living life fully's e-zine for November 18

18 November 2024

Hello, and thank you very much for dropping by! We bring you this week a few articles that we hope will give you much to ponder, material upon which you may be able to reflect in ways that are helpful and productive.
	On Loneliness and Solitude (an excerpt) Kent Nerburn
	Life on the Front Burner Louise Morganti Kaelin
	Simplicity tom walsh
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Simple and Profound Thoughts (from Simple and Profound)
Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing. -Mother Teresa	A smile is the light in your window that tells others that there is a caring, sharing person inside. - Denis Waitley
Delve within; within is the fountain of good, and it is always ready to bubble up, if you always delve. -Marcus Aurelius	We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. - Teilhard de Chardin

On Loneliness and Solitude (an excerpt) Kent Nerburn You should spend time alone. Not just minutes and hours, but days, and if the opportunity presents itself, weeks. Time spent alone returns to you a hundredfold, because it is the proving ground of the spirit. You quickly find out if you are at peace with yourself, or if the meaning of your life is found only in the superficial affairs of the day. If it is in the superficial affairs of the day, time spent alone will throw you back upon yourself in a way that will make you grow in wisdom and inner strength. We can easily fill our days with activity. We buy, we sell, we move from place to place. There is always more to be done, always a way to keep from staring into the still pool where life is more than the chatter of the small affairs of the mind. If we are not careful, we begin to mistake this activity for meaning. We turn our lives into a series of tasks that can occupy all the hours of the clock and still leave us breathless with our sense of work left undone. And always there is work undone. We will die with work undone. The labors of life are endless. Better that you should accept the rhythms of life and know that there are times when you need to stop to draw a breath, no matter how great the labors are before you. For many people, solitude is just a poet's word for being alone.
But being alone, in itself, is nothing. It can be a breeding ground of loneliness as easily as a source of solitude. Solitude is a condition of peace that stands in direct opposition to loneliness. Loneliness is like sitting in an empty room and being aware of the space around you. It is a condition of separateness. Solitude is becoming one with the space around you. It is a condition of union. Loneliness is small, solitude is large. Loneliness closes in around you; solitude expands towards the infinite. Loneliness has its roots in words, in an internal conversation that nobody answers; solitude has its roots in the great silence of eternity. Most people fear being alone because they understand only loneliness. Their understanding begins at the self, and they are comfortable only as long as they are at the center of their understanding. Solitude is about getting the "I" out of the center of our thoughts so that other parts of life can be experienced in their fullness. It is about abandoning the self as the focus of understanding, and giving ourselves over to the great flowing fabric of the universe. In solitude silence becomes a symphony. Time changes from a series of moments strung together into a seamless motion riding on the rhythms of the stars. Loneliness is banished, solitude is in full flower, and we are one with the pulse of life and the flow of time. The awareness we experience in solitude is priceless for the peace it can give. It is also the key to true loving in our relationships. When we have a part of ourselves that is firm, confident, and alone, we don't need another person to fill us. We know that we have private spaces full of goodness and self-worth, and we grant the same to those we love. We do not try to pry into every corner of their lives or to fill the emptiness inside us with their presence. As always, look at the world around you. The mountain is not restless in its aloneness. The hawk tracing circles in the sky is not longing for union with the sun. They exist in the perfect peace of an eternal present, and that is the peace that one finds only in solitude. Find this peace in yourself, and you will never know another moment of loneliness in your life.
more thoughts and ideas on solitude

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Life on the Front Burner
Louise Morganti Kaelin

How many times in your life have you had to put something "on the back burner", letting an idea or a project simmer in the background while you focused on something else? How often were the things that went on the back burner your personal hopes, dreams or needs while you concentrated on the hopes, dreams or needs of someone else? There is nothing wrong with that decision and in some cases it can be admirable. However, it's not admirable if your personal needs never come off the back burner.

We all know that, during the safety instructions on an airplane, we are instructed to put the mask over our own mouth first, then on our child's. Why? The reason is simple -- if we are knocked unconscious there will be no one to look after the child, endangering them even more than those few moments it takes to put our own mask on. The wisdom of this is readily apparent once we think about it, and is good advice to take forward into all areas of our lives.

