculating a path toward these goals, one can navigate through challenges more effectively, ensuring that each action contributes to the larger purpose.
In practice
In a speech about leadership, you may quote Greene to illustrate the need for foresight in decision-making.
In a society where the roles everyone plays are obvious, the refusal to conform to any standard will excite interest. Be both masculine and feminine, impudent and charming, subtle and outrageous. Let other people worry about being socially acceptable; those types are a dime a dozen, and you are after a power greater than they can imagine.
When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike.
The moment people feel they know what to expect from you, your spell on them is broken. More: You have ceded them power.
The future belongs to those who learn more skills and combine them in creative ways.
The Nihilistic Troll might pretend to be acting in the service of some cause or leader, but don't be fooled. The cause and their supposedly strong convictions are simply a way to justify and provide cover for their abusive behavior.
Only create associations with positive affinities. Make this a rule of life and you will benefit more than from all the therapy in the world.
Letting go means we stop trying to force outcomes and make people behave. It means we give up resistance to the way things are, for the moment. It means we stop trying to do the impossible-controlling that which we cannot-and instead, focus on what is possible-which usually means taking care of ourselves. And we do this in gentleness, kindness, and love, as much as possible.
It's not about the past; it's about knowing your history so that you can fight in the present. Otherwise, you don't know who the real enemy is, what the real issue is, because it had been covered by many layers of bad information, of lies, and manipulation.
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.
A good youth ought to have a fear of God, to be subject to his parents, to give honor to his elders, to preserve his purity; he ought not to despise humility, but should love forbearance and modesty. All these are an ornament to youthful years.
If we can't face our losses, we can't be present either fully to everything that is. When people have cut off or not made peace with some part of themselves, they miss out on other aspects of life.
When life is good and we have no problems, we can almost let ourselves believe we have no need for God. But in my experience, sometimes the richest blessings come through pain and hard things.
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