Good
day, and welcome to our first week of April!
Spring is making its
mark on the world as time moves on and on up here in
the northern hemisphere,
and we
hope that you're able
to make some positive and helpful marks upon the
world, also!
The
tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of
others only a green thing which stands in their way.
William Blake
Happy
the people, and happy they alone, who can call
today their own;
They who are secure within can say,
tomorrow do thy worst, for I have
lived today.
John
Dryden
One
who is afraid of time becomes a
prey of time. But time itself becomes a prey
of that one who is not afraid of it.
Goethe made a rather profound statement when he said,
"If I treat you as you are, you will remain as you
are. If I treat you as if you were what you could
be, that is what you will become." Those words
of long ago express in a unique way what love is
about. As I reread them for the umpteenth time, I
think of the love in a family and the way we see each
other. Looking at your mate as alive, well, and
alert rather than nosy, or seeing him or her as exercising
good judgment and thrift instead of being shallow and
stingy, will have a profound impact on your
relationship. If you think of your mate as being
expressive instead of talkative, and if you consider him
or her sensitive and caring rather than touchy, your
respect and admiration for your mate will grow, and you
will develop a deeper love, appreciation, and
understanding of him or her.
When you take that approach, you will have mastered one of
the great lessons of life--namely, that when you love
someone, you do not react to the symptoms of behavior, but
you respond to the need that your mate might have.
In this process you will learn that love will always give
you the benefit of the doubt. Over a period of time
you will realize that you do that not because you want to
do what is right, but because you have become that kind of
person.
The
underlying message behind all of this is that you can
change, and in the process you will have a substantial
influence on the life of the other person.
Each of
you will win, and as a couple, you will win. That's
the way to beat the daily grind.
If
He Can, You Can
Kacey McCallister lives in Keizer, a suburb of Salen,
Oregon. He plays basketball, and in baseball he has
been catcher and covered positions at first base and in
the outfield. His play was so spectacular that a
Little League team in North Carolina dedicated its season
to him, and disabled Boy Scouts in Georgia were inspired
by him. People all over America have been inspired
by Kacey, who lost both legs at the hip when he was run
over by a truck a few years ago.
He does all of those things by propelling himself with his
arms. He has a tremendous attitude and a
determination to live as any other youngster wants to
live, and the nation is applauding him. CNN sent a
crew to the family's home to do a story on him.
Kacey said he was more motivated than ever: "I
want to show them that I really can do all this
stuff."
In today's world when too many people complain about
everything, here's a role model who is determined to make
the most of life. Where do his drive, commitment,
and enthusiasm for life come from? I suspect his
mother and father are much of the source of his
inspiration. Instead of spoiling him by catering to
his whims and allowing him to feel sorry for himself,
they've made the wise choice of encouraging him to believe
in himself and letting him do everything he can do, while
still being available to help when it is required.
That's love in action, and the results are spectacular.
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Hair grows at the rate of about half an inch a
month. I don't know where he got his
facts, but Mr. Washington came up with that one
when we were comparing barbers. That means
that about eight feet of hair had been cut off
my head and face in the last sixteen years by my
barber.
I hadn't thought much about it until I called to
make my usual appointment and found that my
barber had left to go into building
maintenance. What? How could he do
this? My barber. It felt like
a death in the family. There was so much
more to our relationship than sartorial
statistics.
We started out as categories to each
other: "barber" and
"customer." Then we became
"redneck ignorant barber" and "pinko
egghead minister." Once a month we
reviewed the world and our lives and explored
our positions. We sparred over civil
rights and Vietnam and lots of elections.
We became mirrors, confidants, confessors,
therapists, and companions in an odd sort of
way. We went through being thirty years
old and then forty. We discussed and
argued and joked, but always with a certain
thoughtful deference. After all, I was his
customer. And he was standing there with
his razor in his hand.
I found out that his dad was a country
policeman, that he grew up poor in a tiny town
and had prejudices about Indians. He found
out that I had the same small-town roots and
grew up with prejudices about Blacks. Our
kids were the same ages, and we suffered through
the same stages of parenthood together. We
shared wife stories and children stories and car
troubles and lawn problems. I found out he
gave his day off to giving free haircuts to old
men in nursing homes. He found out a few
good things about me, too, I suppose.
