Living Life Fully’s Daily Pick-Me-Up

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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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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Probably the most difficult thing that I ever had to teach myself in life was the fact that I was–and am–lovable.  I grew up thinking that I was completely unlovable, that no one would ever love me, that there was somehow something wrong with me that made it impossible to love me.  And with that thought buried deeply within me, guess how I always acted around other people?  I acted as if they never could love me.  And since I acted that way and felt that way, guess how other people saw me?  As pretty unlovable, believe it or not.

But something that I’ve learned in the meantime is that I am lovable–that we all are lovable children of God, that we all have lovable qualities that make us truly unique.  Learning this was a great shock to me, for I had to include myself in the “all” category.  And if I were lovable, then guess what?  I didn’t need to have someone else be in love with me in order for me to know that I’m lovable.  It’s a pretty liberating realization to make, especially for someone like me who never considered himself to be lovable at all.

Some people have problems on the other end of the spectrum and consider themselves to be much more irresistable than they really are.  It’s really quite a similar problem, though in a different way.  But many of us have a hard time thinking that other people can actually love us, and learning–and accepting–that we are lovable is a very important part of our growth as human beings.  After all, why and how would God ever create a being that is completely unlovable?  It just doesn’t make sense.  If God made us, then what are we saying about God when we claim that we’re not good enough for people to love us?

You’re lovable, too.  Have you looked at yourself as a lovable person lately?  What do you see when you do?  How do you feel when you do?  It’s a great feeling to know that we’re lovable, and I hope that you treat yourself to that feeling as often as possible.  You may not be truly loved by the people you wish would love you, but that’s a question of just finding the right people who do love you, who do appreciate you for just who and what you are.  And it won’t be until you admit and accept that you are lovable that you’ll truly love yourself–and it won’t be until you truly love yourself that you’ll be able to love anyone else truly, without condition.  When we realize these facts, it becomes imperative that we reach a point at which we see and feel ourselves as lovable.  A lot depends on our ability to do this!

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We don’t always have to do everything ourselves–sometimes it’s best to step back and let someone else contribute.  Today, it’s Bernie Siegel:

I have always found it hard to prune a tree and relatively easy to operate on someone.  That may seem coldhearted, but when I am operating on someone I am removing a disease or correcting some defect in the person’s body.  I can remove dead limbs from trees, but any other pruning is upsetting because I don’t want to saw through something that is alive and appears healthy.

One day I was standing in our yard next to our mimosa tree with Jeff, who is a master gardener.  “Dad, you need to prune this,” Jeff said, pointing to the tree.

The branch he was pointing to was very large and covered with many beautiful blossoms.  I told him I didn’t mind that it grew at an odd angle.  I didn’t care about the shape or symmetry of the tree.  The branch was alive and bearing blossoms and I didn’t want to lose it.

Jeff listened to my impassioned plea and then said, “Dad, if you don’t prune the tree, it will die.”

Now he was speaking my language.  If we were dealing with a threat to the life of my patient, then I could understand my consultant’s advice and the need to operate.  I got out my saw and removed the limb.

What did Jeff and the mimosa tree teach me about life?  There are times when you must be willing to give up a part of yourself to save your life.  In some cases, it means literally giving up a part of your body or the loss of the use of limbs or organs.

How much you regret giving part of yourself up depends on how you define yourself.  It is easier to lose parts of your body if you understand your essence and realize you are more than the sum of your parts.  You have a spirit and soul that cannot be altered by pruning.  Yes, the envelope can be altered and the container can be crushed, but the essence remains unaltered.  Your faith and love can continue to exist no matter how badly your physical body is damaged.

This is a difficult lesson for most of us.  Take a look around and you’ll see the people who have gone on living and loving despite disfigurement, paralysis or loss of limb.  If you see their example, learn from them and realize that you are a spirit.  Then you will understand how to give up physical parts of yourself and still be capable of performing acts for the greater good.

I removed a portion of the lovely mimosa so it could go on providing us with beauty for many years to come.  I believe the tree understood this more easily than we do.  Whether you are pruned by surgery, aging or disease, accept the fact that you must give up portions of yourself, at times, in order to survive and continue growing toward the light.  Remember that losing one part may lead to the enhancement of others.  Your work of art is not finished until the day you die.

(An excerpt from his book Prescriptions for Living.)

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We had a bus break down on our way to a track meet yesterday.  We were stuck out in the middle of nowhere on the side of the Interstate with cars and trucks flying by at 75 mph.  Three coaches, a bus driver, and 26 high school athletes.  As you can imagine, time went pretty slowly there, with nothing much to do but wait for the replacement bus to come and get us.  Most of the students waited outside the bus, on the far side of the guard rail, throwing rocks down the hill next to us and checking out all the garbage that people had thrown from their cars.

A couple of them found an old piece of cardboard.  Once they had that, it was a matter of moments before they came up with a marker and started writing on it.  Within a couple of minutes, they were standing next to the guard rail with the cardboard raised high towards the cars.  Some of the drivers started honking their horns, but most of them were going far too fast even to read the relatively small letters.

In my position, I simply had to find out what was written on their sign.  If there was something offensive or vulgar on the sign and none of us coaches did anything about it, we could have had some very negative fallout–especially with the name of the school written on the bus.  So I kept my eyes on the sign, waiting for the guy who was holding it to turn around for a moment.

It wasn’t long before he did, and when I was able to read the sign I felt a surge of hope, a flow of optimism about life in general and our students in particular.  For written on the sign for all to see were the words “Honk if you love life.”

There are so many things that a small group of 15-17-year-olds could have come up with.  There are so many ways that they could have tried to push buttons and infuriate people.  But there on the side of the highway while waiting for relief from a bus that had broken down, they came up with a beautiful message to share with everyone who happened to drive by.

I think that tomorrow on my way to work I’m going to wait until I’m in an uncrowded spot where no one can misinterpret a stray noise, and honk my horn for the memory of that sign, and in honor of the kids who shared a bit of hope with us in a most unexpected way.  Perhaps you, too–somewhere, some time–could honk if you love life.

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Sometimes all that things in our lives need in order to become something new and different is for us to take a new look at them.  When we get used to them and start taking them for granted, or when we stop seeing them for the special and unique things that they are, we can lose our sense of perspective.  We can lose our appreciation for their beauty, their uniqueness, their specialness.  But they don’t really lose those things at all–we simply stop seeing them because we’re so caught up in seeing them in the ways that we think they should be.

In the movie Dead Poets Society, one of the characters does a good job of reframing something for a friend of his.  When the friend’s parents buy him the exact same desk set for his birthday that they had bought him a year earlier, he finds humor in the situation and convinces his friend that the desk set is very aerodynamic–and gets him to throw it off the roof to make him feel better.  The desk set didn’t change at all, but by reframing the set and the situation, the young man is able to make a depressing time much more bearable for his friend.

Sometimes all we need is reframing for ourselves.  When we stop seeing the specialness in a spouse or another family member, perhaps it’s time to try to see that person through someone else’s eyes.  When we get tired of our car, it can be time to start thinking of life without a car, or with the first car we ever had.  Trying to imagine how something would look through the eyes of a child can be very helpful–after all, kids still have that ability to feel the sense of wonder that can make something look much more special than it is–or even exactly as special as it is.

In our culture, we tend to think that when something has run its course, when we get tired of something, then it’s time to replace it.  I think that our lives could be much simpler and fulfilling if we stopped replacing so many things and simply learned how to look at things with new eyes, and with new appreciation for the qualities that we liked in them in the first place.

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