We all have creative potential. Beyond narrating
negative stories to us, our minds are also a wonderful
source of imagination and innovation. Our creativity
is an important part of us--it enables us to express
ourselves and reflect upon the experiences we have in our
lives. Creativity is largely the ability to bring
forth original, imaginative products through innovative
thinking or artistic expression.
Spending time in nature has been shown to boost our
creativity. The reason behind this seems to be that
in our everyday lives our attention is constantly occupied
by our phones, our computers, our televisions, the general
business of our lives, and so on. This causes
constant activation of what we call our "executive
attention." As our attention is drawn from one
thing to another, we begin to deplete our ability to
engage in more creative, fun, and playful thinking.
It seems that spending time with nature can refresh our
minds by allowing us to expand our attention beyond our
consciously thinking mind and letting the mind
wander. At times, it comes up with new and exciting
ideas or thoughts, often when we least expect it.
Who wants to lose their ability to dream and imagine?
Daydreaming
I often find that when I am in wild places, my mind begins
to playfully daydream as I connect with the natural world
around me. I wonder what it would be like to fly
like a bird across the mountains and oceans. I
imagine myself under the sea and try to gain a sense of
what it might be like to swim my way through life like a
fish. I start to contemplate what it would be like
to be an animal or a plant without a conscious mind.
I allow myself to drift in and out of asking myself
questions I may never be able to answer and simply savor
letting go to the inquisitiveness and curiosity of my
childlike imagination.
Being with nature also leads my thoughts to engage with
the things that are truly important to me. I often
think about my family, my close friends, and my passions,
such as nature, music, and travel. Mysteriously, my
mind begins to free itself a little from the habitual
thinking patterns it develops in the context of the
routine of my everyday life. As it tunes in to the
sights, scents, and sounds of the natural world, it
embarks on an unpredictable journey full of dreams and
fantasies. I start to enjoy engaging with my deepest
aspirations and begin thinking with my enthusiasm and
inspiration about how I could create change in my life to
achieve them.
Happiness for Us All
Who doesn't want to be happy? There is compelling
evidence that having the natural world in our lives makes
us happier. We seem to show increased levels of
satisfaction with our jobs, home, and life in general when
we have natural settings nearby. Spending time with
the natural world also improves our mood, reduces
depression and anxiety, and increases self-esteem.
The natural world also seems to encourage us to pursue our
aspirations for personal development, close relationships,
and greater community spirit (which, in turn, can increase
our well-being) and reduces our desire to become richer
and own more possessions (which are often associated with
feelings of dissatisfaction). As we become happier
and more open to the rest of life, we also become more
caring and generous toward other people when we connect
with nature. . . .
So why does nature make us happier? Well, it is
perhaps not surprising because it is where we come from
and where we belong; it is our home. However, there
is also evidence that nature enhances our capacity for
mindfulness and reduces the time we spend engaged in worry
and rumination over life's problems. Nature captures
our sensory experience, our curiosity, and our attention
and naturally brings us out of our thinking minds and back
to the present moment. So it seems that becoming
more mindful of the natural world actually enhances our
mindfulness of our experience in other parts of our
lives. Nature is thus an excellent companion along
the path of developing greater awareness and inviting
greater happiness into our everyday lives.
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One afternoon I was speaking to a group called
the Young Presidents' Association. It is
made up of young men and women whose companies
are worth millions of dollars. I asked
them, "Is life fair?", expecting to
get a resounding yes as an answer. They
yelled "No," louder than any group I
have ever spoken to. I answered, "It
must be fair. You're all
complaining."
Money doesn't solve your problems unless you
know what to do with it. Ninety-five
percent of all lottery winners say it ruined
their lives five years after winning. My
father had his father die when he was
twelve. He said it was one of the best
things that ever happened to him.
Why? Because it taught him how to survive
on his own and to realize that money was to help
make other people's lives easier.
A while back one of our sons called me to ask
for tuition money. I reminded him that he
had received a good deal of money as an
inheritance when my dad died. He said,
"I gave it away to help a friend come to
the States and go to college." I gave
him the money grudgingly. I wasn't
enlightened enough then to appreciate his
exceptional act and how much like my father he
was. I have learned from them both and can
live a much happier and peaceful life not
keeping track of who owes me what but instead
looking for ways to help others in need.