I never saw him outside the barber shop, never
met his wife or children, never sat in his home
or ate a meal with him. Yet he became a
terribly important fixture in my life.
Perhaps a lot more important than if we had been
next-door neighbors. The quality of our
relationship was partly created by a peculiar
distance. There's a real sense of loss in
his leaving. I feel like not having my
hair cut anymore, though eight feet of hair may
seem strange.
Without realizing it, we fill important places
in each other's lives. It's that way with
a minister and congregation. Or with the
guy at the corner grocery, the mechanic at the
local garage, the family doctor, teachers,
neighbors, co-workers. Good people, who
are always "there," who can be relied
upon in small, important ways. People who
teach us, bless us, encourage us, support us,
uplift us in the dailiness of life. We
never tell them. I don't know why, but we
don't.
And, of course, we fill that role
ourselves. There are those who depend on
us, watch us, learn from us, take from us.
And we never know. Don't sell yourself
short. You may never have proof of your
importance, but you are more important than you
think.
It reminds me of an old Sufi story of a good man
who was granted one wish by God. The man
said he would like to go about doing good
without knowing about it. God granted his
wish. And then God decided that it was
such a good idea, he would grant that wish to
all human beings. And so it has been to
this day.
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.
Be
aware of wonder. Live a balanced life-- learn some
and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance
and play and work every day some.
Can I talk about
politics for a moment? Over the past (almost)
twenty years, I've kept away from politics because I
don't feel that this site should be in any way partisan,
and that the idea of living life fully is something that
should transcend something as volatile and personal as
political beliefs or preferences. In today's
world, though, I'm starting to get the feeling that
politics are strongly and directly interfering with
people's ability to live their lives fully--that
decisions being made in political arenas are affecting
us so strongly that it's often impossible for us to
simply be happy and to accept life as it is, for so many
of the decisions are pushing people into situations that
truly sabotage their ability to make the most of their
lives.
So many people these days are forced to work more than
they want to or more than what's good for them simply to
make ends meet. Many people are forced to work
50-60 hours just to pay the rent and bills. People
are constantly choosing sides, being asked to condemn
those who don't agree with them rather than trying to
understand the other perspective and accept the fact
that not everyone is going to agree about
everything. And we're constantly being made to
feel helpless--like there's nothing we can do to improve
the situations we're in because the people who are
making political decisions for us have no idea what we
truly want or need.
I'm not going to choose sides politically--goodness
knows there are enough people doing that (and very
loudly). And when all is said and done, we really
shouldn't be choosing sides, anyway. We should all
be working towards the good of all people in our
society, because we know that as long as we have poverty
and sickness and people suffering, none of us can live
our lives completely fully. Each one of us is a
part of many different communities, some healthy and
some not, and when we choose sides we lost focus on
helping those who need help and start to focus on
pushing personal or professional agendas.
What should
young people do with their lives today? Many things,
obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable
communities
in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.
Kurt Vonnegut
Our politicians are
hurting us regularly because for the most part,
they're more interested in preserving the status quo
and keeping their jobs than they are in serving the
public they were elected to serve. It seems
that the days of the public servant have come to an
end in most cases, and the days of the professional
politicians who are more interested in preserving
their income and influence have not just arrived,
but firmly entrenched themselves in our
society. Because of this dynamic, we're
finding it harder and harder to give help to those
who need it.
At the base of this problem is a complete
misrepresentation of the social programs that we
have developed to help those in need. They
have come to be presented as taxpayer-funded
charity, but that's not what they are at all.
We have to remember that social programs that help
the needy exist to help to stabilize society as a
whole. We feed the hungry partly because if we don't,
they will find other ways to deal with their hunger,
and many of those ways may destabilize their
communities. We help the poor to get an
education because if they stay poor, we end up
paying much more money on law enforcement, prisons,
and crime prevention than we would pay in poverty
prevention programs. Yes, we may spend ten
million dollars on this program, but if it saves us
thirty million dollars over the next ten years and
helps people to live in peace and relative
prosperity, than it's definitely worth it.
