Living Life Fully’s Daily Pick-Me-Up

My wife and I went for a walk today around a beautiful mountain lake.  It was a great day–the weather was warm, the sky and the water were brilliant shades of blue, we had a nice breeze, the smell of the pines was almost intoxicating–everything was perfect.  The only thing that seemed out of place was the fact that we had never been on a walk at this beautiful place before, even though it’s only about fifteen minutes from where we live.  We’ve lived here for almost ten months now, and even though we had been to the lake once before, we never had taken the time to get out of the car and spend some quality time there.

Whenever something like this happens, it gets me to wondering just how many other beautiful places are nearby.  How many places are within a quick drive from where we live?  There’s so much beauty in the world, and so much of it is so close to us already, yet we so rarely take the opportunity to go out and actually see it and enjoy it.  Sometimes we don’t even make the effort to find it in the first place!

Now, my wife and I do explore–we’ve seen plenty of other beautiful places in our area.  And we both work quite a lot, with relatively few days off together, so we don’t exactly have every waking moment to explore.  But if we do want to get the most out of where we live, it’s important that we find out just what we have to take advantage of in our own back yard!  I’ve never lived anywhere that didn’t have some beautiful places within walking distance, or at least a short drive or bus ride away.  It’s so easy for us to accept what we know as the limits of our potential experiences, and when we do this, we close the door on the possibility of discovering new and beautiful places that can help us to get more out of the days that we pass on this planet.  Today we watched a bald eagle soar and we felt a cool breeze while we gazed upon a beautiful lake, and our day was exceptional because of it.  Then we stopped at a charming restaurant that overlooks the lake and had coffee and cake.  All in all, it was a beautiful experience.  And all this time, all this was just ten or fifteen minutes away.

It gets me to wondering what might be twenty or thirty minutes away in another direction.

Just what might be fifteen minutes away from you that may add significantly to your life?  I’ll bet if you were to do some exploring, you just might find something quite special. . . .

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I just read that two athletes that are hugely successful and currently ranked number one in their respective sports–Annika Sorenstam and Justine Henin–have called it quits, and will be moving on to do other things with their lives.  It’s extremely refreshing to see people in their position step back and even consider the idea that there may be more rewarding things for them to do with their lives than compete and try to hold on to their rankings.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with competing in athletics on a professional level.  It’s probably a very rewarding way to make a living.  But there’s also nothing wrong with re-examining your motives and your life in an effort to determine whether or not such competition is still fulfilling, still rewarding.  There’s a lot of money involved in the sports, but there are also many things that we can do that are more fulfilling in our hearts and spirits.

Their motives aren’t important to us because they’re their motives.  We don’t live their lives, so we don’t know what they were thinking and what kinds of needs they have.  The simple fact is that they’re sending a message to many people, especially their fans, that there may be more to life than the “success” that’s found in athletic victories and rankings and in the money that one earns in sports.  Perhaps there are things like family and friendship and fulfillment in one’s career that are more important than the incessant traveling and competing that define the lives of professional athletes on tour.

It’s refreshing to see two people decide to take a risk and change their courses in life.  I sincerely hope that they find fulfillment and joy in their new callings, and I’m grateful to them for showing us that simple monetary and athletic success aren’t necessarily the most important things in life, no matter how much people may idolize them and their performances.  I hope that they’re able to find peace and balance in their new lives, and I thank them for the moves they’ve made!

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I recently had the honor of presenting an award to one of our students.  That meant, of course, that I had to think of what to say about her in front of a crowd of people–what it was about her that impressed me the most.  It was a pretty difficult task, as there are quite a few things about her that impress me–her work ethic, the effort that she gives to everything she does, how nice she is to other people, the respect that she shows to everyone.  After a lot of thought, though, I realized that all of those things together worked towards one particular thing–she is constantly doing her best to fulfill her potential in all that she does.

Reaching to fulfill our potential isn’t all that easy sometimes.  After all, it often takes hard work, and it takes making decisions that may not involve the easy ways of doing things.  We may have to decide to try to do something very difficult or very frightening if we want to live up to our potential.  After all, I’m never going to reach my potential as a runner if I never push myself hard when I’m training.  I’m never going to reach my potential as a teacher if I don’t take risks in the classroom, and if I don’t work hard to keep up on current literature and research, and if I don’t try hard to get to know my students and determine their needs.  I could just come to class every day and present the same old stuff in the same old ways, but then how will I ever come close to reaching my potential?

