Good
day, and welcome to the newest issue of our
e-zine! We hope
that your new month has started well and that you're
able to turn
it into one of the best months you've ever spent on
this planet!
Compassion
makes no distinction between friends and
enemies, neighbors and outsiders, compatriots and foreigners.
Compassion is the gate to human community.
This
is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for
complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is
our temple; the philosophy is kindness.
Happy the man and happy he alone
He who can call to-day his own;
He who's secure within can say,
To-morrow do thy worst, for I have lived
to-day.
-Dryden
"There never was a land so dear
But found its hallelujah here."
If an inhabitant of some other planet were to
visit America, he would probably think that
our people were all en route for something
beyond, some other destination, and that where
they happen to be living is merely a way
station where they unpack only such of their
luggage as they need for a temporary stay.
The visitor would find very few people
actually living in the here and the now.
He would find that most people's gaze is fixed
upon something beyond, something to
come. They are not really settled
to-day, do not really live in the now,
but they are sure they will live to-morrow or
next year when business is better, their
fortune greater, when they move into their new
house, get their new furnishings, their new
automobile, get rid of things that now annoy,
and have everything around them to make them
comfortable. Then they will be
happy. But they are not really enjoying
themselves to-day.
Our eyes are so
focused upon the future, upon some goal in the
beyond, that we do not see the beauties and
the glories all about us. Our eyes are
not focused for the things near us, but those
far away.
We get so accustomed to living
in our imagination and anticipation that we
lose much of our power of enjoying the here
and the now. We are living for
to-morrow, to-morrow, and yet, "When
tomorrow comes it still will be
to-morrow!"
We are like children chasing a rainbow.
If we could only reach it, what delight!
We spend our lives trading in
"futures," building
air-castles. We never believe that we
have yet reached the years of our finest
living, but we always feel sure that the ideal
time of life is coming.
Most of us are discontented, restless,
nervous, and unhappy. There is a
far-away look in our eyes, which shows that we
are not content with to-day, that we are not
really living here and now, that our minds are
on something away beyond the present.
The great majority of people think that the
proper thing to do is to live almost anywhere
except right here and now. Many people
dwell on the past with its rich but lost
opportunities, its splendid chances which thay
have let slip; and while they are doing this,
they waste the precious present which seems of
little account to them to-day, but which
to-morrow will begin to take on a new value in
their estimation. It is astonishing what
new virtues and forces we are able to see and
develop in regretful retrospection, the moment
these have passed beyond our reach. What
splendid opportunities stand out after they
have gone by! Oh! What could we
not do with them if we had them back!
. . . . If we are ever happy, it will be
because we create happiness out of our
environment with all its vexations, cares, and
disheartening conditions. He who does
not learn to create his happiness as he goes
along, out of the day's work with all its
trials, its antagonisms, its obstacles, with
all its little annoyances, disappointments,
has missed the great life secret. It is
out of this daily round of duties, out of the
stress and strain and strife of life, the
attrition of mind with mind, disposition with
disposition--out of this huckstering, buying
and selling world--that we must get the honey
of life, just as the bee sucks the sweetness
from all sorts of flowers and weeds.
The whole world is full of unworked joymines.
Everywhere we go we find all sorts of
happiness-producing material, if we only know
how to extract it. "Everything is
worth its while if we only grasp it and its
significance. Half the joy in life is in
little things taken on the run."
. . . . Resolve every morning that you will
get the most out of that day, not of
some day in the future, when you are better
off, when you have a family, when your
children are grown up, when you have overcome
your difficulties. You never will
overcome them all. You will never be
able to eliminate all the things which annoy,
trouble, and cause friction in your
life. You will never get rid of all the
little enemies of your happiness, the hundred
and one little annoyances, but you can make
the most of things as they are.
The reason why our lives are so lean and
poverty-stricken, so disappointing and
ineffective, is because we do not really live
in the day; we do not concentrate our energy,
our ambition, our attention, our enthusiasm,
upon the day we are living.
Resolve to enjoy yourself to-day. Enjoy to-day,
and do not let the hideous shadows of
to-morrow, the forebodings, and the things you
dread, rob you of what is yours to-day--your
inalienable right to be happy to-day.
Just have a little heart-to-heart talk with
yourself every morning, and say:
"It does not matter what comes or what
goes to-day, what happens or what does not
happen, there is one thing of which I am sure,
and that is, I am going to get the most
possible out of the day. I am not going
to allow anything to rob me of my happiness,
or of my right to live this day from
beginning to end, and not merely to exist.