We also help them because it's the right thing to
do.
Human beings are a part
of the whole, called by us "the universe," a
part limited
in
time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts
and
feelings,
as something separated from the rest--a kind of optical
delusion of our consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison
for us,
restricting us to our own personal desires and to affection
for a few
persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free
ourselves from this
prison by widening our circle of compassion to
embrace all living
creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
Unfortunately, our
poor people often have been made out to be villains
who are basically stealing money from our
government, and from us, the taxpayers. Yes,
there are people out there who try to scam the
system, but we need to find them and deal with
them--we can't let the bad ones make us think that
everyone who receives assistance is bad. If we
do that, we're allowing them to rob us of our
objectivity, and to take away our ability to make
rational choices based on evidence at hand rather
than rash decisions based on emotional responses.
Rash decisions almost always come back to bite us
eventually. They're rarely effective decisions
with positive results.
The truth is that few of the people who receive
government assistance want to do so. They're
stuck in situations that make them unable to fend
completely for themselves. The single mother
who is working two jobs that both pay poorly really
needs the food assistance, and more than likely
doesn't want it--but she appreciates the fact that
she's able to feed her kids. The man who was
injured on the job and who can't work presently
appreciates the fact that there's a program that
helps him to pay his rent and buy food while he's
out of work. He'd much rather still be at work
and not in pain, but that's where he is in
life. For us to play judge and jury and call
him a slacker is completely out of line, for we
really don't know his situation at all--we only see
it on the surface.
If we really want to be living our lives fully, we
need to stop judging others for what they do and
focus more strongly on what we can do to improve
situations. If there are ten million people
getting aid, what can we as a society do to make
sure that five years from now, only five million are
getting aid? And the answer isn't to make it
harder to get that aid--the answer is to improve the
job situation and to make rents more affordable.
We are
responsible for one another. Collectively so.
The world is
a joint effort.
We might say it
is like a giant puzzle, and each
one of us is a very
important
and unique part of it. Collectively,
we
can unite and bring about a powerful change
in the world.
By
working to raise our awareness to the highest
possible level of
spiritual understanding, we can begin
to heal ourselves,
then each other and the world.
As a society, though,
we often try to provide Band-Aids in order to deal
with cancer. We don't go after root causes--we
go after symptoms. And our politicians are so
often so busy playing games to try to make their
sponsors happy that they lose sight of the long-term
needs that will make ours a safer and more
productive and more compassionate society.
I'm not saying at all that we should simply throw
money at every problem that arises. But we
should be putting more money into education, not
less; more money into a healthcare system that
works, not less; more money into fighting poverty,
not less. And that money needs to be spent in
practical ways that other countries have found to be
successful, not in the ways that we've failed at
time and time again.
We are part of a community--actually, we all are
part of many separate communities. Communities
are only as strong as their weakest members, just as
chains are only as strong as their weakest
link. We strengthen the entire community when
we bolster those who are facing hardship, and we
simply can't afford any more to pretend that things
are okay with everyone when so many children are
homeless and starving, and when so many of the
members of our society are finding it impossible not
only to thrive, but just to get by.
When you have worn out
your shoes, the strength of
the shoe leather has
passed
into the fiber of your body.
I measure your
health by
the number
of shoes and hats
and clothes you have worn out.
So much of life involves risk
and the possibility of failure.
If you are not afraid of failure,
you will take many more risks
in your life.
The more risks you take,
the more alive you will feel.
You are afraid of failure
because you fear rejection.
The moment you give up seeking
acceptance from others,
your fear of rejection will disappear.
And with it, the fear of failure.
It is essential that our love be
liberating,
not possessive. We must at all
times give
those we love the freedom to be themselves.
Love affirms
the other
as other. It does not
possess and manipulate
another as mine. . . .
To love is
to liberate. Love and
friendship
must empower those we love to become
their
best selves, according to
their own lights and visions.
John
Powell
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.
™
