Living Life Fully’s Daily Pick-Me-Up

I just read an interesting line in a book that made me stop and think for quite a while.  A man writes about a question that he asks in seminars that he delivers:  “How many of you want to leave the world a better place for you having lived here?”  After almost everyone raises their hands, he asks them another question.

“What’s your plan?”

Wow–there’s the question of a lifetime.  If I want to leave the world a better place, in no matter what level of influence I may have, then don’t I really need a plan?  I think I do.  Do I have a plan?  I think I don’t.

So my goal right now is simply to get others to think of where they are on this issue, just as I’m thinking about where I am.  Do I have a plan?  What kind of plan might I make?  Which of my gifts and abilities need to be reflected in that plan?  I know in my heart that as I think of this, I’m going to discover some ideas and possibilities that I never have thought of before.  And when I do, I’ll make them a part of my plan!

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I’ve often heard the question:  If you were to die today, what kind of legacy would you leave behind?

I prefer to ask myself another question, though:  Because I know that I’m going to die someday, what am I going to contribute to my legacy today?

There are many things that we can contribute to life today.  Encouraging, teaching, helping, giving, sharing, loving, smiling, being patient. . . . none of these are all that difficult to do, and all of them can leave a positive mark on the lives of other people with whom we share this planet.

Our legacy doesn’t necessarily have to have anything to do with money or major contributions to charities.  Perhaps our legacies won’t have anything to do with money at all.  Perhaps I’ll be remembered as a person who helped others to push ahead in life simply through encouragement and teaching.  Maybe people will remember me as someone who gave of his time and energy to help others reach their goals and make their lives more fulfilling.

And perhaps I won’t be remembered at all.  But that’s okay, too–some of the most important legacies of all never shall be recognized as the valuable contributions to our world that they are.  This is often the case with people who have devoted themselves to being loving, compassionate parents, or people who have worked their whole lives long behind the scenes, never getting or taking credit for what they do.

But the bottom line is this:  In order to make my legacy what I’d like it to be, I must work at it, help it to grow, and continue to contribute to it.  So what can I do today to add to my legacy?  One day I will surely die, and what will I leave behind as my contribution to this world and the animals, people, and plants that live in it?

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I believe that it’s true that we have to decide over and over just what we stand for in life.  I believe we have to decide constantly because what we think, what we believe, and what we feel changes as we grow older and learn more about life and more about ourselves.  It seems to me as I meet and get to know more older people, I learn how important it is to trust ourselves, to trust our hearts, and to trust our intuition.  And these parts of ourselves can help us to learn just what we stand for in life.

Do we stand for honesty?  Integrity?  Fairness?  Kindness?  All of the above?  None of the above?  We all have certain areas that affect us more strongly than others, certain topics that make us feel more strongly, that arouse our passions, much more than other areas do.  When we learn to recognize what they are and to trust our feelings about them, then we can start to learn what we stand for in life.

It’s hard to conceive of someone standing for the same things at 80 as he or she stood for at 20.  I know that in my life, my thoughts and ideas and passions have changed considerably over the last few decades.  There are certain things that I considered to be extremely important years ago that no longer feel so urgent to me, and other things that are much more pressing.  For example, the tendency to encourage other people was very weak in me when I was younger because I didn’t think that anyone would be affected by my encouragement back then.  Now, though, I realize that it’s important to encourage others because I have no idea at all what will affect them and what won’t.  And there’s a good chance, I’ve learned, that my encouragement will be not only heard, but helpful.

Many people prefer not to stand for anything, choosing instead to allow life to go on without thinking about their own contribution to it all.  And because they never really consider the contributions that they’re making–or could be making–they often end up not contributing at all.  Taking, probably, but contributing, no.

I hope that when the end of my life here on this planet rolls around, I can look back and say that I really stood for something, that I tried to teach others about something very important.  And it won’t matter if what I stood for at 20 was the same as what I stood for in my 60’s–as long as I’ve examined my heart and my conscience and trusted what they had to tell me about where I should stand and what I should do.

