It's
Tuesday once more, and our new week is moving on, as
time tends to do.
We hope that you're making the most of the time that
you're living through by
paying attention to the beautiful and positive
things in your life!
To
pursue joy is to lose it. The only way to get it is
to
follow steadily the path of duty, without thinking of joy,
and
then, like sheep, it comes most surely, unsought.
Alexander
Maclaren
Some things can only be
understood when you're in a tree house. With a pile of warm chocolate chip cookies. And a book.
Dr. SunWolf
Cease
trying to work everything out with your minds. It will get
you nowhere. Live by intuition and inspiration and let your
whole life be
Revelation.
Wrote
the poet and mystic Maeterlinck: "The thoughts
you think will irradiate you as though you are a
transparent vase." We radiate what we are
and so it is more important to be than to get,
to become than to possess. People tune
in to our inner wave length. There is much wisdom in
the old Hindu saying: "Beware, beware, what
goes forth from you will come back to you."
As
a boy I learned a little rhyme that I have never
forgotten: "Don't be a veneer stuck on with
glue, be solid mahogany all the way through."
Our
first task then, in living with ourselves, is to be
ourselves, to be genuine and sincere, to go forth to
others as the persons we truly are without sham or
pretense. Beyond this our task is to grow in mind
and spirit.
While
driving on the Ohio Turnpike I saw a sign exhorting
drivers. "Stay Awake, Stay Alive,"
it cried. These words, it seems to me, have even
deeper significance as a way of life. The more awake
we are to what goes on around us the more alive we will
be. Being wide awake opens the way to experiencing
the infinite riches of body, mind, heart and spirit.
We
do not sufficiently use the senses God has given us.
The magazine ETC, the quarterly review of the
International Society of General Semantics, devoted a full
issue to the subject of LSD and other psychedelic drugs.
Editor
S.I. Hayakawa made this vital point: "Most
people haven't learned to use the senses they
possess. I not only hear music, I listen to
it. I find the colors of the day such vivid
experiences that I sometimes pound the steering wheel with
excitement. And I say why disorient your beautiful
senses with drugs and poisons before you have half
discovered what they can do for you?"
The
great mystics did not fog up the windows of heaven with
drugs. They did not distort their visions with
poisons. They found their own senses and their
perceptive ad intuitive powers sufficient to experience
the Presence of God.
To
make the most of ourselves we must become aware of the
miracles all around us. We must open our eyes, ears,
minds, hearts, spirits. We must think about great
ideas such as space illimitable, time everlasting, energy
inexhaustible. You have the magic power within
yourself to broaden your horizons, to lift your
consciousness, to live more abundantly.
To
learn to live with ourselves we must often get away by
ourselves so we can find quiet, solitude, and time to
think and meditate.
The
poet Robert Frost stressed the importance of
separateness. He told a group, of which I was a
part, that we must be careful that we do not homogenize
society as we homogenize milk. . . so the cream at the top
disappears. The heart and the lungs work together,
he explained, but they are also separate organs. A
person, he said, should endeavor to achieve separateness
in his or her thinking, even amidst the pressures of the
crowd. And often we may experience a greater feeling
of togetherness with people when we are separate and
alone, rather than with others. We must learn to
live together, but we must not lose the precious gift of
separateness.
The
growth of the self, however, is not accomplished only in
solitude and isolation. Aloneness must be balanced
with contacts with people and the world. There is
need to try out our ideas on others, to sharpen our minds,
to contend with those who disagree with us. We can
learn from our enemies as well as our friends, and often
those who are hardest on us contribute more to our growth
than those who make things easy for us.
I
have always liked these words attributed to Walt
Whitman: "Have you learned lessons only of
those who admired you and were tender with you and stood
aside for you? Have you not learned great lessons
from those who braced themselves against you, and disputed
the passage with you?"
The
self needs the spur of conflict, competition, even defeat,
for out of those come strength and character.
Heed
these words by Epictetus: "So when the crisis
is upon you, remember that God, like a trainer of
wrestlers, has matched you with a tough and stalwart
antagonist--that you may be a winner at the Great
Games."
The
art of living with ourselves also requires that we be
resilient and flexible so we will not break ourselves
against the hardness of life. I learned this
important lesson from a naturalist in Bryce Canyon,
Utah. I asked him about the gallant lone pines on
the mountaintops that survive the full sweep of wind and
storm.
I
was told that the pines are called Limber Pines. To
demonstrate, the naturalist took a branch of a Limber Pine
and tied it into a knot. In a few minutes he untied
the knot and the branch immediately sprang back to its
original position.
It
is not through never bending that the trees survive.
It is in never failing to spring erect again after the
gale has passed that victory is achieved.
Resiliency
is also an important factor in the art of living with
ourselves. The winds of life--the conflicts,
pressures, changes--will bend us, but if we have
resiliency of the spirit they cannot break us. To
courageously straighten up again after our heads have been
bowed by defeat, disappointment and suffering is a supreme
test of character.
