A New Approach? What Does That Mean?

"Living life fully" is a concept that I believe has changed considerably in recent years.  While I still believe that it's very important for us all to do our best to make our lives as positive as possible, and for us to give to the world as much as we can while still taking very good care of ourselves, I'm not sure any more that most people are in situations in which this sort of thing is easy, if it's even possible for them.  The world seems to be in dire straits, and people are treating each other not just carelessly, but even cruelly.  There are many people in the world who are having a hard time just surviving, who would have a terribly difficult time thinking of thriving.

I can't imagine what life must be like for a young person of twelve years in Gaza right now.  For any person in Gaza.  Families have to be having a hard time just finding food to eat, and any words that would tell that young person to make the most of their lives and look on the bright side of things must ring very hollow.  The same goes for the 30-year-old in the Ukraine, the thousands of people being detained illegally in the United States, the young girl somewhere who has just been "given" to an older man for marriage, the young person who just graduated college to find that there are no jobs available in their field.

I do think that in most cases, we actually do determine our own happiness or unhappiness.  We've all read material that shows us that a man in a concentration camp can make a difference for fellow inmates and come out of the experience a stronger person; that a young child can lose a leg in a bombing and transform that loss into something that helps them to appreciate life and help others; that a family member can die and make us even more appreciative of what that person left behind.

But mostly, when we talk about living life fully, we're coming from a position of privilege and good fortune and even good luck--luck that we were born in a certain country at a certain time that allows us the luxury of actually pursuing higher needs because our more basic needs--food, clothing, shelter, absence of war, safe water, work, money--are taken care of.  Not everyone enjoys the fulfillment of these basic needs, and how does someone who doesn't enjoy them react to being told "Being happy is all in your own mind, of your own doing"?

So what does all this mean?  Does it mean that all the work that I've put into the website over the past 27 years has been for naught?  I don't believe so--I think there's much there that's helpful and useful for anyone and everyone.  But I also think that it's time for some sort of new direction, a direction that can be more universally useful, a voice that can speak to anyone, anywhere, with caring and compassion and relevance.  I'm not sure exactly what that means, of course, but I believe that it's time to find out.  Or at least to start experimenting until I do find out.

So if you see any changes on the site in the near future, please know that those changes are being made with the current world in mind, with the idea that life in this world of ours has become so difficult and so complex that we need to explore ideas such as that of living life fully in new ways, ways that can be helpful to more people who have become marginalized and disenfranchised.  I think that what I've been doing for the last 27 years--what I've been giving to the world in the form of a website--has been fine in and of itself, but I also think that we've seen some incredible shifts in life and living over the last couple of decades, and new voices and new approaches are needed.

Any suggestions would be welcome.  Any thoughts, as well.  We have a new world to live in, and the world of the future looks to be even more complex and more difficult for more people, so it's time for a different approach.  Let's see what we can do. . . .

A Very Long Silence, Take 2

This is very difficult to write.  I'm hoping that with time, it will become easier, but who knows?  The fact is that I've been completely silent here for over half a year.  And there are several reasons for that.  I've tried writing something to start over, but I haven't liked anything that I've written so far.  It's been too easy to get too philosophical, too negative, too whatever.  I don't want to write negative stuff here--it wouldn't serve the purpose for which this blog was started in the first place.

But the fact is that my silence has been the result of incredible negativity in our country.  My silence has been the result of the mourning and the grief that I'm still going through--the country that I used to know is gone, and it's being replaced more and more, day after day, with an authoritarian regime, the likes of which none of us ever thought we'd see in this land.  But here it is.

The four years that I served in the Army seem like a waste of time now.  I served to help--in a very small way, of course--to preserve the freedoms and the democracy that has made this country great in the past.  But I find now that the country has been taken over by the very wealthy, and they're doing everything they can to redirect as much money as possible away from the people who don't have much of it and into their own pockets.  They're kidnapping people off the streets without any due process.  They're passing laws and making rules without any checks or balances, turning this country into little more than a corrupt banana republic, the likes of which we used to read about with gratitude that our country wasn't like that.

Imagine that.

The grief is such that it's caused my wife and me to look to leaving the country to move to a place that isn't a totalitarian nightmare.  We want to give our children a place to go to when and if things here fall apart so far that life becomes dangerous for anyone who opposes the government.  We want to live in a country where people aren't kidnapped on the street by thugs in masks and no uniforms, and then sent to what are basically concentration camps thousands of miles from where they were abducted, even to countries they've never lived in, with absolutely no due process.

The harm that's being done right now is difficult to witness, especially when I know that I personally can do nothing about it.  As a teacher, I'm horrified at the models of "power" that our young people are witnessing and learning from.

But more than anything else, I'm at a loss as to how I'm going to continue sharing thoughts and ideas about living life fully when so many people are having their freedom taken from them, not to mention their ability to simply live their lives in peace, much less to live them fully.

I'll get there.  Many people are going through much worse these days--think of Gaza for just a moment--and what I'm going through doesn't come near what they're dealing with.  But that doesn't make my loss or my grief any less legitimate.  It's going to take me time to internalize it and deal with it effectively, and to get to a point at which I feel I'm living my own life fully once more.  And I will get to a point at which I can write again, hopefully even slightly effectively.

I never expected anything like this, but life does, indeed, throw curveballs sometimes.  I know that my main task now is to go with the flow rather than fighting it, and finding my own ways to resist the horrible things that are going on in so many places, on so many different levels.  I'm not going to play the victim, but I do need time to grieve the loss that is very real in many of our lives right now.