"He's a bizarre combination"

During a more poorly time in terms of my mental health, I was hearing voices as if coming from people who were immediately present, but I didn't know at the time that the words were hallucinations. Sat in the passenger seat, of the Triumph Dolomite car that my brother's friend Matthew was driving, and in the late 1980s, I randomly heard him say, "he's a bizarre combination", bearing in mind there was no-one else there. I believed that was real for about 25 years, and subsequent voices became much nastier.

It's not uncommon for people to be divided into two broad groups. One could be the intelligent and/or academic types, who might have less common-sense due to having been under involved in trials and tribulations, stemming from regular decisions and the cause-and-effect lessons stemming from them. Then there are people who have few formal qualifications, but they take chances. They face their fears. Some of them say they went to the University of Life. Their confidence gains have them learning to "wing" things, bluff, or make it up as they go along. I was in the former group until my mid-forties.

Without balancing these life approaches, intellectuals might be unfairly or meanly utilised. Whilst those demonstrating confidence, both real or pretend, and with common-sense, might be able to fool people, but as managers, their shunning of reasoned discussions in favour of dictates, betrays their background.

As I have said elsewhere, I think a more modern collection of pointers, based on Saint Paul's "faith, hope and charity", is "balance, respect and love", with balance in the modern world being absolutely vital.