Good
day, and welcome to the newest day of your life!
We have another
difficult week ahead of us, but we're still making
our ways through our lives
and it's good to focus on the things we can control
rather than the things we
can't--we have to deal with much less frustration
that way. We hope that you're
able to make your week a wonderful one, in spite of
any of the obstacles that
get in your way during another week of strife and
division for many of us.
Acceptance
is a letting-go process. You let go of your
wishes
and demands that life can be different. It's a
conscious choice. -
Gary
Emery
Slow
down and enjoy life. It's not only the scenery you miss by
going
too fast--you also miss the sense of where you are going and why.
-
Eddie Cantor
The
most important education
you get is your own-- the one
you learn in solitude. -
Erica
Jong
You
will succeed best when you put the restless,
anxious side of affairs out of mind, and allow
the restful side to live in your thoughts.
-
Margaret
Stowe
LOUIE: Hi everybody. I feel like I’m at a
revival. This is great.
It’s great to be back in my old stomping grounds of San
Francisco. When I graduated UCLA I moved to Northern
California and I lived in a little town called Elk on the
Mendocino Coast. And I didn’t have a phone or TV
but I had US mail. And, life was good back then if
you could remember it. I’d go to the general store
for a cup of coffee and a brownie, and I’d ship my film
to San Francisco and lo and behold two days later it would
end up on my front door, which was way better than having
to fight the traffic of Hollywood. I didn’t have
much money, but I had time and a sense of wonder so I
started shooting time-lapse photography. It would
take me a month to shoot a four-minute roll of film
because that’s all I could afford.
I’ve been shooting time-lapse flowers continuously
non-stop 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for over 30 years
and to see them move is a dance I’ll never get tired
of. Their beauty immerses us with color, taste and
touch. It also provides a third of the food we eat.
Beauty and seduction are natures tools for survival
because we protect what we fall in love with. It
opens our hearts and makes us realize we are a part of
nature and we’re not separate from it.
When
we see ourselves in nature it also connects us to everyone
of us because it’s clear that it’s all connected and
one. When people see my images a lot of times
they’ll say “Oh My God.” Have you ever
wondered what that meant? The “Oh” means it
caught your attention – it makes you present, it makes
you mindful. The “My” means it connects with something
deep inside your soul. It creates a gateway for your
inner-voice to rise-up and be heard. And “God”
– “God” is that personal journey we all want to be
on; to be inspired. To feel like we’re connected
to a universe that celebrates life.
Did you know that 80% of the information we receive comes
through our eyes, and if you compare light energy to
musical scales it would only be one octave that the naked
eye could see, which is right in the middle. And
aren’t we grateful for our brains that can take this
electrical impulse that comes from light energy to create
images in order for us to explore our world. And
aren’t we grateful that we have hearts that can feel
these vibrations in order for us to allow ourselves to
feel the pleasure and the beauty of nature.
Nature’s beauty is a gift that cultivates appreciation
and gratitude. So I have a gift I want to share with
you today – a project I’m working on called
“Happiness Revealed”, and it will give us a glimpse
into that perspective from the point of view of a child
and an elderly man of that world.
CHILD: When I watch TV, it’s just some shows that just
are pretend. And when you explore, you get more
imagination than you already had. And um, when you
get more imagination it makes you want to go deeper in, so
you can get more, and see beautifuller things, like if
it’s a path it could lead you to a beach or something
and it could be beautiful.
OLD MAN: You think this is just another day in your life
– it’s not just another day. It’s the one day that
is given to you today. It’s given to you. It’s a
gift. It’s the only gift that you have right now, and
the only appropriate response is gratefulness. If
you do nothing else but to cultivate that response to the
great gift that this unique day is, if you learn to
respond as if it were the first day in your life, and the
very last day, then you will have spent this day very
well.
Begin by opening your eyes and be surprised that you have
eyes you can open, that incredible array of colors that is
constantly offered to us for pure enjoyment. Look at
the sky. We so rarely look at the sky. We so
rarely note how different it is from moment to moment with
clouds coming and going. We just think of the
weather, and even of the weather we don’t think of all
the many nuances of weather. We just think of good
weather and bad weather. This day right now has
unique weather, maybe a kind that will never exactly in
that form come again. The formation of clouds in the
sky will never be the same that it is right now.
Open your eyes. Look at that.
Look at the faces of people whom you meet. Each one
has an incredible story behind their face, a story that
you could never fully fathom, not only their own story,
but the story of their ancestors. We all go back so
far. And in this present moment on this day all the
people you meet, all that life from generations and from
so many places all over the world, flows together and
meets you here like a life-giving water, if you only open
your heart and drink.