Perhaps we never reach our potential.  Perhaps as we improve, our potential improves, too.  But whether we reach it or not isn’t important; the important thing is whether we attempt to reach it, whether we give all that we have to try to do things better than we ever have before, whether we take the risks to learn more and become more.  I have a great role model in my life now, someone who gives everything she has to reach her potential, and I’m very greatful that I was assigned the honor of presenting her award.  After all, if I hadn’t had the chance to do so I might never have started thinking about reaching my own potential in all that I do.

With realization of one’s own potential and self-confidence
in one’s ability, one can build a better world.

The Dalai Lama

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I’ve been reading a book with a lot of interviews of older people who show a lot of wisdom.  One of the men interviewed in the book said that he’s brought to tears every time he sees a sunset or a rainbow because he never knows when he might see his last one.  It’s a beautiful perspective, for it reminds us that there are many, many beautiful things on this planet all the time.  The only question we have to ask ourselves is whether we notice them and appreciate them for all they’re worth.

There are some wonderful trees and bushes right outside our apartment.  I do my best to notice their beauty whenever I pass them, but I have to admit that I sometimes walk right by without noticing them.  We live very near a beautiful lake, and sometimes I drive by it without seeing what kinds of unique light might be hitting it today.  We have beautiful pictures on our walls that I hardly notice any more–I can sit in front of them for a long time without even seeing them any more.  Sometimes I don’t even notice just how clear and brilliant my wife’s eyes are because I see her so often that they don’t make the same impression on me that they used to.

Even as I write these words, I can look about myself (and I’m doing so) to see many beautiful things–the pictures, the plants, the cacti, the flowers, the tablecloth, the tissue box, the clouds and the blue sky.  But I have to make a conscious effort at times like these to see them, to notice them, to be truly aware of their beauty.  I can’t see the breeze, but it feels beautiful as it comes through the window.

Awareness is a choice, and sometimes it takes effort.  But it’s never disappointing if we truly put some effort into it.  The rewards for our effort already surround us all the time, but they’re awards that we miss constantly until we make the decision to open our eyes and our hearts to the beauty that’s always everywhere.

A person is alive only to the degree that he or she is aware.  To make the most of life we must constantly strive to be aware of the importance of being aware.  Be aware of your senses and use them:  So often we are distracted and unconscious of the riches our senses can pour into our lives.  We eat food without tasting it, listen to music without hearing it, smell without experiencing the pungency of odors and the delicacy of perfumes, touch without feeling the grain or texture, and see without appreciating the beauty around us.

Wilferd A. Peterson

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I just went to a memorial service for a student from our school who passed away last week.  He was an 18-year-old senior who seemed to have learned an awful lot about life in his short time on this planet.  Cancer took him away, but he left a legacy of cheerfulness, encouragement, and love among all of the people who knew him.  Speaker after speaker remembered the way that he cared, the way that he loved, and the way that he was able to have a tremendous amount of fun with anything he did.  It really is rare to know of someone so young who truly was living his life fully, especially since doing so means treating our fellow human beings with dignity, love, and respect.  It usually takes us a bit longer than 18 years to learn such lessons in our lives.

It got me to thinking once more how I’ll be remembered.  Will people have pleasant thoughts of me and remember me in positive ways?  Or will they be indifferent?  I certainly hope that they won’t be glad, though when you’re teaching high school it’s probably inevitable that someone, somewhere holds something against you. . . .  I know, though, that if I want a memorial service that resembles this student’s, then I have to make decisions and take actions today that will make positive impacts on other people’s lives.  They don’t have to be major things, just simple things such as encouraging, complimenting, and loving.

But even more, it means living by example.  If I tell people they should have fun in life, do I have fun?  If I tell people that smiling and laughing are important, do I smile and laugh?  Do I make the time for things like hikes in the woods and runs through the desert?  Do I enjoy myself and partake regularly in fun things that I love to do?

If I don’t do these things, then there’s really very little chance that I’ll be remembered as someone who loved life.  I might be remembered as someone who talked about loving life, but did I really live it as if I loved it?

