Hello,
and welcome to today and this week! We've been given
the gift of some more time on this planet, and we hope
that you're
able to make the most of your today in all
possible ways!
I was sitting in a bookstore three blocks from my
freshman dorm, trying to decide on my college
major. It had been a tough year-- the most
stressful of my life so far-- and I felt too tired to
make the trivial decision, let alone one that might
have a serious impact on my future. Glumly, I
leafed through the Fields of Concentration
booklet I'd received from the registrar.
Should I concentrate on English Literature?
Well, maybe; I liked to read.
Philosophy? No-- too pretentious.
History? That was a possibility. Visual
art?
As this thought occurred to me, a most peculiar
sensation swept through my body. It felt as
though my cells had suddenly become buoyant.
For a dizzy moment, I almost believed that I was
rising up into the air. A panorama of memories
rushed through my brain: the thousands of
hours I'd spent drawing as an art-obsessed child and
adolescent; the gorgeous smell of crayons, paper,
paint, and turpentine; the wordless enchantment I
experienced whenever I made pictures. The
feeling was so surprising and lovely that I burst
out laughing.
I cannot tell you how atypical this was. For
several scared, bewildered, and lonely months, I
hadn't so much as smiled for an I.D. photo.
Now I felt as though I'd discovered the canary in
the coal mine of my soul, still singing away under
tons of bedrock. Emily Dickinson's line
"Hope is the thing with feathers" popped
into my mind, and for the first time, I knew what
she meant.
I also understood
something else Emily once said: that when she read great
poetry, she felt as if the top of her head were coming
off. I'd always thought this was a sad commentary on how
desperate the recluse poet was for entertainment, but now I
realized Emily must have been talking about something similar to
the strange lightness I felt when I considered majoring in art.
I'll bet you've had this feeling too, or a sensation close to
it. Everyone experiences this a little differently, but in
each individual it tends to be very consistent over time.
It's the feeling of your essential self saying, "Yes!
This way to your North Star!"
Of course, when this happened to me in the bookstore, I didn't
listen. Within thirty seconds, my social self had launched
a full frontal attack. It dredged up a conversation I'd
overheard in the freshman dining hall several weeks
earlier. A group of my peers had spent half an hour
mocking visual-arts majors, whom they saw as a bunch of
wannabe-European airheads with dim minds and even dimmer
futures. A degree in art, my friends had all agreed, was
worse than useless. So much for that idea. My
body seemed to crash back into the chair, and my mood into its
inky funk.
For the next ten years, as I charted my course to a
"secure" career in academia, I occasionally pondered
that experience in the bookstore. I thought about it as I
slogged my way through one Chinese class after another, feeling
as though the subject and I had mutually repellant force
fields. I thought about it when I toted up all the income
I'd earned working my way through college and graduate school,
and realized that I'd made more money teaching and selling art
than my any other means. I thought about it the day I quit
my academic job, finally acknowledging that I simply wasn't cut
out to be a sociology professor, no matter how fail-safe such a
career might seem.
I'll never know what would have happened if I'd listened to my
essential self when it tried to choose my major for me. I
don't think I'd be a professional artist; my sense is that
studying the subject was my truest path, but not a final
destination. I do believe that if I'd chosen art as my
major, the next few years would have been more enjoyable, more
fulfilling, and easier. I think I might have lived the
breadth of those years, as well as their length. I'm
basing this conjecture on experiences I've had since: both
the times that I ignored my essential self shouting
"Yes!" and the times I listened to it. I also
have lots of corroborating data from people who habitually
listen to their essential selves, and have extraordinarily rich
lives to show for it.
Oh my
mama told me 'Cause she says she learned the hard
way She say she wanna spare the children She say don't give or sell your soul
away 'Cause all that you have is your
soul
Chorus: So don't be tempted by the
shiny apple Don't you eat of a bitter fruit Hunger only for a taste of justice Hunger only for a world of truth 'Cause all that you have is your
soul
Well I was a pretty young
girl once I had dreams I had high hopes I married a man he stole my heart
away He gave his love but what a high
price I paid All that you have is your soul
Chorus
Why was I such a young fool Thought I'd make history Making babies was the best I could
do Thought I'd made something that
could be mine forever Found out the hard way one can't
possess another And all that you have is your soul
Chorua
I thought, thought that I
could find a way To beat the system To make a deal and have no debts to
pay I'd take it all, I'd take it all,
I'd run away Me for myself first class and first
rate But all that you have is your soul
Chorus
Here I am, I'm waiting for a
better day A second chance A little luck to come my way A hope to dream, a hope that I can
sleep again And wake in the world with a clear
conscience and clean hands 'Cause all that you have is your
soul
Chorus
Oh my mama told me 'Cause she say she learned the hard
way She say she wanna spare the children She say don't give or sell your soul
away 'Cause all that you have is your
soul
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I have
lived in the inner city for a long time. It is
not, by and large, a place of indiscriminate
virtue. I have discovered that compassion comes
no easier to the poor than it does to the rest of
humankind. Compassion is clearly more a state of
mind than a state of life. People are no more
generous here, no more kind here, no more virtuous
here than are people in the suburbs--despite the fact
that they know suffering as few do. How can that
be, I wondered? How is it that the poor do not
commiserate with the poor?