Open your heart to the incredible gifts that civilization
gives to us. You flip a switch and there is electric
light. You turn a faucet and there is warm water and
cold water — and drinkable water. It’s a gift
that millions and millions in the world will never
experience.
So these are just a few of an enormous number of gifts to
which you can open your heart. And so I wish for you
that you would open your heart to all these blessings and
let them flow through you, that everyone whom you will
meet on this day will be blessed by you; just by your
eyes, by your smile, by your touch — just by your
presence. Let the gratefulness overflow into
blessing all around you, and then it will really be a good
day.
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When I was a medical student, an elderly woman came
for consultation about a mass on the side of her
jaw. Our hospital was one of the leading
hospitals for cancer treatment in the world, and the
mass was skillfully identified, classed, and staged
and state-of-the-art therapy was determined which
involved both chemotherapy and the total removal of
her lower jaw.
One of the staff doctors went to discuss our
findings and recommendations with the woman and her
family and schedule the surgery. He returned
outraged. The old woman had refused surgery
and her family had supported her in this
decision. He had explained carefully the
almost certain fatal outcome of her cancer without
surgery, described the surgery in detail, and given
her the statistics of postoperative survival.
The old woman had thanked him for his concern and
said that she would go home now. All his
arguments had failed to move her. Finally he
asked her to sign a paper absolving the hospital and
staff all responsibility for the outcome.
Calmly, with her family looking on, she had
signed. Others had gone to talk with them and
with her. Despite enormous pressure from the
staff, she left the hospital. She never
returned.
Her refusal to accept our help left the staff angry
for days. Our attitude effectively
disenfranchised her with respect to her own life,
yet any one of us would have passionately defended
her right to vote.
Despite her enormous dignity, and the obvious love of her
family, I remember thinking that they were very strange
people. I never found out what lay behind her choice, what
had caused her to make her difficult decision with such calm
certainty.
But thirty-five years have brought some change not only to me
but to medicine itself. Recently, after I presented this
story to a class of medical students, a second-year student
commented that he felt the problem was that the doctors had
known this woman's disease, but not the woman herself. Who
was she? he asked. She was elderly. Had anyone found
out what she had lived by all that time? What was
important to her?
A fine discussion ensued about the difference between defending
a person against death and making a commitment to their
life. The students raised some hard questions: How
do we serve life? Can we know what is "best" for
people, or do we only know what is best for the treatment of
their diseases? Is it possible to improve someone's
physical health and yet diminish their integrity?
The class split right down the middle. Some felt much the
way that my own classmates had felt, frustrated, judgmental, and
angry. But the others thought that the doctors of long ago
had diagnosed, but they hadn't understood. They had been
rendered impotent not by the woman's refusal of surgery but by
their own refusal to listen and know who she was. This
group of students conceived the task of her doctors not as
prolonging her life at all costs but as enabling her to live her
life according to her own values. Depending on who she
was, this might include prolonging her life or it might not.
I wonder how these comments might have been received thirty-five
years ago by my classmates and teachers. Unquestionably we
had missed an opportunity to learn about something far more
important than the diagnosis and treatment of cancer, but the
capacity to recognize that opportunity lay far in the future.
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.
A
single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So
our
prospects brighten
on the influx of greater thoughts. We
should
be blessed if we lived in the present always,
and took
advantage of
every accident that befell us, like the grass which
confesses
the
influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and
did not spend our
time in atoning
for the neglect of past opportunities,
which we call
doing our duty. We loiter in winter
while it is already spring.
One of the things that frustrates me most in life is when I hear
people say things like "I did it for your own
good." This is a code that we all broke when we were
very young when our parents told us this, and it means "I did
it because I want you to act a certain way." Even
though we broke that code, though, most of us grow up to use this
exact same sentence on other people after we've done something
that really is for our good, not for theirs.
After all, who are we to decide what's best for others? Our
goal when dealing with others should be helping them to reach
their own goals and deal with their own problems on their terms,
not to tell them which goals to reach or how they should do
things. The other people in our lives are living their own
lives and have their own lessons to learn. We can help them
a lot, but we shouldn't think that we can control them or make
them do what we think they should do.
Our own experiences are limited by our own perspectives--our ways
of seeing the world and our particular circumstances make it
necessary for us to act in certain ways and do certain
things. Our views of the lives of other people, on the other
hand, are extremely limited. We see a very small portion of
their lives, and even if they share their thoughts with us, we
still have a very incomplete picture of what others think.
These limitations make it impossible for us to know what's best
for someone else in a given situation--as much as we'd like to
think that we know what's "best," the truth is that
we're only taking a guess based on what has happened to us in our
life.