"I do not care what comes, I shall not
allow any annoyance, any happening, any
circumstances which may cross my path to-day,
to rob me of my peace of mind. I will
not be unhappy to-day, no matter what
occurs. I am going to enjoy the day to
its full, live the day completely. This
day shall be a complete day in my life.
I shall not allow the enemies of my happiness
to mar it. No misfortune in the past,
nothing which has happened to me in days gone
by, which has been disagreeable or tragic, no
enemies of my happiness or efficiency, shall
be a guest in my spirit's sacred enclosure
to-day. Only happy thoughts, joy
thoughts, only the friends of my peace,
comfort, happiness, and success, shall find
entertainment in my soul this day. . . ."
Remember that yesterday is dead.
To-morrow is not yet born. The only time
that belongs to you is the passing
moment. One might liken the sixty
minutes in the hour to flowers, that live for
only sixty seconds and then die. If we
get the good that belongs to us here and now,
we must extract the sweetness of each passing
minute while it is ours. That is the
real art of living in the to-day.
Are you waiting on a lightning strike?
Are you waiting for the perfect night?
Are you waiting 'til the time is right?
What are you waiting for?
Don't you wanna learn to deal with fear?
Don't you wanna take the wheel and steer?
Don't you wait another minute here.
What are you waiting for?
chorus:
You gotta go and reach for the top
Believe in every dream you got
You're only living once so tell me
What are you, what are you waiting for?
You know you gotta give it your all
And don't be afraid if you fall
You're only living once so tell me
What are you, what are you waiting for?
Are you waiting for the right excuse?
Are you waiting for a sign to choose?
While you're waiting it's the time you lose
What are you waiting for?
Do you wanna spread your wings and fly?
Don't you really wanna live your life?
Don't you wanna love before you die?
What are you waiting for?
chorus
Tell me what you're waiting for
Show me what you're aiming for
Whatcha going to save it for?
So whatcha really waiting for?
Everybody's gonna make mistakes
But everybody's got a choice to make
Everybody needs a leap of faith
When are you taking yours?
chorus
We
have some
inspiring and motivational books that may interest you. Our main way of supporting this site is
through the sale of books, either physical copies
or digital copies for your Amazon Kindle (including the
online reader). All of the money that we earn
through them comes back to the site
in one way or another. Just click on the picture
to the left to visit our page of books, both fiction and
non-fiction!
It was inevitable, really, that I should find myself
surrounded by piles of Legos and Little People, games
and gadgets, paper, paper, and more paper. My
husband Jim and I have two children. With their
arrival, our lives had become fuller--and with school,
sports, hobbies, and home improvements, so did our
house.
At first, acquiring things made me feel good. . .
successful. After years of living in a Spartan
apartment and budgeting my pennies to buy
"frivolities" such as kitchen towels, I
enjoyed tricking-out our house with knickknacks and
necessities. Then the kids came, along with the
inevitable avalanche of clothes, games, Happy Meal
toys, school papers, and craft projects. We also
added more knickknacks, better dishware, new wine
glasses, scrapbooking supplies (mine) and power tools
(Jim's). We lived by the bumper-sticker motto,
"Whoever has the most toys when he dies,
wins." And we were going to die winners.
As the house began to bulge, we coped as best we
could--buying bins, shelving, and baskets, filling
drawers, tubs, and coffee cans. My coffee-cup
shelf overflowed. So did my daughter's
bookshelves and my son't T-shirt drawer. I could
no longer find anything easily. Try searching
through 800 unalphabetized kids' books to find one
specific inch-thick book called The Christmas Bear
15 minutes before bedtime, and you'll get an idea of
the stress that plagued me each night.
It was during one such "bear hunt" that I
decided I no longer wanted more. I wanted less.
And more of it. The mediocre items were choking
out the ones that really, truly mattered, like ivy run
amok in a bed of prize roses. I could not locate
a special child's drawing amid the massive piles of
notes and scribbles. In saving twenty years'
worth of my own writings, I had run out of file space
for current projects. What's more, I was finding
it ever harder to have a coherent thought.
Something had to change.
I racked my cluttered brain for a solution.
Should I fill more file cabinets? Buy more
bins? Stock more shelves? "No, no,
no!" cried a voice inside my head, from somewhere
behind a stack of old childhood fears and repressed
teenage angst. (What can I say? I saved
everything.) It had become apparent that
organizing was no longer the answer. The only
solution was to purge.
