It has taken me a long time to realize that I have an effect on the people around me.  Like many people who were different when they were young, I suffered for years from shyness and a lack of self- worth.  All but invisible to myself, I believed I was invisible to others as well and that my presence or absence had little or no influence on anyone.  In early days, I would often not respond to a written invitation or return a phone message.  Sometimes I would leave a party without a word to anyone including the host or hostess.  It simply never occurred to me that anyone might notice that I had not responded or that I was no longer there.  That it might matter.  Years later I was stunned to discover that all those years I had been seen as aloof and rude.  And that my behavior often hurt people.

Many people do not know that they can strengthen or diminish the life around them.  The way we live day to day simply may not reflect back to us our power to influence life or the web of relationship that connects us.  Life responds to us anyway.  We all have the power to affect others.  We may affect those we hardly know and those we do not even know at all.  Many of the people with cancer who I have met over the years have been taken completely by surprise by this power.  Until they had cancer they had simply not known how many lives touched their own

All this changed one day during a visit to New York City.  As she and her husband were standing on a street corner waiting for the light to change, she had looked across the street and noticed a building with exceptionally beautiful architecture.  She had called his attention to it.  "Look John," she had said, "isn't that a beautiful building?"  Thinking they were alone, he had responded to her in the tone of absolute contempt that he used in their private conversations.  "You mean the yellow one," he said to her, "the one that no one in their right mind would think was any different from every other building on the block?"

She had flushed with shame and fallen silent.  And then a woman standing next to them, a complete stranger who was also waiting for the light to change, turned and fixed him with a glare.  "She's absolutely right, you know," she said with strong New York accent.  "That is a beautiful building.  And you, sir, are a horse's ass."  When light turned green, this woman crossed the street and walked away.

It was the defining moment in the relationship, my colleague told me.  Suddenly it was all crystal clear.  She knew then that she would find the strength to leave him.  It would take some time but she knew she could do it.

To recognize your capacity to affect life is to know yourself most intimately and deeply, to recognize your real value and power, independent of any role which you have been given to play or expertise you may have acquired.  It is possible to strengthen or diminish the life around you in almost any role.  One of the ways in which we may become dangerous to others is to assume that our role or our expertise has in it such an inherent capacity for good that we, occupying that role, can do no harm.  There is no role that absolves us of the responsibility to listen, to be mindful that life is all around us.
   
   

A second wonderful book of short vignettes by Rachel Naomi Remen, My Grandfather's Blessings is an exploration of the meanings of life and living.  Remen uses the heart-rending stories of her patients to teach readers how to follow in her example, that is, combining a life of service with a life of receiving and giving blessings (a combination that avoids common problems such as burnout, self-sacrifice, and navel gazing).

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exists to try to provide for visitors of the world wide web a place
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are presented as thoughts of the authors--by no means do we
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A Worn Out Creed
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

I have a letter from an "orthodox Christian," who says the only hope for humanity lies in the "old- fashioned religion."  Then be proceeds to tell me how carefully he has studied human nature, "in business, in social life, and in himself," and that he finds it all vile -- selfish -- sinful.  Of course he does, because he studies it from a false and harmful standpoint, and looks for "the worm of earth" and "the poor, miserable sinner," instead of the divine human.

We find what we look for in this world.  I have always been looking for the noble qualities in human beings, and I have found them.  There are great souls all along the highway of life, and there are great qualities even in the people who seem common and weak to us ordinarily.

One of the grandest souls I know is a man who served his term in prison for sins committed while in drink.  He was not "born bad," he simply drifted into bad company and formed bad habits.  He paid the awful penalty of five years behind prison bars, but the divine man within him asserted itself, and today I have no friend I feel prouder to call that name.

Mr. John L. Tait, secretary of the Central Howard Association, of Chicago, writes me regarding his knowledge of ex-convicts:  "According to my experience with a number of men of this class during the last two years, more than 90 per cent of them are worthy of the most cordial support and assistance."

If this can be said of men who have been criminals, surely humanity is not so vile as my "orthodox" correspondent would have me believe.  A "Christian" of that order ought to be put under restraint, and not allowed to associate with mankind.  He carries a moral malaria with him, which poisons the air.  He suggests evil to minds which have not thought it.  He is a dangerous hypnotist, while pretending to be a disciple of Christ.

The person who believes that all people are vicious, selfish and immoral is projecting pernicious mind stuff into space, which is as dangerous to the peace of the community as dynamite bombs.  The world has been kept back too long by this false, unholy and blasphemous "religion."  It is not the religion of Christ -- it is the religion of ignorant translators, ignorant readers.

Thank God, its supremacy is past.  A wholesome and holy religion has taken its place with the intelligent progressive minds of the day, a religion which says:  "I am all goodness, love, truth, mercy, health.  I am a necessary part of God's universe.  I am a divine soul, and only good can come through me or to me.  God made me, and He could make nothing but goodness and purity and worth.  I am a reflection of all His qualities."

This is the "new" religion; yet it is older than the universe.  It is God's own thought put into practical form.

from The Heart of the New Thought, 1902

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Then said a rich man, "Speak to us of Giving."

And he answered:

You give but little when you give of your possessions.

It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.

For what are your possessions but things you keep and guard for fear you may need them tomorrow?

And tomorrow, what shall tomorrow bring to the overprudent dog burying bones in the trackless sand as he follows the pilgrims to the holy city?

And what is fear of need but need itself?

Is not dread of thirst when your well is full, thirst that is unquenchable?

There are those who give little of the much which they have - and they give it for recognition and their hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome.

And there are those who have little and give it all.

These are the believers in life and the bounty of life, and their coffer is never empty.

There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward.

And there are those who give with pain, and that pain is their baptism.

And there are those who give and know not pain in giving, nor do they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue;

They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space.

Though the hands of such as these God speaks, and from behind their eyes He smiles upon the earth.

It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked, through understanding;

And to the open-handed the search for one who shall receive is joy greater than giving.

And is there aught you would withhold?

All you have shall some day be given;

Therefore give now, that the season of giving may be yours and not your inheritors'.

You often say, "I would give, but only to the deserving."

The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pasture.

They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish.

Surely he who is worthy to receive his days and his nights is worthy of all else from you.

And he who has deserved to drink from the ocean of life deserves to fill his cup from your little stream.

And what desert greater shall there be than that which lies in the courage and the confidence, nay the charity, of receiving?

And who are you that men should rend their bosom and unveil their pride, that you may see their worth naked and their pride unabashed?

See first that you yourself deserve to be a giver, and an instrument of giving.

For in truth it is life that gives unto life -- while you, who deem yourself a giver, are but a witness.

And you receivers -- and you are all receivers -- assume no weight of gratitude, lest you lay a yoke upon yourself and upon him who gives.

Rather rise together with the giver on his gifts as on wings;