ood
day! Thanks much for dropping by--we hope that
you find something
here that gets you to thinking in positive ways that
you can help others to
live their lives fully, and help yourself to do the
same!
We have only this moment, sparkling
like a star in our hand. . . and melting like a snowflake.
Let us use it before it is too late.
Marie Edith Beynon
I have always grown
from my problems and challenges, from the things that don't
work out. That's when I've really learned.
Carol Burnett
Why do some people always see beautiful
skies and grass and lovely flowers and incredible human
beings, while others are hard-pressed to find anything or
any place that is beautiful?
It's a funny thing about the lessons we learn in
life. No matter how much it costs us to learn them,
no matter how deeply they're etched into our hearts,
sometimes we forget them anyway. We need a way to
put them into practice when we've forgotten a little of
what we've learned. So in this case, how do we
remember to accept ourselves when we start sliding back
into old patterns?
If change happens when you see something big and new and
meaningful, the key to maintaining that change is
continuing to see. So we have to see when we're
sliding back into old patterns. This requires
vigilance. Too often self-rejection comes in the
guise of "constructive criticism" or "a
much-needed kick in the ass." But if you can
see that you're getting on your case for stuff you know
has been very hard for you to change, then this is just
self-rejection. See it for what it is.
A simple way to get rid of self-rejection is to ask,
"Is this helpful?" Be honest. You've
just said, "God, I'm so fat." Okay, so
tell me: does that help? I can't imagine it
does. So get in the habit of answering back to
yourself, "That's not helpful," every time you
say something self-rejecting.
Another way to put an end to self-rejection is ask
yourself whether what you're telling yourself is what a
friend would say or what an enemy would. Friends are
supportive. Enemies put us down and undermine our
confidence. So if you say something that an enemy
would say, stop.
Answer back,
"I'm going to be supportive of myself. As a
friend, what I have to say to myself is. . ."
Then say something supportive.
Another good way to maintain self-acceptance is to remind
yourself, "I'm not Superman. All I can do is
try my best." When people struggle with
self-acceptance, I've noticed that they judge themselves
from too many angles. If you're a new mom, for
example, that's tough enough all by itself. It can
be hard to accept that you're a plenty-good-enough
mom. But to think that you'll be able to look like a
million bucks at the same time is just not fair.
Most of us can barely do one thing well in life. And
to do that one thing well, we have to let most other
things go.
Finally, if you've been getting down on yourself, maybe
this thing you're struggling with isn't you. You
want it to be you, but it isn't. Maybe you've come
up with some great idea for a piece you want to write for
your local newspaper. But then when you sit alone
you can't bring yourself to put words down on paper.
So why torture yourself? Maybe it's you to
have good ideas, but it's not you to sit alone in a
room for hours at a time and produce something out of
nothing. Remember, self-acceptance begins and ends
with being able to say, "This is who I really
am, and it's okay."
And what's made all this growth into self-acceptance
possible for you is that something happened in your life,
and the meaning of what happened was so you could look at
it and say, "I'm not going to do to myself what was
done to me."
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Losing awareness of our natural world is having
deep consequences for our own well-being, as
well as for the well-being of other species we
share the planet with. However, our own
well-being is interlinked with that of the rest
of life on the earth. There is no
separation between us. So what is
happening to nature is also happening to us.
To lose awareness of the natural world is to
deny an inherent and vital part of being alive
and human. We have replaced our natural
home with comfortable and secure
lifestyles. Many of us spend much of our
time in cities, in front of televisions and
computers, on our cellphones and communicating
electronically. When we began to seek
protection from the life-threatening dangers of
the natural world, we were trying to avoid
death. Now, however, by locking ourselves
up indoors and in our minds, it seems we are
beginning to avoid life. Technology and
more comfortable lives are part of our world and
we can't deny this. And personally, I do
not intend to return to a hunter-gatherer
lifestyle. However, we also need to
maintain the experience of nature in our lives.
This disconnection with the natural world has
led to what Richard Louv called "nature
deficit disorder," whereby many of us--and
especially our children--are experiencing
anxiety, depression, hyperactivity, attention
deficit disorders, obesity, and type-2
diabetes. There is evidence also that
excessive stimulation from technological or
artificial means can cause mental fatigue and
loss of vitality and general health. In a
world where living in the realms of our minds
can take over to the extent where mental-health
problems are a global epidemic, our loss of
awareness of the natural world is not something
we can continue to ignore. We need the
rest of the natural world for our own
well-being.