To
learn to live with ourselves, to make the most of
ourselves, to achieve wholeness of personality, to grow
into more effective human beings--this is the first vital
step in the art of living.
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Gracious giving requires no special talent, nor large amounts of
money. It is compounded of the heart and head acting
together to achieve the perfect means of expressing our
feelings. It is love sharpened with imagination. For,
as Emerson explains, "The only gift is a portion of
thyself."
A little girl gave her mother several small boxes tied with bright
ribbons. Inside each were slips of paper on which the child
had printed messages such as, "Good for two flower-bed
weedings," "Good for two floor-scrubbings."
She had never read Emerson, but unconsciously she put a large part
of her small self into her gift.
When unexpected expenses wrecked a business girl's budget at
Christmas, she hit upon a similar happy idea. Her presents
that year were "time credit" slips which her friends
could cash in at their convenience. A young couple received
slips entitling them to leave the baby with her for two
week-ends. To a niece in college went an offer of her car for
a Christmas vacation trip. An elderly shut-in could claim
her time for five reading-aloud sessions. No costly presents
gave so much satisfaction--both ways.
A young bride received a wedding present from an older
woman. With it went a note, "Do not open until you and
your husband have your first tiff." When there finally
came a day of misunderstanding the bride remembered the
package. In it she found a card box filled with her friend's
favorite recipes--and a note, "You will catch more flies with
honey than you will with vinegar." It was a wise woman
indeed who gave of her experience with her gift.
Often the most successful gift is a spontaneous one. Act
while the impulse is fresh--giving of yourself knows no special
days.
Probably no gift ever thrilled a doctor more than a letter he
received from a youngster on her birthday. "Dear
Doctor, 14 years ago you brought me into this world. I want
to thank you, for I have enjoyed every minute of it."
Family gifts should be the most satisfying because we know each
member's wish and whim. Yet how often we make the
stereotyped offerings--ties, candy, or household utensils.
One man I know is planning an unusual present for his wife.
When I saw him coming out of a dancing studio, he explained:
"I got tired of hearing my wife complain about my
dancing. It's going to be a lasting birthday present for
her--my dancing well."
An elderly lady on an Iowa farm wept with delight when her son in
New York had a telephone installed in her house and followed it up
with a weekly long-distance call.
Flowers are our first thought for a sick friend. But why not
a more imaginative idea? A friend in a hospital received a
flowerpot filled with dirt. On top was a packet of seeds
with the note, "You'll have more fun growing your
own!" A nurse told me about a woman patient whose
recovery dated from the moment a neighbor brought her a pressure
cooker, something she had always wanted.
In her autobiography, His Eye Is on the Sparrow, Ethel
Waters tells about her gift to Rex Stout when he was
convalescing. Though she was starring at the time in a
Broadway play, she turned up early one morning at the hospital
and, dressed as a nurse, carried in his breakfast tray. She
spent the day with Stout, diverting him with chitchat, wheeling
his chair, giving him all her attention. Friends of the
author said that this was his most cherished gift.
In your own profession or business you have imaginative gift
opportunities. One Christmas morning a Washington, D.C.,
woman was waiting for a trolley to go to the station when a taxi
stopped beside her. The driver motioned her to get in.
At the station when she fumbled in her purse for the fare, the
driver said, "Nothing doing--I asked you. Merry
Christmas." In memory of her sister who was killed in
service during the war, a waitress often pays the checks of
servicemen who sit at her table.
All gifts that contain a portion of self signify that someone has
been really thinking of us. One of the most useful and
thoughtful travel presents a girl ever received was currency of
the country to which she was going. A friend bought her some
pesos from a bank so that she would have the correct money for
tips and taxi fare when she first arrived in Mexico.
A GI stationed in Mississippi tells this story: "I made
friends with a sharecropper who lived near camp. Though
poor, he was the most contented man I had ever met. One day
when I was grousing about not being able to borrow $20 that I
needed, he handed me the money, saying it was a gift, not a
loan. He explained it this way: 'If I lend you this
money and for some reason you never return it, I must always think
you have wronged me. If I give it to you as a gift, we're
both happy. When you have the money and feel you want to
make me a gift of $20, then we'll both be happy again.'"
Chances for heroic giving are rare, yet every day there are
opportunities to give a part of yourself to someone who needs
it. It may be no more than a kind word or a letter written
at the right time. The important thing about any gift is the
amount of yourself you put into it.
1951
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
believe imagination is our premium resource. We carry
within us the lost diversity this planet needs. Engaging
our individual expression, using imagination to inform,
expand, and guide us, we can begin to return to Eden.
Suzanne Beth Stinnett
Little Shifts
Teaching and
Learning
I've recently been involved in a discussion about teaching.
In this discussion, several teachers have expressed their opinion
that it's a good thing to give students their cell phone numbers
and email addresses so that students can contact them at night
with questions about their homework. While on the surface
this might seem like a rather harmless perspective, it really does
scare me to think of just how often teachers become enablers, and
just how little privacy and personal times teachers allow
themselves to have.