For many years, I put the needs of others first. As I evolved personally, I came to understand that it was okay--healthier, even-- to put my needs equal to the needs of others. In fact, it is how I now define the word "selfish," and use the term "self-centered" for someone determined to live as though the world revolves around them.

Even with that advanced understanding, however, I still didn't take care of my self as much as I needed. That included delaying doctors' appointments or working past the exhaustion point because someone else needed me. Even though I felt my needs were equal to the needs of others, the reality is that 90% of the time I still opted to take care of others before myself. This isn't bad, either, because for the most part these were conscious choices I made. Unfortunately, there has been a physical and emotional cost that becomes harder and harder to bounce back from.

Where does that leave me today? With a new understanding, one that suggests that, in fact, I need to opt for myself more than 10% of the time. However, I'm still basically someone who likes to give, and I like that about myself, so it's really important for me not to become that "self-centered" person I described earlier. And that brings me to the concept of choosing to put me on the front burner, to live on the front burner.

This analogy is really appropriate for me. I think it works because I
still am a person who cares for others. So, while I may have neglected myself on the back burner, I find that I do not neglect others back there. The result is that I am truly taking care of myself and caring for others at the same time, for the first time in my life. Sometimes we just need the right analogy or framing for an idea to really take hold. This 'front burner' idea is perfect for me. In fact, I now keep the tea kettle on the front burner on the stove. This way, every time I walk into the kitchen I am reminded of this shift in my thinking and it helps me remain focused and clear about this positive new action and change in my life.

So, where in your life have you been putting yourself on the back burner and forgetting about you? A harried parent, juggling work and family? An over-conscientious leader or manager? Oldest sibling? Youngest sibling? Caught between aging parents and developing children? No matter how overwhelmed you might be feeling, it is possible to find some moments of time just for yourself. The key is remembering that it is not an either/or situation. You get to take care of yourself and handle your responsibilities to others. Make a conscious decision to live YOUR life on the front burner!

* * * * *

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.

The balance and peace we seek for ourselves and our society won’t be achieved
through mental effort alone. Mind and spirit are meant to travel together,
with spirit leading the way. Until we make a conscious commitment to understand
and embrace our spiritual nature, we will endure the ache of living without
the awareness and guidance of the most essential part of ourselves.

Susan L. Taylor

Simplicity

There have been times in my life when I've been forced into very simple lifestyles, in which material items hardly entered the picture because of circumstances--my four years in the Army and the three years I lived in Europe with just the possessions I could carry with me leap to mind. And as I think of those times in retrospect, I realize that they were very good times--the fewer possessions I had to worry about, the fewer obligations that I had outside of home, even the less money that I had, all combined to make my life much simpler than it has been at other times, when I've owned homes and had many outside obligations.

That doesn't mean, of course, that I would advocate that everyone sell off their houses and live in one-room shacks for the rest of their lives. While such a strategy has proved to be effective for some people, it definitely wouldn't work for us all. Rather, what I do know to be true is that the simpler we're able to make our lives within the frameworks that make up our reality, the easier it is for us to focus on what's truly essential in our lives--our relationships with the people we love, excellence in our work, creating a comfortable and inviting home that we enjoy returning to each evening.

The more we complicate our lives, the more room we take up in our lives with those things that distract us, that keep us from our essential and authentic selves. It seems to be natural for us to want to complicate our lives, for we do like having the bigger or the nicer house, the more expensive car, the more complex computer system, more friends and acquaintances. But the more we complicate our lives, the more responsibilities and obligations we end up having, and the more can go wrong. And these days, the more that can go wrong, the more time we end up devoting to fixing things that we may not necessarily need, and the more money we end up spending on them.

Do you know the more I look into life, the more things it seems
to me I can successfully lack--and continue to grow happier.
How many kinds of food I do not need, or cooks to cook them,
how much curious clothing or tailors to make it, how many
books I have never read, and pictures that are not worthwhile!
The farther I run, the more I feel like casting aside all such
impediments--lest I fail to arrive at the far goal of my endeavor.