When my family and I were robbed, instead of
holding the anger, I learned to see myself as
offering the thief a few more dollars to get his
children or mother a wonderful Christmas or
birthday present. Am I nuts? Sure,
but they no longer are stealing the value of my
life by controlling my thoughts and emotions.
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.
I have given up
the ambition to be a great scholar. I want to be more--
simply a human. . . . We are not true humans, but beings who live by a
civilization inherited from the past, that keeps us hostage, that confines us.
No freedom of movement. Nothing. Everything in us is killed by our
calculations for our future, by our social position and cast. You see, I
am
not happy--yet I am happy. I suffer, but that is part of life. I
live, I don't
care about my existence, and that is the beginning of wisdom.
There's a part of me
that wants to say, who am I to take on answering this
question? Then another part of me would reply, who
are you not to? You've studied this question for
decades, and you've read much of the material available
that addresses the question, so why not? You may
get the answer completely wrong, but so what? At
least you're trying to address it.
And then another completely different part of myself
chimes in: Why should anyone at all try to answer
this question? Isn't the goal of life to live it
rather than explain it? When we try to put things
into words, we limit them dramatically to the meanings
found in those words; when we live life without trying
to explain it, we have deeper experiences and feelings,
and we aren't distracted by trying to find words to
explain those experiences and feelings to others.
Depending on whom you listen to, life can be a joy or a
drag, beautiful or terrible, bright or dark, positive or
negative--or even neutral. For many people, life
just is, and they go on existing in it without ever
feeling joy or despair--they just muddle along and do
"the best they can" without ever giving fully
to the experience, and thus never getting fully from it,
either. I think that the people who are the least
happy on this planet, though, as far as I've seen during
my time on this planet, are the people who look at life
as something that they get from, not that they give
to. Their focus in life is what they can get
rather than what they can give, and due to their own
perspective, they face constant disappointment.
O
beautiful human life! Tears come to my eyes as I think
of
it. So beautiful,
so inexpressibly beautiful! The song
should never be silent, the dance never still,
the laugh
should sound like water which runs forever.
Richard
Jeffries
Of course, there's a
lot to get in life. In our lives on this
planet, we receive many, many blessings, from the
presence of other people to the food and water that
we ingest to the beauty that is all around us, all
the time. But if we think of life only in
terms of what we receive from it, we're missing the
point, and we're missing an awful lot of
opportunities.
I believe that if I were to answer the question
honestly, I would have to say that life is
opportunity. It's a series of opportunities to
grow in love and wisdom and giving and caring.
We tend to look at life merely as a series of
events--this happens, then this happens, then that
happens--and we lose the ability to recognize the
meaning behind those events. When we see
things as simply happening, we don't see the purpose
behind the occurrences. And if fact, we often
completely ignore any lessons embedded in what goes
on in our lives.
For example, two children grow up in a family with
an alcoholic parent. They both witness
first-hand the damage and pain that the addictive
behavior causes, and one of them learns from their
experiences not to abuse alcohol in life. This
child grows up not having to deal with the horrible
issues that alcohol can cause, and this person's
children never have to deal with having an alcoholic
parent. The other sibling, though, doesn't
learn the lesson at all, and grows up being an
alcoholic him- or herself, subjecting their family
and everyone else they know to the same harm that
they experienced while young.
If I witness a relationship in which one of the
people is dominating and controlling, I can see the
damage being done, and it's up to me to grow and
learn from what I see--and growing and learning in
this case means rejecting the strategy of trying to
control someone else so that I don't harm others and
myself.
As I grow
to understand
life less and less,
I learn to live it
more and more.
Jules Renard
Often we see the
opportunities in negative lights. Yes, it's
difficult for us when someone close to us dies, yet
it's also an opportunity to take the good things
from that person and pass them on to others.
Was the person who died a loving person? Then
I have the chance to emulate them and become a
loving person myself (once I work my way through the
grief, of course!). If I spend the rest of my
time focusing on the loss and what I don't have, I
can become full of resentment and anger and even
despair. But if I focus on just how blessed I
was to have that person in my life for a certain
amount of time, I can move on in life and continue
to learn and grow.
