Welcome
to our first issue of March, 2025. We're glad
that you're here with us,
and we hope that you're able to find something here
that will add to your day in
very positive ways. Please enjoy this issue!
We have announced and declared that we choose for
ourselves for marriage to be the highest expression
of the grandest experience of love of which humans
are capable. That's what we've said. We
have said, "We choose for marriage to be an
expression of the grandest and highest love of which
humans are capable." Then we proceed to
construct a marriage institution and a marriage
experience which produces exactly the opposite of
that--virtually the lowest form of love of which
humans are capable. A love that possesses
rather than releases. A love that limits
rather than expands. A love that owns rather
than disowns. A love that makes virtually
everything around it smaller rather than making
everything around it larger.
We've created an experience of marriage that has
nothing to do with love in far too many
instances. We've created a holder, a shell,
some kind of encasement. And that's what we
want marriage to be. We want it to be an
encasement that holds everything exactly where it
was the moment we said, "I love you," and
that holds us all exactly where we were in that
first moment. But people and events move
around. They change. Life is an
evolution. And so marriage, as we have
constructed it, works against the very process of
life itself, because it provides very little
breathing room in the way many societies and
religions and family traditions have constructed it.
Largely, marriage
has been used by those societies, religions, and families as a
mini-prison, as kind of a contractual arrangement that
says:
"Everything will be, now and forevermore, the
way it is in just this moment. You will love no one else,
and you certainly won't demonstrate that love for anyone else in
the way you demonstrate your love for me. You won't go
anywhere else except where I go. You'll do very little
that I do not do with you, and in most ways from this day
forward, your life is going to be, at least to some degree,
limited." And so the very thing which should unlimit
people and release the spirit within them, works against that
and limits people and closes that spirit down.
That's the irony of marriage as we've created it. We say,
"I do," and from the moment we say, "I do,"
we can't do the things that we would really love to do in
life, in largest measure. Now, very few people would admit
this in the first throes of romance and in the first moments
after their wedding. They would only come to these
conclusions three, or five, or--what's the famous phrase, the
seven-year itch--seven years later, when they suddenly
realize that, in fact, their experience of themselves in the
world at large has been reduced, and not enlarged, by the
institution of marriage.
That's not true, of course, in all marriages, naturally.
But it's true in enough of them--I'm going to say, in the
majority of them. And that is why we have such a high
divorce rate, because it isn't so much that people have gotten
tired of each other, not nearly so often as they've
gotten tired of the restrictions and the limitations
that marriage seems to have imposed upon them. The human
heart knows when it's being asked to be less.
Now love, on the other hand, is all about freedom. The
very definition of love is freedom itself. Love is that
which is free and knows no limitation, restriction, or condition
of any kind. And so I would think that what we have done
here is that we have created an artificial construction around
that which is least artificial. Love is the most authentic
experience within the framework of the human adventure.
And yet in the midst of this grand authenticity, we have created
these artificial constrictions. And that makes it very
difficult for people to stay in love.
And so what we have to do is reconstruct marriage, if we're
going to have marriage at all, in a way that says: "I
do not limit you. There is no condition that makes it okay
for us to remain together. I do not have any desire to
cause you to be less in your expression of yourself, in any
way. Indeed, what this marriage is intended to do, this
new form of marriage, is to fuel the engine of your
experience--the experience of who you really are and who you
choose to be."
And one last thing that the New Marriage does: it says,
"I recognize that even you, yourself, will change.
Your ideas will change, your tastes will change, your desires
will change. Your whole understanding of Who You Are had better
change, because if it doesn't change, you've become a very
static personality over a great many years, and nothing would
displease me more. And I recognize that the process of
evolution will produce changes in you."
This new form of marriage not only allows for such changes, but
it encourages them.
When will America become America?
When will America become America?
When will the home we love
Mean freedom for everyone?
When will America become America?
When will the killing stop?
When the last child has dropped?
How long must other's tears
Rain down on streets of tears?
When will the home we love
Mean justice for everyone?
When will America become America?
When will America become America?
When will America become America?
When will the home we love
Mean freedom for everyone?
When will America become America?
When will the struggling poor
Walk with heads held high once more?