And then I understood: the poor know the burden
of injustice, seldom the privilege of mercy. It
is the advantaged who are called to compassion and
mercy because it is the advantaged who have the luxury
to give and the responsibility to understand.
I have known these things for a long time but
yesterday I saw them alive and smiling. I met
the young man in question in Cape Town, South
Africa. He was from Chicago, heard the American
accent, and took the trouble to tell me to
"travel safely."
"I was beaten up on the street," he said,
pointing to his half-healed right eye.
"They stole the shoes right off my feet."
I winced a little.
"When I called to tell my mother," he said,
"she was furious. But I said to her,"
he went on simply, "Mom, you don't
understand. Those shoes cost more than most of
these people make in a year."
He smiled a little. "I just hope they fit
him."
I realized that I had just seen real compassion in
action. He understood the offense. He
oozed no righteous fury. In that smile, I
learned a lot that I had known for years but, all of a
sudden, knew differently.
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.
Often,
we are harder on ourselves than others are. If we cannot
forgive ourselves,
how can we forgive other people? Everyone's
lesson is
to forgive ourselves for our
mistakes, even those things we feel ashamed
about, and learn to accept ourselves
for
who we are, knowing that
we can always gently work on making improvements.
For
me,
the true experience of inner peace began only once I was
able
to forgive those around me, my parents, and myself.
Patrick
Wanis
Creativity
I am a very creative person, and I'd be willing to bet that you
are, too. I'd also be willing to bet, though, that you're
much like I am in that you haven't learned to see yourself as a
creative person first and foremost, and that you probably even
would say that you're not very creative at all if someone were to
ask you. When it comes to creativity, most of us tend to
judge our own creativity against things that we see from other
people, be it paintings or writing or crafts. "I could
never do something like that," we say, thus lowering our
perception of our own creativity.
Creativity, though, isn't limited to artistic endeavors.
Almost everything that we do in life, from our jobs to cooking to
doing the yard work, can involve incredible amounts of
creativity. Even our lives themselves can be full of
creativity, depending on how we choose to live them and the
decisions that we make while doing so. We can be creative in
our relationships, creative in our hobbies, even creative in the
ways that we try to be creative (if that makes sense). I
once read about a man who raked leaves into piles that represented
different armies in different situations, then raked them together
as the armies met in battle, having fun and exercising his mind
while he did a simple task. (Personally, I'd probably want
to imagine that the piles were flocks of birds flying south, for
example, than armies of people killing each other, but to each his
or her own, right?)
Part of our problem is the way that our cultures define
creativity, and celebrate it only when and if it becomes famous or
earns a lot of money for the person who "created."
Most of our creativity is private, and we can be creative in
little ways that aren't going to make us famous at all. And
much of what we see as "art" isn't actually very
creative at all--it's simply product that's been carefully
designed to appeal to people's wants so that they'll buy more of
it. Many movies, for example, follow simple formulas of
character, setting, and plot, with only slight differences between
them--different actors or settings, for example. We think
they're the result of creativity because they're supposedly
entertaining, but the truth is that they're calculated products,
not creative inventions. And if we start thinking that that
is what creativity consists of, then we're making a big mistake.
Creativity
is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks,
breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun.
Mary
Lou Cook
I can be
creative by taking a different route to work, by
figuring out new ways to do tasks, by finding new
solutions to problems. We practice creativity
when we find a way to make a vegetarian dish out of
something we've always made with meat, or when we
find a new way to cook that steak or make those
cookies. Sometimes we don't even notice that
we're being creative--we're just taking care of
something that needs to be taken care of.
Fostering and developing our creativity can have
extremely beneficial effects for us. When we
work at being creative, we're using our minds in
ways that are inspirational and uplifting, and we're
finding new possibilities in a world in which it
seems as if everything's been done already.
We're reminding ourselves that our world is full of
new things and new ways to do things, and we're
giving ourselves a chance to look at the world in
new ways, a fact that rejuvenates our perspective
and helps us to become even more creative.
Have you ever noticed how when we're being creative,
it becomes much easier to follow up a creative
project with something else that's creative?