I went room by room, beginning with my home
office. One bag for recyclables. One bag
for trash. One bag for charity. I was
ruthless. I asked myself, "Do you need this
right now?" "Would you pack this and
move it to a new house?" And "Will you
care about this in 20 years?" If the
answers were yes, it stayed. If not, it got
kicked to the curb. . . or out of the office,
anyway. The house looked worse before it looked
better, but in a few days, the office looked
GREAT! And over the next few months, the rest of
the rooms followed suit.
If acquiring dish towels felt good a decade ago, this
paring-down felt ten times better. I could walk
through a room without sighing. I could put my
feet up at night on a cleared-off coffee table.
And without all that clutter weighing on my mind, I
was free to focus on things that mattered. . . like
the writing that feeds my sould. . . like finding The
Christmas Bear at bedtime.
I now understand that there is a fine line between success
and excess. And the next time I think we
are about to cross it, you'll see me with three bags
in my hand--one for recyclables, one for trash, and
one for charity.
Living
Life Fully, the e-zine
exists to try to provide for visitors of the world wide web a
place
of growth, peace, inspiration, and encouragement. Our
articles
are presented as thoughts of the authors--by no means do
we
mean to present them as ways that anyone has to live
life. Take
from them what you will, and disagree with
whatever you disagree
with--just know that they'll be here for you
each week.
Peace
does not dwell in outward things, but within the soul;
we
may preserve
it in the midst of the bitterest pain,
if
our will remains firm and submissive. Peace
in this
life
springs from acquiescence to, not in an exemption
from, suffering.
Francois de Fenelon
Troubling Times and
Gardens to Tend
It kind of seems that there are no breaks for us these days.
We're in difficult times--that's pretty much undeniable.
Whether these times are more difficult than others that human
beings have passed through is debatable, but it's absolutely
certain that we're facing a whole lot of adversity right now.
A comprehensive list of difficulties and adverse situations would
be impossible, of course, but here's a start: inflation
that's coming at the tail end of a devastating pandemic; extreme
droughts in many parts of the world, as well as the fires that are
destroying huge swaths of forest; strong division between
political parties that seems to grow worse each day; mass
shootings here in the States that just won't end; rising housing
prices that are keeping many people out of the market, even for
renting; a war in the Ukraine that is completely unjustified and
that is killing thousands of people; worldwide pollution that's
causing possibly irreversible damage to the planet; and
more--much, much more.
So what do we do? Do we lose hope and give up and give in,
letting ourselves trudge towards our ultimate demise? We can
lock ourselves in our homes and watch shows and do nothing and
eventually perish along with everyone else, right? Or do we
whine and complain and blame others because we, of course, aren't
responsible for what's going on?
Those
who know no hardships will know no hardihood. Those who face no
calamity will need no courage. Mysterious though it is, the
characteristics in human nature
which we love best grow in a soil with
a strong mixture of troubles.
Or do we do
what we can, in our own little ways, making our
small contributions on a small scale and hope that
the combined effect of all of us together making
such small contributions may end up being
significant? Do we look for the small things
that we can do that may help others, that may teach
others, and trust that the ripple effect will result
in those others doing their own positive small
things in their own ways?
It's quite easy to say that we learn the most from
adversity--the danger is, of course, that in doing
so we minimize the drastic effects of such hard
times. We can't just say things like,
"Don't worry about it" when people are
being traumatized by what's going on; we can't
dismiss the severity of the situations that we're
facing with simplistic platitudes and glib
words. Yes, adversity is one of the best
teachers that we can have in life, but knowing this
fact doesn't make anything easy for anyone.
Reminding ourselves of this truth may help us to
weather the storms we're passing through, but the
truth is that times like these call for us to show
our love and kindness and compassion for others
much, much more than the glad times require.
So how can we do this? How can we live life
fully today when things are going badly all over the
world today?
That's a very good question. There's a Zen
story, I believe, about a monk who was tending to
his garden when he was asked what he would do if he
knew the world would end tomorrow, or if he would
die tomorrow--I've forgotten which. But his
answer is important: he said, "I would
tend my garden." Voltaire ends his work Candide
with the main character saying, "We must
cultivate our garden."
I think we can learn a lot from this perspective.
There are not so many
lessons in glad times. Adversity is by far the better
teacher. Adversity will be part of almost all our lives. So it is not in escaping adversity,
but in answering it, that our
character is defined.