Children playing on a haunted street
Where dogs and vultures eat
A politician weaves a spell
A promise spoken from the mouth of hell
When will America become America?
When will America become America?
When will America become America?
When will the home we love
Mean freedom for everyone?
When will America become America?
With the very lives they gave
Soldiers are young and brave
Shame for the world to see
A mystery to you and me
Angels will keep their watch
Heaven will count the cost
When will America become America?
When will America become America?
When will America become America?
When will the home we love
Mean freedom for everyone?
When will America become America?
We
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The communication principle is, "Be clear, concise,
open, and honest."
Communication is an art. I have seen some great
communicators at work. These are some of the lessons I
have learned:
Let others talk.
Avoid arguments.
Don't complain.
Give honest and sincere compliments.
Be more ready to compliment than to criticize.
Invite input.
Make a point to remember people's names; it is music to
their ears.
Never be afraid to seek advice.
Never criticize someone in front of other people.
Be aware of other people's desires.
Find joy and pleasure through taking an interest in
people.
Talk about yourself only if asked.
Smile--it is contagious and opens people's hearts.
Learn to listen.
Remember people's birthdays and anniversaries--it shows
you care.
Encourage people to share about themselves.
Engage people where they are--talk in relation to their
interests.
Help other people to discover their uniqueness, to feel
special and important, without patronizing them.
Respect other people's opinions.
Admit when you are wrong.
Be kind and friendly to every person you meet.
Ask questions people respond to positively.
Encourage other people in their dreams--particularly
children.
Try to see it from the other person's point of view.
Hold up ideals.
Challenge people gently.
Talk about your own failures.
Appeal to higher motives.
Always look for yourself in others and others in
yourself--it affirms the oneness of the human family.
Affirm the highest values of the human spirit.
Never pass up an opportunity to speak a kind word of
appreciation. There are six billion people on the
planet, and 5.9 billion of them go to bed every night
starving for one honest word of appreciation.
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.
Sufficient it is to know
that the way we lived our yesterday
has determined for us our today. And, again, when the
morning with its fresh beginning comes, all tomorrows should
be tomorrows, with which we have nothing to do. Sufficient
to know that the way we live our today determines our tomorrow.
I've been having a hard time finding a sense of balance the last
four months or so, ever since the elections that we had in
November. I've spent most of my adult life trying to find
the good in life, the positive, the uplifting. I've been
trying to focus on kindness and compassion and hope and helping
others. I spent four years in the Army trying to serve my
country in a way that could be helpful because I felt that there
was something here worth serving, that no matter how the current
winds blow, there's a decency here in our country that is worth
serving.
The election results seemed to tell me I was wrong. Yes,
there are many decent people in this country, but the country as a
whole no longer embodies the principles that I hold so dear:
kindness and compassion and charity and helpfulness. The
country as a whole has embraced racism, hatred, anger, prejudice,
and the desire to punish anyone who is "not like us,"
just because they're "not like us." They aren't
our religion, or their sexuality is different than mine, or their
skin is a different color or they speak a language other than the
one I speak.
What's just as
bad--if not worse--is the message that came through
loud and clear: we don't care about the
qualities that have traditionally been the earmarks
of good leaders. Leaders shouldn't be kind and
compassionate people who look after the welfare of
their constituents--rather, it's okay to elect
someone who puts self-interest before everything
else, who abuses women and who talks bad about
virtually everyone who doesn't meet the standards he
says they should live up to, even though he
personally seems to have no standards at all to
follow in his own life.
My concerns are many. One is the question of
what we're teaching our young people by electing
such an awful person to the highest office in our
land--again. An extremely large number of
people voted for this man, effectively saying
"it's okay to abuse women, it's okay to cheat
in business, it's okay to spread lies consistently,
it's okay to incite a riot to try to overturn
results of a legitimate vote. The number of
people who are okay with the vast number of
transgressions that this man has committed makes me
sick to think of--they're telling our young people
"It's fine to be an awful person--and if you
can be an extremely awful person, someday you may
grow up to be president."