Creating an Unnatural World
Our loss of awareness of the natural world is
also at the heart of infinite decline,
destruction, and suffering for all living
beings. By creating the concept of nature
being separate from ourselves, we have proceeded
to exploit it in order to satisfy our every
desire. We are cutting down the world's
forests, destroying other natural habitats,
polluting the air, land, and sea, fishing life
out of the oceans, displacing plants and animals
across the globe, and exhausting natural
resources. Meanwhile, human activities are
also accelerating the rate of global climate
change, which could cause more loss of plants
and animals, more frequent natural disasters,
disease, sea-level rise, and acidification of
the oceans. These are all leading to the
extinction of animals and plants at an
unprecedented rate since the dinosaurs
disappeared sixty million years ago.
Are these consequences surprising? Not
really. The processes that sustain life in
the natural world follow some basic laws and our
controlling minds have convinced us that we may
be able to override them. If we continue
to believe this, and live by the story
"nature belongs to us," we will
probably cause the collapse of all life on the
earth as we know it. We won't be exempt
from this, because we don't exist without the
rest of the natural world. The products of
the human mind, our abstract ideals, our
beliefs, our political systems, our economic
systems will never persist if we continue to
assume that we are separate from nature.
Think about the natural law of gravity. We
all have direct experience of this. Would
you ever try to defy gravity? Would you
ever go and jump off a cliff and hope to stay
alive? Almost certainly not.
It is the same with the other rules that govern
the natural world. When we bring our
awareness to nature, we soon understand that one
of the essential natural laws is
interconnectedness. Life is fundamentally
one. We are life. What we do
to one part of life, we do to the rest of life,
including ourselves. The eventual
consequence of denying that nature is sustaining
our life on this planet could be the end of
humanity itself. Buddha saw this from
beneath the Bodhi tree. Ecologists see
this from their scientific research.
However we look at it, this is an undeniable
reality. Reconnecting with nature through
mindfulness is consequently vital if we are to
reverse this extremely concerning trend.
Bringing our awareness back to nature lies at
the heart of our happiness and of the well-being
of all life on the earth.
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.
Learn to get excited like a child.
There is nothing
that has more magic
than childish excitement. So excited you hate
to go to bed at night.
Can’t wait to get up in the morning. So
excited that you’re about to
explode. How can anyone resist that
kind of childish magic? Now,
once in awhile I meet someone who
says, “Well, I’m a little too mature
for all that childish
excitement.” Isn’t that pitiful? You’ve got to weep
for
these kinds of people. All I’ve got to say is, “If you’re
too
old to get excited, you’re old.” Don’t get that
old.
Growing up in the
culture I did, here in the States, I learned quite early
on that making fun of others was normal. I learned
that we see doing so as funny, and that we should do our
best to make jokes at the expense of others, especially
when they make mistakes. After all, "making
fun" of someone is just good-natured ribbing,
right? Looking for someone else's flaws and
mistakes and then making jokes at the expense of that
person is funny, and anyone who doesn't think so should
"lighten up."
Well, to be quite honest, I don't think that making fun
of other people is funny at all, and I have no plans in
my life to lighten up. The people telling me that
I need to develop a sense of humor are telling me that I
should condone a practice that is very often quite cruel
and vicious, and that contributes absolutely nothing to
the world while making the victims feel self-conscious,
embarrassed, unconfident, and overall simply bad about
themselves.
I've watched students make fun of each other, and I've
seen the results in the eyes of those who have been made
fun of. It's there in the eyes even of those who
say it's okay, and that it's just a joke--that hurt that
says that someone else has seen a weakness of mine and
used that weakness to get a little laugh. Now they
have to hide that weakness--and so often what the other
person is mocking is actually a strength that now is
going to be ignored or repressed in order to avoid any
future "jokes."
When is a small bit of
laughter ever worth damaging someone else's sense of
self-worth? When is it ever okay to make
someone else feel bad about a trait of theirs,
something that they were born with and over which
they often have little or no control? When do
we ever contribute something positive to the world
by trying to get a laugh at someone else's expense?
Of course, the answer to all three questions is
simple: never.
Usually, people who make fun of others are dealing
with their own sense of inadequacy, and it makes
them feel a little better to put someone else
down. Even the words that describe what we do
are pretty insidious--put down. Make them feel
smaller. Take them from feeling up to feeling
down. Keep them from the heights and keep them
in the gutter. We also call it "cutting
down," a term which brings up quite a bit of
negative imagery. "Making fun" of
someone is simply some people's way of making
themselves feel a little superior to the other
person because of their own feelings of inferiority,
and it's a very harmful habit.
I get most angry when I see parents do this to their
children. Children are very easy targets, for
they make a lot of mistakes, and very often they're
willing to share their feelings more than adults
are. It's easy for a parent to pick up on
something that their child did or said and make a
joke about it so that other people will laugh--and
so that the child being mocked feels awful about him
or herself. Children trust their parents, so
the putting down is even more damaging--it harms the
children's trust in their parents, and it makes the
children more likely to feel that what the parent
says really is something wrong. After all, why
would they say it if they didn't mean it?