It's like running or working out--when you're doing
it regularly, a five-mile run is extremely easy, but
when we neglect our running, the five-mile run
becomes a five-mile ordeal. Our creativity
thrives when it's being used, not when it's put into
a jar and hidden in the pantry.
Creativity
of all kinds focuses your mind, engages your imagination,
and feeds your soul. Being creative can also facilitate
understanding
and encourage healing. Creativity is mindfulness in
motion--intuitive,
artistic motion. Creative moments and activities give you a boost
and help you feel energized and good about yourself.
Our creativity
is one of the elements of our lives that make us
feel truly alive. It can help us to stay truly
focused on the moment as we work on a creative
endeavor; it can help us to think abstractly as we
envision the final project of what we're creating;
it can help us to feel joy as we see something that
we've made or finished that didn't exist one or two
days ago; it can help us to feel extremely good
about ourselves as we realize that yes, we do have
skills and talents that are uniquely ours. Our
creativity can be an amazing spark that sets us on
fire--not the destructive type of fire that destroys
everything in its path, but the constructive fire
that sheds light and provides warmth.
Our creativity also, as Sue points out above, helps
us to practice mindfulness and to be more aware of
our surroundings than we usually are. When
we're being creative, we see how things work--and
how they don't work. We start to understand or
strengthen our understanding of many principles,
from learning how baking times differ depending on
ingredients to how long paints need to dry before
you can paint over them to what kinds of paper are
stronger than others to which notes work well
together, and which don't.
The bottom line is that we are creative
creatures. We're born that way, and our
spirits thrive when we practice the creativity that
is innate in each one of us. It's important,
though, that we keep in mind that we should not
be comparing the results of our creative efforts
with the creativity of other people--creativity is not
a competition. It is an integral part of who
we are, and we should view it as just that, without
putting extra pressure on ourselves to
"perform" for others by trying to impress
them with our creativity. If we're just
creative, if we just do what we do in order to spark
and develop our own creativity, we'll be doing what
we need to do in order to make our lives
richer. The compliments and accolades from
others may or may not come--and it's perfectly okay
if they don't. We're not on this world to
impress others. We're on it to develop
ourselves to be the best people we can be, and our
creativity is a huge part of who we are.
Creativity is a central source of
meaning in our
lives. . . most of
the things that are interesting,
important, and
human are the
results of creativity . . . when we
are involved in
it, we feel
that we
are living more fully than
during the rest of
life.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
You can be
creative today. You don't need to write the
best poem or short story ever written to be
creative, and you don't need to make the best egg
dish ever or anything that will win prizes at county
fairs. But you do need to be willing to take a
chance or two, to think of things in slightly
different ways, and to put yourself out there and
risk that what you create won't be exactly what you
envisioned. Creative people often find that
their results don't match their plans at all.
But if you take the time to do something creative on
this day, you'll find that your creativity comes
just a bit easier tomorrow, and easier still the day
after, until your creativity is a major part of the
life that you're living. And when that becomes
the case, that life will be rich indeed--and you'll
be able to help others tap into their creativity,
too.
Simply give others a bit of yourself;
a thoughtful act, a helpful idea,
a word of appreciation,
a lift over a rough spot,
a sense of understanding, a
timely suggestion. You take something
out of your mind,
garnished in kindness out of your heart,
and put it into
the other person's mind and heart.
Charles H. Burr
Happiness
Edward J. Lavin
Contentment is a balm, satisfaction is a friendly
embrace, but happiness is a warm glow and tingle
that arise from the health of both mind and body.
We all want to be happy, yet how many of us can with
certainty declare that we are? We all have
little happinesses that raise us up out of the mire
of our daily struggles. Perhaps we should be
content with these small gifts, for the quality of
perfect happiness is an uncommon state.
This little caution is a warning to those whose life
is a perpetual search for the perfect happiness--a
holy grail that requires an immense effort. It
is not found in a clean bathroom, although the TV
commercials want us to think so. Nor is it
found in money or health or friends or lovers or
travel or small packages. These may lead to
small happinesses, and blessings on them all.
Perfect happiness is a well-regulated hierarchy of
spirit, mind, and body. The order is
important, and anything that disturbs that order
ruffles the surface of the lake of happiness.
Unregulated desire, as the Buddha knew so well, is a
heavy stone dropped into the lake; equally
disturbing is the tendency to forget about the
spirit and to concentrate exclusively on the mind or
the body. Perfect happiness is not to be found
in the leaps of aerobic movement nor in the dense
concentration of scholarly research.
Yet we must not despair. Perfect happiness is
our birthright--it is only that we must work at it.
from his book Life
Meditations
A
handful of pine-seed will cover mountains with the green majesty
of forest. I too will set my face to the wind and throw my
handful of seed on high.
Fiona
MacLeod
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.
™