I'm also
extremely concerned about the power we've given to
money and to the people who have it. Our
government is now being run by a group of people who
have virtually no history of public service--which
is what a government should exist for--but rather a
history of self-service, of acquiring wealth for the
sake of wealth and for the sake of self. These
people don't care at all about the people they're
supposed to be serving. Instead, their entire
agenda seems to revolve around what they can do to
make sure that they're able to acquire more wealth
and pay fewer taxes and lower wages, and provide
fewer benefits for their workers, the people who do
the work necessary for them to become rich.
What they're doing to our country is appalling, and
it's clear to see, but many people are choosing to
ignore the evidence in front of them in order to
claim that they did a wonderful thing by electing
this person. Many of the safeguards that took
years to put into place, safeguards that made it
illegal to discriminate against and to harm other
people, are being systematically stripped away,
leaving vast numbers of people without work, and
without safeguards that protect them from
others. Little by little over the years, we've
developed a set of laws that have been designed to
protect members of minorities from being harmed or
abused by members of the majority, and all those
years of development now mean little to nothing.
I could go on. I don't know what purpose it
would serve, though, to list transgression after
transgression. Rather, right now I need to
grieve. The country that I grew up in, the
country that I served by spending four years in the
military, seems to be gone. I need to grieve
the loss of kindness and compassion and caring
amongst a huge portion of our population. I
need to grieve the fact that so many of my
"fellow Americans" were willing to vote
for someone who promised to harm other people if
elected, and who were willing to vote for him
despite mountains of evidence that he can't be
trusted and that he's in everything he does only for
himself.
America seems
to be a caricature of itself now. Mass
firings, re-opening an unconstitutional prison at
Guantanamo Bay, despicable treatment of foreign
leaders (especially Zelensky), rejection of western
European allies and acceptance of Putin, unelected
government officials allowed access to classified
information without any vetting at all--this is no
longer the "land of the free and the home of
the brave." Rather, we've become a
laughingstock around the whole world, and we've
reached a sad and pathetic state, a depth that I
never thought we would sink to as a nation.
So I'm grieving, and I don't know how long it will
last, especially when I see every day new reminders
of just how awful things are. I'm grieving and
I'm dreading the future--because things will get
worse for almost everyone. The person who was
elected promised that things will get worse, though
he worded it "things will get
better." And too many people took him at
his word, believing the word "better" even
though there wasn't a shred of evidence that he
cares even slightly about making anything better for
anyone other than himself.
I focus on my own world. I try to be a good
teacher and to provide my students with a little bit
of stability in my classroom, where we can focus on
kindness and compassion and humanity, where everyone
can feel safe being just who they are. I focus
on working on the website in the hopes that it may
be helpful for somebody, somewhere. I try to
deal with the overwhelming feeling of helplessness
to do anything about the bigger picture by doing
what I can in my own little picture, in my own
corner of the world. It's what keeps me sane
for now, and what gives me a feeling of hope, a
feeling that one day this, too, may pass, no matter
how difficult or troubling or evil it may be.
Cemeteries are full of
unfulfilled dreams. . . countless
echoes of "could
have" and "should have". . . countless
books unwritten. . .
countless songs
unsung. . . I want
to live my life in such a way that when my body
is laid
to rest, it will be a well needed rest from a life well lived,
a
song well sung,
a book well written, opportunities
well explored, and a love well
expressed.
Steve Maraboli
Youth
Samuel Ullman
Youth
is not a time of life; it is a state of mind;
it is not a matter
of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of
the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions;
it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.
Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage
over
timidity of the appetite, for adventure over the love of ease.
This often exists in a man of sixty more than a body of twenty. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years.
We grow old by deserting our ideals.
Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up
enthusiasm
wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the
heart and turns the spirit back to dust.
Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human
being's
heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing child-like appetite of
what's next, and the joy of the game of living. In the center
of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station; so long
as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and
power from men and from the Infinite, so long are you young.
When the aerials are down, and your spirit is
covered with
snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown
old, even at twenty, but as long as your aerials are up, to catch the
waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at eighty.
Do not go looking for problems to feed your
soul. Just let
life be your
teacher. It will
nourish you with its inevitable difficulties. How
will you
know whether you are letting life teach you and
nourish you? If your
physical senses become more
sensitive
to the beauty you see, the words
of love you
hear, and the life
you feel touching your body and soul,
then
you know you
have discovered the great value of
misfortune.
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).
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