We can never
untangle all the woes in other people's lives. We can't
produce miracles overnight. But we can bring a cup of cool water
to a thirsty soul, or a scoop of laughter to a lonely heart.
So it's
important to remember that our job isn't to solve
other people's problems for them, but to help them
to discover the ways that are most effective and
most practical for them to deal with their own
problems. We can't wave a magic wand or open a
self-help book to a certain page and say,
"There--you're no longer an alcoholic,"
but we can listen to them and talk to them and help
them to find ways to deal with the issues that are
driving them to use alcohol. And when they're
facing the hardest times in dealing with the
problems, we can be there as someone to lean on when
they need to lean.
When I need help with something, some of the words
that I absolutely hate hearing are "Here's what
you've got to do," especially if it's about my
personal life. Those words are fine if I'm
looking to unclog a drain, but if I'm dealing with a
relationship issue, the words mean only that the
person is giving me an indirect command without
knowing the entire situation. If someone asks
me for advice, I've learned to preface my words with
something like, "I was in a similar situation
once, and here's what I did. . . and this is how it
turned out." That way, I'm simply giving
the other person more information that can be used
in making his or her own decisions rather than
telling them what they should do.
The
truest help we can render afflicted people is not to take
their burdens from
them, but to call out their best energy,
that they may be able to bear the burden.
Sometimes we
get so caught up in our own lives that we stop
thinking about the needs of others and what we might
be able to do to help them. Life has a
tendency to catch us up in it, to make us focus so
much on our own issues that we even forget that
other people have issues, too. And as time
goes on, it seems that the other people in our lives
are less and less likely to ask for help--after all,
our culture values independence over almost
everything else, and if we have to ask for help, it
seems like a major failure for us. We have to
get used to the idea that very often, we need to
recognize when someone needs help first, and then
offer that help sincerely and without expectation of
anything in return if we want to make our help as
valuable as it can be.
Our help should not be a negotiating tool, except in
certain circumstances with certain people. If
someone has consistently been rude to me, I may not
want to help them with something that's rather
trivial, like carrying groceries in. And
sometimes
it's better that others do the work they're supposed
to do without help--mowing the lawn is usually a
one-person job, for example, and sometimes our help
can keep someone from feeling a sense of
satisfaction about a job well done. But if my
neighbor has a sprained ankle, perhaps it's time to
help with the lawn, and if someone has some sort of
sickness, it may even be time to help with the
cooking or housecleaning.
Time and
money spent in helping people to do more
for themselves is
far better than mere giving.
Henry
Ford
We make our own
lives richer by helping others--this is no secret at
all, though it's something that most of us prefer to
ignore for the most part. If I live only to
make my own life better, my life becomes narrow and
unfulfilling. But if I turn my attention
outward and do my best to contribute in positive
ways to the lives of the people with whom I share
this planet, then I'm helping myself to lead a
richer life, too. Helping others provides
something very positive for those whom we help;
helping others also provides something very positive
for ourselves, too.
Sooner
or later people, if they are wise, discover that life is a
mixture of good days and bad, victory and defeat, give and
take.
They
learn that a person's size is often measured by the size of
the thing it takes to get his or her goat. . . . that the
conquest of petty irritations is vital to his or her
success.
They
learn that they who lose their temper usually lose.
They
learn that carrying a chip on their shoulder is the quickest
way to get into a fight.
They
learn that buck-passing acts as a boomerang.
They
learn that carrying tales and gossip about others is the
easiest way to become unpopular.
They
learn that everyone is human and that they can help to make
the day happier for others by smiling and saying "Good
morning!"
They
learn that giving others a mental lift by showing
appreciation and praise is the best way to lift their own
spirits.
They
learn that the world will not end when they fail or make an
error; that there is always another day and another chance.
They
learn that listening is frequently more important than
talking, and that they can often make a friend by letting
other people tell their troubles.
They
learn that all people have burnt toast for breakfast now and
then and that they shouldn't let their grumbling get them
down.
They
learn that people are not any more difficult to get along
with in one place than another and that "getting
along" depends about ninety-eight percent on their own
behavior.
One of the most common words in the invalidating,
self-blaming
stories we believe about ourselves or our
situations is the
word “should.”The psychologist Albert Ellis has coined the
phrase
“Stop shoulding on yourself.”When you tell yourself that
you
should feel or be
another way, you are likely to feel bad
about yourself.As an alternative, try telling yourself that
it is
okay to feel or be the way you are, even though you
have
some idea that you should feel or be different.
Bill O’Hanlon
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.
Explore all of our
quotations pages--these links will take you to the first page of each
topic, and those pages will contain links to any additional pages on
the same topic (there are five pages on adversity, for example).
™