When I got laid off from a job once, I never once
saw it as a completely negative thing. I saw
it instead as life pushing me in a different
direction, telling me that it was time to change
what I was doing and the place where I was doing
it. We (my wife and I) went through some
difficult times, but we also ended up having some
wonderful learning experiences that we never would
have had if I hadn't been laid off. Life went
on, and it was up to me to move on with it.
Right now I live with the idea that we're here to
give to others. That doesn't mean that I spend
seven days a week volunteering for charities or that
I don't take care of myself--on the contrary, I make
sure that I'm doing okay before I try to give to
others so that I'm giving from a strong position
rather than a weak one. And to take care of
myself, I make sure that I have restful times that I
spend reading and reflecting, and I make sure that I
get out into nature as much as I can in order to
experience the peace and healing that it can give
me.
The art of
life lies in a constant readjustment to our surroundings.
Okakura Kakuzo
I also like the idea
presented here, the idea of readjusting. Life
changes, and that's one of the beautiful parts of
it. Much of our pain and dissatisfaction comes
from a desire that we seem to have to keep life the
same as it is now--because we're afraid that if it
changes, it will become too difficult to deal
with. It won't. Changes are inevitable,
and it's important that be able to recognize the
changes and roll with them. We cause our own
distress if we're unable to deal with changes, and
all we have to do to avoid that distress is not try
to keep life the same. Let changes happen, for
they present new opportunities to learn how to adapt
and grow. Some of the happiest people I've
ever known are those who are willing and able to
adapt to new circumstances, and that ability often
comes from having lots of practice. In my
case, growing up in a military family meant moving
from place to place very often in my childhood,
which was often painful at the time, but which has
led to an ability not just to accept the new in my
life, but to celebrate it and learn from it and give
to it.
One thing that I recognize is that if I were to sit
down to write an article or essay with this same
title two months from now--or even tomorrow--it may
be a completely different article with a completely
different focus. But this is what came to me
today. Life is a chance to grow and learn, and
to give to the others in our lives. Let's take
those chances and enjoy the processes of growing and
learning, and make our lives whole and fulfilling,
while we have them!
Some
people confuse acceptance
with apathy, but there's
all the difference in the world. Apathy
fails to distinguish
what can and cannot be helped; acceptance
makes the
distinction. Apathy paralyzes the will-to-action;
acceptance frees it
by relieving
it of impossible burdens.
Arthur
Gordon
A Prayer for the World's Children
Ina Hughs
We pray for children who sneak popsicles before supper,
who erase holes in math workbooks,
who can never find their shoes.
And we pray for those who stare at photographers from behind barbed wire,
who can't bound down the street in a new pair of sneakers,
who never "counted potatoes,"
who are born in places where we wouldn't be caught dead,
who never go to the circus,
who live in an X-rated world.
We pray for children who bring us sticky kisses and fistfuls of dandelions,
who hug us in a hurry and forget their lunch money.
And we pray for those who never get dessert,
who have no safe blanket to drag behind them,
who watch their parents watch them die,
who can't find any bread to steal,
who don't have any rooms to clean up,
whose pictures aren't on anyone's dresser,
whose monsters are real.
We pray for children who spend all their allowances before Tuesday,
who throw tantrums in the grocery store and pick at their
food,
who like ghost stories,
who shove dirty clothes under the bed and never rinse out
the tub,
who get visits from the tooth fairy,
who don't like to be kissed in front of the carpool,
who squirm in church or temple and scream in the phone,
whose tears we sometimes laugh at and whose smiles can
make us cry.
And we pray for those whose nightmares come in the daytime,
who will eat anything,
who have never seen a dentist,
who aren't spoiled by anyone,
who go to bed hungry and cry themselves to sleep,
who live and move, but have no being.
We pray for the children who want to be carried and for
those who must, for those who never give up and for those who don't
get a second chance, for those we smother. . . and for
those who will grab the hand of anyone kind enough to
offer it.
Amen
People are never helped
in their suffering by what
they
think for themselves,
but only by revelation
of a wisdom
greater than
their own. It is this which
lifts them
out
of their distress.
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.
™