David Grayson

A perfect example happened last week with an mp3 player that I had just bought. When I plugged it into the computer to sync it, I was expecting a ten-minute process that I wouldn't have to pay much attention to. Four hours later, after several failed syncs and converting it back to factory condition twice, the job was finally finished. While I enjoy listening to the music on it, I have to think about how nice it would have been spending those four Saturday hours sitting down and reading a good book instead of struggling with the computer to fix something that needed to be fixed if I didn't want to have wasted money on it.

Sometimes, complications in life just seem to be necessary. At the moment, I'm working full time and taking two college courses, as well as working some twenty hours a week on other tasks. My life is not simple, but I know that this is only for a short season--I had the chance to do the two courses for free (and actually get paid for one of them), so it was worth my while to commit myself to a more complicated lifestyle for four months to be able to achieve something that's necessary for me. That said, though, once the courses are over, I definitely will not commit myself to such a schedule for a very long time.

Our tendency to over commit ourselves and reject simplicity keeps us stressed out and unbalanced. Simplicity, on the other hand, allows us to balance our lives rather easily, for there's less to balance. Choosing a simpler lifestyle also allows us to focus more strongly and more clearly on those things that are truly important to us. Because my life is very complicated at the moment, for example, there are activities that I love doing that I've had to give up completely until the college courses are done. I could still try to fit them in, but I know that I would do them poorly because I would have to rush through them, and I'm not willing to do that. By putting them aside instead of trying to do everything, I'm at least simplifying my complicated life as much as I can.

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary
so that the necessary may speak.

Hans Hofmann

Simple lives allow us to do well all that we do instead of doing things quickly at lower levels of quality. When our lives are simple, we can find the time for the rest that we need to be functioning always at high levels of effectiveness. In a simple life, problems are easier to recognize and deal with, so they don't tend to hang on and keep us stressed out for long periods of time. Simplicity allows us to breathe, to relax, to enjoy fully--that cup of hot cocoa tastes so much better when we can drink it at our leisure, not having to hurry through it to get to our next task.

It's not as difficult as it may seem to simplify our lives. There are quite a few good books out there with many good tips, but we can start just by stopping for once, looking around ourselves, and asking ourselves, "what is truly necessary here?" When we can identify different aspects of our lives as "needs, wants, or neither," we can make it easier to recognize the things that pull us from simplicity and start to work them out of our lives--either immediately by getting rid of them, or slowly by phasing them out.

Leading a simple life does not mean living a Spartan life. There's no need to get rid of everything you own and sleep on a mat on the floor, eating just rice and noodles. We can still own things--we just have to make sure that we own them, and that they don't own us. One simple question to ask ourselves is whether a certain object makes us spend time doing things we don't want to do or otherwise wouldn't need to do. Adding a pond to the garden would be nice, but it's going to take a lot of time from us in maintenance and upkeep. That complicate home theater system may be nice, but do we really need it and do we really want to spend the time necessary to learn all of its functions and settings? And when there's a problem with it, how do we get it repaired? We don't own the cheapest Blu-ray player on the market, but the one we have is fine for us--and if it goes out, we'll just replace it without having lost any money. I've spent far too much time in the past trying to get electronics fixed, only to have to take them back after I got them home and they still didn't work. The simpler the things I own, the less stress they cause me when they stop working properly.

If one's life is simple, contentment has to come. Simplicity is extremely
important for happiness. Having few desires, feeling satisfied
with what you have, is very vital: satisfaction with just enough food,
clothing, and shelter to protect yourself from the elements.

the Dalai Lama

Most of us couldn't say with any degree of truth that we know what it's like to go through an entire day without any real responsibilities. We don't know what it's like to be able to sit quietly and enjoy the peace and quiet--we have to fill the air with sound and fill our time with accomplishments.

Simplicity, though, is a choice that we all can make. It would require getting rid of some things, and minimizing the numbers of other things. Living simply requires constantly asking ourselves questions such as "Do I really need this?" "Will this add quality to my life, or stress?" "Do I truly have time to take on this new hobby or responsibility?" And then we have to answer the questions with complete honesty, and make our decisions based on those answers. After all, there is nothing inherently wrong with accomplishment or even being busy--but until we actually experience the peace of simplicity, it's very difficult to imagine what it's like.