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I was just thinking about how much we ask ourselves and each other “What’s next?”  It’s a short, simple question that we hear quite a lot, even if it’s not always in those exact words.  We spend a lot of time and effort and energy looking towards that next thing, very often neglecting what’s going on now as we keep our focus on possible futures.  But any possible future that we consider is simply that–possible.  No more, no less.  But what’s here and now is definitely real, definitely a part of our lives, and it’s extremely important that we make the most of our present moments in order to build a string of positive moments that one day we’ll look back on as a positive life.

So I want to keep asking myself another question instead of “What’s next?”  I want to ask myself “What’s now?”  I want to keep focused on the present moment so that I don’t lose any opportunities that are right here and now, so that I don’t neglect any chances that I have to contribute to life and living.  I want to ask myself “What’s now?” so that I can remind myself that in my life right now are many beautiful and positive things, many of them just waiting for me to notice them and become fully aware of them.

Many people spend their lives constantly waiting for whatever’s coming next.  It’s easy for us to anticipate some coming thing, some better job or some great opportunity, or some spectacular event that’s going to add something great to our lives.  But what’s it going to add to?  It’s going to add to what we have right here, right now, and that in itself is pretty spectacular, too.

The only time that any of us have to grow or change or feel or learn anything is in the present moment.  But we’re continually missing our present moments, almost willfully, by not paying attention.

Jon Kabat-Zinn

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We’ve all heard things about ourselves that we never were meant to hear–someone else is talking about us, and we hear it when we’re not supposed to.  We’ve all left rooms only to hear someone who thinks we’re out of earshot make a comment about us.  We’ve seen movies in which this happens and a character is hurt or mortified or angered, and the rest of the movie deals with the fallout from the careless words that are overheard.

When I think about this sort of thing, though, I start to think:  What would I like to hear if someone were talking about me and didn’t know I could hear them?  I can think of a lot of words that would be pleasant to hear, but also words that would reaffirm that what I try to do with and in my life is serving some positive purpose.  Words that would let me know that my true inner self is shining through, that people truly can see what I’m trying to be–and that I’ve been somewhat successful in my attempts.

Some of the words might be:
“He’s a really honest person.”
“I like the way he treats me with respect.”
“He puts a lot of effort into everything he does.”
“He’s the kind of person I’d like to have in my corner if I’m having problems.”
“He’s a very generous person.”
“I’d trust him with anything.”
“I’m glad I know him.”

These are just a few examples of words that would show that I’m having a positive effect somewhere, somehow in this world.  What kinds of words would you like to hear if you overheard someone talking about you?

And more importantly, what kinds of things would you have to do–what kind of person would you have to be–in order to cause anyone to say those things about you?  What can you do today?  Right now?

That’s the main reason I think about things like this, for I know that if I want to cause people to say certain things about me, then my behavior has to cause them to say those things.  People won’t say anything about me behind my back that they don’t honestly feel to be true, and I hope that my behavior will cause them to speak well of me, as a person who cares deeply about other people, and who always gives his best to anything that he does.

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I’m in the process of reading a book called If It’s Going to Be It’s up to Me by Robert Schuller.  He starts his introduction out in a very interesting way, with over a page of questions.  And they’re good questions that got me thinking about some very important things.  Questions like, “Where are you headed?” and “What are your hopes and what are your hurts?” and “Your emotions–are they your friends?  Or foes?”  As I read through the list, I could feel my mind starting to work on some of the questions almost immediately, and I recognized some good topics that it would do me well to focus on for a bit.

When I think of the best teachers I’ve had, I realize that the best ones for me were the ones that asked the best questions.  I realize that the important changes in my life have come when I’ve asked myself questions such as, “Do I really want to be doing this for a very long time?”  Whenever we ask a question, there’s an answer implied in it somewhere, and as long as we’re honest in our question-asking–and we don’t ask questions that already have our own desired answers as part of them–then we can make a great impact on our lives by learning to ask ourselves really, really good questions.

Rainer Maria Rilke said that we must learn to love the questions themselves.  In his Letters to a Young Poet, he writes, “Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

I want to ask myself the good questions, not the ones with judgment built into them, not the ones that point fingers or imply wrong or that are leading or misleading.  Because I know that in my life, one of my greatest strengths is pondering questions and coming up with several different answers for each question.  And I can choose among the answers to find the ones that are most likely to contribute greatly to my happiness, my peace of mind, and my joy.  It’s important for me always to find questions that I love, and then live them.

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