"No!"

"You should learn to say no, my dear"

Daddy used to give me these nuggets of wisdom from the time i was a kid. But it took me quite a while before I realised what he meant to say. Like: Saying "no" doesn't mean you have to use the word "no"; it means setting priorities, and meeting them, and for the ones you have put in your folder called 'no', just mark some "think time" on the calendar and deal with them when you know you can (or when you can't put them off any longer).

So here are others that I finally understood. And some over which I am still mulling.

• It is easier to come to a common understanding if both sides understand that either has the power to walk away
• Sometimes a "wrong" only someone else's definition of what I think is "right"
  
• Truth and fact are not the same thing. Truth is whatever people *believe* to be fact, whether or not what they believe in really is a fact or not.
  
• Sometimes it is better to tell a person why you think there is a problem, rather than to assume they would understand just because they are older.

(I still have to keep drumming this into my head)

Looks to me like the good ol' pearls of wisdom have to come with their own dictionary.