This is a question that I need to start asking myself all the time.  And then I need to take action depending on what my response is.  A life half-lived, after all, is really no life at all, is it?

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My step-daughter was just in a serious accident that totaled her car–a semi came into her lane and pushed her car off the road after a few spins, and she ended up in a ditch in the median of the Interstate.  Miraculously, she was unharmed except for some bumps and bruises and soreness.  I started thinking of just how much we take for granted so many of the things that have been improved so much over the years, such as our cars, and how much we take for granted the people who design them to make them safer than they used to be.

I feel pretty confident when I get in my car that I’m quite safe, even if I happen to get into a collision.  I don’t fool myself into thinking that I’m immortal or that I can’t get hurt, but I do know that the people in the automobile industry have worked very hard to make their cars as safe as they can–after all, it’s good business for them to do so.  But that fact aside, it’s also very nice to know that there are people out there who spend their time thinking about my safety.  When I get on a plane, there are many safety devices that may end up saving my life.  When I’m in a building there are sprinkler systems in case of fire, as well as emergency exits.

The fact is that the world is a much safer place than it used to be.  Yes, there are still accidents and fatalities and such, but they happen less frequently than they used to, while accidents without fatalities or serious injuries make up a higher percentage of all accidents than they used to.  Personally, I’m very thankful for the safer world, though I usually take it for granted.

So here’s a quick thanks to those people who make this world safer for all of us–I may be just one person, but I am grateful for your efforts.  And if more of us keep their efforts in mind, then all of us–those who make the world safer and those who are safer for their efforts–will be richer for the gratitude that will result from our awareness.

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There are many things in life that contribute to the greater good that don’t cost us a single cent to buy, and that take almost no effort at all to share with others.  These things are free and easy, yet somehow we neglect them, and we utilize them much, much less than our potential would suggest we could or should.  What are these things that are free and easy?

Encouragement.  It’s so easy to share an encouraging word with someone, and the encouragement could go a long way to giving someone else the added energy, incentive, and motivation to continue with something that’s important in his or her life.  Why don’t we encourage more?  I’m not sure, but it’s a shame that we don’t.

Compliments.  These don’t cost us anything at all, either, but some people dish them out so conservatively that you’d think they cost a zillion dollars each.  I don’t have any idea why we don’t hear compliments all day, every day, but I’m sure it has something to do with the fact that we simply don’t think of how important they are for other people to hear.

Love.  Love is great–the more you give out, the more you have.  You never can lose it, and it won’t diminish by being shared.  Unconditional love is the best, of course, for when we share unconditional love it’s never diminished by our disappointment in the way it’s returned to us–or not returned at all.

Peace.  How do we share peace?  By being peaceful.  By not losing our cool when someone does something we don’t like, or when we lose something important to us.  By not spreading gossip or rumors when the chance arises.  By simply being.  Others pick up on our peace just as a radio picks up radio signals and converts them into sound, and our peaceful presence can contribute immeasurable calmness into stressful situations in which we find ourselves.

Hope.  Hope for the present, hope for the future.  Hope for the fulfillment of potential, hope for positive outcomes.  Hope for me, and hope for you.  Hope for better things and situations.  We share hope by being hopeful, and in sharing it we give a very important part of ourselves, all for free, and all very easily.

Free and easy–there are many more things that fall into this category.  And do you know what they are?  And once you think of them, can you turn them into a part of your life by sharing them with others, at absolutely no cost to yourself?

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In all of the talk about being completely present in the moment of “right now,” I sometimes think that we lose a bit of perspective concerning the future.  No, it’s not healthy or productive to focus entirely on the future, but it can be very important to make informed decisions about the present moment by thinking about what’s coming up in the future.

This principle was demonstrated very clearly this past weekend when I attended the state track meet with our high school team.  Having worked with the team for several months, I was very aware of who had been working hard for those months and who had been working less hard.  At the meet, it was very clear who had been doing what–and there were some very sad young people who had had talent enough to make it to state, but who had made decision after decision during the season not to try to improve their abilities through hard work.  In their series of present-moment decisions, they had decided to talk to friends, to spend time texting, even to skip practice to do other things, while others were making the decisions to work hard in order to try to improve.