When I finish teaching for the day, I'm done for the day.
Don't get me wrong--I don't bolt out of the building with the last
bell. I hang around and talk with students and give help
wherever I can to those who want it. I usually coach sports,
which puts me at school even longer, and I volunteer for a lot of
activities, which adds even more time. But when I go home,
I'm at home and not at work. My down time at home, the time
when I rest my mind and my body and my emotions, is the time that
allows me to do well when I am at school. If I were to
receive a call at 8 p.m. from someone who has a question about
homework, would I be doing that person any favors by answering the
question for them? Usually not.
Education is not the
filling of a pail,
but the lighting of a fire.
William Butler Yeats
You see, there
are two sides to education: teaching and
learning. The teacher's responsibility reaches
only so far--the learner also has a responsibility
to put forth some effort to develop strategies for
learning material. We don't learn by simply
listening to someone tell us answers--we have to
process the information and then hopefully respond
to it in ways that show that we truly do understand
it. Our young people today, however, are not
learning to do this--they're simply learning to ask
someone else for the answers (even if that someone
else is a corporate entity such as Google), and then
accepting those answers without considering whether
they're accurate or not.
Teachers have a very important job; there's no doubt
about that. But that job does not and should
not extend into their living rooms at night--when
they're done for the day, they should be done for
the day. They need the down time to rest and
recuperate. And if they have given homework,
then it's important for their students to come up
with the best answers they can, themselves.
The answers may not even be completely accurate, but
the process of at least working towards the answers
is the most valuable part of learning. Having
a ready source of the answers to call and ask for
information does not exactly make a positive
learning experience.
Learning
is not attained by chance. It must be sought
for with ardor
and attended to with diligence.
And students
need time with material that doesn't make sense to
them to try to get it to make sense. Instead
of calling the teacher for an explanation, a student
needs to sit down with the material again in order
to try to figure out what he or she missed the first
time around. And to do it a third time if they
miss things the second time around. It's in
struggling with things that we truly learn about
them--things that are simply explained to us by
others rarely make their way into our long-term
memories.
I don't ever make my students suffer, but I do try
to make them think. I don't hand them answers
on a silver platter, but I also don't withhold
answers when it looks like someone is reaching the
limits of his or her patience, or is about to be
overwhelmed with frustration. You see, I want
my students to learn how to deal with problems on
their own rather than just call a teacher or type a
phrase into a search engine. When my students
move on past my classes, I want them to be
self-sufficient--able to ask for help when they
really need to do so, but also able to function on
their own when they need to. The attrition
rate in college is over 40%, and I know from
experience that most of that is due to too many
students not being able to function on their own,
and not having those teachers who gave them every
answer there for them any more.
You know that I don't
believe that anyone has ever taught anything
to anyone. I question the efficacy of teaching. The only thing
that I know is that anyone who wants to learn will learn. And maybe
a teacher is a facilitator, a person who puts things down and shows
people how exciting and wonderful it is and asks them to eat.
Carl Rogers
If we want to
learn, the first thing we need to do is to learn how
to learn. If we want our young people to be
good learners, we have to help them to learn how to
find answers themselves, and not just ask the
nearest bystander for information. Life is an
amazing journey, and there's much to learn along the
way--and we'll never know how much richer our lives
could be, if we but knew how to learn all we can
from every situation we face. So learn how to
learn, and teach young people to learn for
themselves by not giving them every answer they ask
for.
As a teacher, one of my most common answers to a
student's question is, "You tell
me." When someone asks what a word means,
I give them a dictionary. It would be easier
for all of us if I were just to give the answer, but
I'm not looking for easy answers--I'm looking to
prepare young people for the adventure that lies
before them. And there are many astonishing
adventures in front of you, too, with many wonderful
lessons to teach. May you be ready and able to
learn when the chances come your way.
In
all things preserve integrity;
and the consciousness of your
own uprightness
will alleviate
the toil of business,
soften the
hardness of ill-success and
disappointments, and
give you
a humble confidence before
God, when the
ingratitude of
people, or the iniquity of the
times may rob
you
of other rewards.
Barbara Paley
When
your self-identity and beliefs merge, differences feel
threatening. You are likely to defend your turf, become
righteous and angry, and possibly shame or abuse other people who
see things differently. When people adopt a belief--be it
about religion, politics, sex roles, or whatever--as the one,
correct belief, their minds get locked up in a rigid box, and
other people with differing beliefs are seen as the enemy.
And what do you do to the enemy? Abuse them, shame them,
hate them, or even kill them. . . .
Listen to
your beliefs, think about how you learned them, and realize that
they are not genetic, nor are they the "only way."
You are free to acquire new perspectives, to absorb new ideas, and
to question everything you were taught to believe. As your
mind opens to exploration and change, you'll feel a new lightness
and more joy.
They
speak foolishly who ascribe their anger or their impatience to such
as offend them or to tribulation. Tribulation does not make people
impatient, but proves that they are impatient. So everyone may
learn from tribulation how his or her heart is constituted.
Martin Luther
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.
™