Christopher Warren
How do we get
through rough times? By recognizing that in
our own worlds, we still have work to do, and the
seeming insignificance of that work on the level of
the whole world means nothing--we still need to get
that work done. Today I have to change a
couple of electrical outlets in my home, and that
job needs to be done no matter what's happening in
the Ukraine, no matter how bad the floods in
Australia, no matter what this political zealot said
to offend millions of people. My most
important tasks today are to focus on the things in
my own life that need to be taken care of today, or
to make plans to take care tomorrow of those things
that can wait.
It's very tempting in times like these to come up
with some sort of list, something that we can focus
on to make sure that we're not wasting time worrying
or feeling helpless and/or hopeless. Lists can
be fine, but they can also make us feel overwhelmed
when we all of a sudden have five or six or ten
things that we have to pay attention to. But
when we can focus our thoughts and efforts to
tending to our own garden--in other words, our own
lives--we simplify life and we don't expand our own
expectations of ourselves to an unmanageable
point.
Certain circumstances
are so overwhelmingly difficult that the best
we can do to promote our eventual healing is simply to mark time,
stay alive,
and bear up under the worst of our suffering.
Ann
Kaiser Stearns
It's very easy
to get overwhelmed with the despair and pain in the
world. It's easy to think that we should be
doing something to fix the world, or at least fix a
little corner of it. We want to make people
feel better, safer, more respected, more
loved. For the vast majority of the people on
this planet, though, these are things that we do to
a very limited extent, with a very limited number of
people. The world is going through difficult
times right now, and there's a good chance that
things will get worse before they get better.
We can't let that fact pull us out of our own lives,
though. If we do get caught up in thinking
about life from a worldly perspective, there's a
good chance that we're going to lose our abiity to
influence, in a positive way, the people and things
that are a part of our personal worlds.
It's not that we can do nothing at all. My
wife and I have chosen three charities, for example,
that we send money to monthly. We know that
these organizations have a much better chance at
affecting policy than we personally ever will.
We don't give a fortune, and we don't fix things,
but we contribute a small amount that combines with
other small amounts that come together to bring
strength to a group of people who are in positions
that can truly help on a greater level.
How can you help the world? By being yourself;
by being true to yourself. By giving
encouragement and helping others to feel confident
in themselves and their gifts. By contributing
in a very small way to something bigger than
yourself. By spreading love on this planet
that definitely needs more love than we can even
imagine.
Twenty
years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you
didn't
do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the
bowlines. Sail
away from the
safe harbor. Catch the trade wind in your sails.
Explore. Dream. Discover.
unattributed
Wishing
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Do you wish the World were better?
Let me tell you what to do:
Set a watch upon your actions,
Keep them always straight and true.
Rid your mind of selfish motives,
Let your thoughts be clean and high.
You can make a little Eden
Of the sphere you occupy.
Do you wish the world were wiser?
Then suppose you make a start,
By accumulating wisdom
In the scrap book of your heart.
Do not waste one page on folly;
Live to learn and learn to live.
If you want to give out knowledge
You must get it ere you give.
Do you wish the World were happy?
Then remember day by day,
Just to scatter seeds of kindness,
As you pass along the way.
For the pleasures of the many
May be oft times traced to one,
As the hand that plants an acorn
Shelters armies from the sun.
Hope
works in these ways: it looks for the good in people
instead of harping on the worst; it discovers what can be
done
instead of grumbling about what cannot; it regards
problems,
large or small, as opportunities; it pushes
ahead when it would
be easy to quit; it "lights the
candle" instead of "cursing the darkness."
unattributed
Yes, life
can be mysterious and confusing--but there's much of life that's
actually rather dependable and reliable. Some principles apply
to life in so many different contexts that they can truly be called
universal--and learning what they are and how to approach them and use
them can teach us some of the most important lessons that we've ever
learned.
My doctorate is in Teaching and Learning. I use it a lot when I
teach at school, but I also do my best to apply what I've learned to
the life I'm living, and to observe how others live their lives.
What makes them happy or unhappy, stressed or peaceful, selfish or
generous, compassionate or arrogant? In this book, I've done my
best to pass on to you what I've learned from people in my life,
writers whose works I've read, and stories that I've heard.
Perhaps these principles can be a positive part of your life, too! Universal Principles of Living Life Fully. Awareness of
these principles can explain a lot and take much of the frustration
out of the lives we lead.
™