In the right now, it can be tempting to put something off in order to “make the most of this moment.”  Sometimes, though, making the most of this particular moment can involve preparing for future moments–and that could mean that we decide now to work hard, or even to do something that we find unpleasant, simply to avoid making future moments completely miserable.  This isn’t at all a sacrifice of the present moment, but a productive use of it with an eye towards the future.

Living in the moment doesn’t always mean having the most fun possible or doing only things that we like to do.  It means being aware of our lives and our surroundings–and even our future–and doing what it takes to make sure that all these things work together well.

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I’m sitting in the restaurant area of a hotel right now, listening to a television program and its accompanying commercials.  It’s a very frustrating experience–it’s some sort of morning news program on which the people are speaking very loudly at each other–not to each other–and seemingly looking for conflict no matter what they say.  The commercials are borderline fraudulent:  “For only $9.99.  But wait!  If you order now we’ll double your order!”  I’ve listened to people calling all Democrats stupid, and others insult all Republicans for their lack of ethics.

Hearing all this makes me even more glad that we don’t have television in our home.  We have a television set, but it’s hooked up to a DVD player so that we can choose what we want to watch, when we want to watch it.  I have to wonder how people feel after watching an entire hour of this type of conflict, this type of hype, these types of meanness–especially if watching such programs is a regular part of their days.  Whenever I’m reminded of the types of rudeness and the lack of respect that people show each other in our media, it surprises me less that I see such behavior out on the street every day.  After all, what goes in must come out, right?

In many ways, we’re working our way more and more towards becoming a culture of conflict.  Our media are focusing on conflict more and more as it becomes more and more profitable for them.  The key words in programmers’ vocabularies seem to be conflict and competition–but when was the last time we saw significant programming devoted to something such as cooperation?  Love?  Peace of mind?  Hope?

If we start reading a book and we don’t like it, we stop reading it, don’t we?  But if we start watching a television program and we’re not enjoying it, we simply change the channel.  And many times we change it until we find the least objectionable program for us–in other words, we choose the lesser of many evils, while not thinking at all about what effects it may be having on us.  Why not just turn the thing off?

There’s obviously nothing inherently wrong with TV.  But not all programming is created equal.  If we want to feel peace in our minds and hearts, then we can’t focus two of our five senses on negativity.  Television, as with anything else, can have its place.  But as I finish up here, listening to these people interrupt each other, speak condescendingly to each other, insult each other, and dish up health doses of self-aggrandizement, then I realize that the decision that my wife and I made well over a year ago to turn off our TV for good to outside programmers is definitely a very healthy decision.  We can program for ourselves with the great selection of DVD’s out there, and that’s definitely the best for us.

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Sometimes death comes up and smacks you right between the eyes.  It happened to me today, reminding me of some very important truths in life.  Truths that have to do with the fact that this life will one day end, for all of us, and with the idea that if we’re going to be satisfied and content with what we’ve done with our lives once death comes, it’s important that we spend our right nows doing things that will make us satisfied, or just being people with whom we’ll be satisfied on that day when death comes calling for us.

If I want to be content with all that I’ve done on the day I die, then I need to make positive choices today about what I’m doing today and tomorrow.  Is what I’m doing contributing in positive ways to the lives of others?  Will this next action of mine contribute to the peace and hope of the world, or the anger and frustration?

If I want to have a sense of peace on my deathbed (assuming I die in bed!), then I need to be sure that I do things that will bring me–and others–peace.  Starting or continuing arguments will never do that, nor will gossiping or spreading rumors.  Encouraging others and giving them praise, on the other hand, will.

If I want to have no regrets when I’m ready to pass on, then I need to take risks and do things that I dream of doing.  I can’t live safely inside of an artificial shell that is supposed to protect me–that’s the kind of protection that harms me more than it helps me.  Risk is a major ingredient of a fulfilling life, and the lack of risk gives us a life with no seasoning at all–just blandness and boring tastes.

I was reminded today that death will come.  If I keep that fact in mind, I can live my life so that it won’t really matter when it does–I’ll be ready to move on and willing to let go of a life that I’ve lived fully, rather than kicking and scratching to hold on to it in order to get again the chances to do so many of the things that I didn’t do when I had the chances to do them in the first place.  Which way would you prefer to go?

Death twitches my ear.
“Live,” he says, “I am coming.”

Virgil

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