Putting
people down does not make you
a powerful and strong person. It makes you
a bully, a coward, and eventually alone in life.
unattributed
In my family the
cut-down was a norm, and all of us paid the price
for it as we were growing up. Every little
mistake was a cause for a joke, not compassion or
understanding or even--God forbid--encouraging words
to help us avoid the mistake again. And as we
grew up, we started to cut each other down, as that
was our norm. Over time we got pretty good at
it, so in our household it was pretty common to hear
someone cutting someone else down--and to hear
someone else laughing about it or adding their own
put-down.
It wasn't until years later that I realized what I
had been trained to do, and that I was able to make
the decision that I wasn't going to keep on doing
it, that I wasn't going to try to use other people's
words or actions as fodder for a joke that was more
damaging than it was funny. And when I made
that decision and started practicing it, my life
improved rather significantly. Not
immediately, because people don't notice changes
like that very quickly, but soon enough.
People started enjoying talking to me, because I was
a good listener and I wasn't listening for something
to give me ammunition for a "joke."
People trusted me more because when I replied to
them, I was either asking for more information or
sharing my own feelings or trying to encourage them
if something went wrong.
People
who are secure in themselves
don't put others down. They lift them up.
unattributed
I also found that I
got much more out of talking to other people.
The conversations that I had were much more
rewarding and fulfilling when there was no risk of
hurting someone else by saying something that I
considered to be a joke, but that would actually
hurt the other person.
I've been lucky. While I developed the skill
of recognizing other people's weaknesses in order to
make jokes about them, that skill now helps me to
find ways to offer encouragement and advice, not
jokes. And I wasn't one that kept up the
cut-downs constantly, ever, like some people I
know. I know some fathers who are merciless
when it comes to talking to their children, exposing
and mocking every weakness or mistake that they
perceive on their children's part--and their
children are suffering dearly for it.
Our goal in conversations never should be to
perceive weaknesses in order to make jokes about
them. If someone does make a mistake, it's
fine to laugh along with them as long as they're
laughing, too, but it's not fine to make them pay
for it with an insult masquerading as a joke.
After all, our goal in life should always be to help
and encourage and build up other people, not to cut
down and discourage them, and not to get laughs at
their expense. That's one expense that is far
too high for anyone.
You
can kiss your family and
friends good-bye and put miles
between you,
but at the same
time you carry them with you in
your heart,
your mind,
your stomach,
because you do not just live in
a world but a
world lives in you.
Frederick Buechner
It's
nice that we grow up. As pleasant as the idea of
holding on to our childhood is, there are so many nice
things about maturing and gaining a strong sense of
perspective on the world. Our perceived wants and
needs change, and the things that used to seem so
important to us, the things that we allowed to cause us so
much pain, later seem to be completely unimportant.
All of the time that we spent worrying or agonizing over
them now seems to be wasted time. And hopefully, we
mature enough not to repeat that kind of mistake.
One
of the greatest joys of growing up and maturing is the
strengthening of our ability to let go. When we let
go of our desire for things, our desire to have other
people do and act as we wish them to, our desire to
"take care" of things no matter what they are,
we grow stronger, more peaceful, more aware, and more able
to spread our peace to others. We're able to pull
away from competition for things that don't truly matter,
saving our energy and our focus for things that do.
Today's
desires one day will seem small and insignificant, but
that doesn't diminish their importance for us today.
But we don't have to diminish something's importance to be
able to face it with a clear mind and a readiness to take
care of it. If we can back off and look at it from a
perspective of seeing a bigger picture, though, and
realize that it won't be the end of the world if this
desire goes unfulfilled, then we'll be able to put this
desire in its proper place.
From our Daily Meditations
A few years ago, on a liner bound for
Europe, I was browsing in the library when I came across a
puzzling line by Robert Louis Stevenson:
"Extreme busyness, whether at school, kirk, or
market, is a symptom of deficient vitality."
Surely, I thought, "deficient" is a mistake--he
must have meant "abundant." But R.L.S.
went merrily on, "It is no good speaking to such
folk: they can not be idle, their nature is
not generous enough."
Was it possible that a bustling display of energy might
only be a camouflage for a spiritual vacuum? The
thought so impressed me that I mentioned it next day to
the French purser, at whose table I was sitting. He
nodded his agreement. "Stevenson is
right," he said. "Indeed, if you will
pardon my saying so, the idea applies particularly to you
Americans. A lot of your countrymen keep so busy
getting things done that they reach the end of their lives
without ever having lived at all."
Arthur Gordon
We do not succeed
in changing things according to our desire,
but gradually our desire
changes. The situation that we hoped to
change because it was
intolerable becomes unimportant. We have
not managed to surmount the obstacle, as we were absolutely
determined to do, but life has taken
us around it, led us past it,
and then if we turn around to gaze at the
remote past, we can
barely catch sight of it, so imperceptible
has it
become.
Marcel
Proust
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.
™
