Maintaining Principles (In Today's World)

It's important that people should know what you stand for.
It's equally important that they know what you won't stand for.
-Mary H. Waldrip


In the world of today, it's pretty easy to get the idea that living by principle is a concept of the past, something that some people used to do, but not so relevant or important today.  After all, we see all over the place the people who have no principles at all to live by, and they're being rewarded over and over again, especially financially.  Lots of people are making lots of money without having to display even the slightest indication of principled living--or who demonstrate principles such as greed, materialism, and even hatred and anger as ways of life, while people who do stick to principles such as honesty and fairness and equality are mocked and even punished for decisions they make to stick to their principles.

It's a sad situation, and one that most certainly is going to leave deep footprints in the future of this world, especially in the United States, where more and more people are less and less interested in holding people accountable for wrongdoing, abuse, violence, bigotry, and many other things that used to be unacceptable to anyone for whom principles were an important part of their lives.

Somebody just attacked a public figure who happens to be Muslim, and a police lieutenant went online and posted a rather despicable "joke" about the incident.  He was immediately placed on leave, and retired the following morning.  He obviously didn't follow principles that have consistently been demanded of persons in law enforcement, who have to deal with people of all backgrounds on a regular basis, and he did pay a rather heavy price for it.  In that sense, we can see that principles are still present in many forms and situations, and that's a good thing.

But go to the Facebook page of the television news program that reported on his retirement and read the comments.  Many of them are horribly negative, but the truth is that the vast majority of the people who commented said basically, "he should be able to say whatever he wants about anything or anybody he wants."  In the comments, you can see a complete lack of principled thinking, of the idea that people should be living up to certain standards, especially if they're public servants.  And most of the people think it's okay for him to do so because they dislike--or even hate--the person who had been attacked.  Their idea of "principles" seems to apply only to people they like and people they agree with.  But if you're different than I am, or if I don't like you, then my principles don't matter.

And this is a direction we've been taking in this country for quite a while now.  We've become a society in which people like to judge each other harshly and relentlessly, and such judgment allows us to make "exceptions" to our principles--we don't have to stick to them if the other person "deserves" something.  That person next door supports green people, so my principle of treating other people with dignity and respect doesn't apply to that person.  The man in the house across the street supports teaching something to my kids in school that I disagree with, so I'm not required to be honest to him because he doesn't deserve my honesty.

It's really quite sad and sick.  And the damage that this new ability to modify our own principles to fit different situations does is very real--we can hurt people, we can destroy communities, we can sabotage our own efforts to live well because we're not allowing ourselves to live honestly and live authentically.

I need to stick to my principles if I'm going to be able to live my life fully and happily.  If I believe in the principle that all people deserve my respect, then I really must respect the rights that other people have to their own beliefs.  No, I don't have to agree with them, and no, I don't have to support them, but I do need to stick to my principles.

And if I do want to follow those principles, I can't call them names, mock them, or treat them badly.  I can despise them and all that they stand for, especially when they're racist or misogynistic or cruel, but a principle of decency and respect is just that--a principle that I don't want to violate lest I make myself into a person who is much less than I want to be.  No, I don't need to socialize with them, and no, I don't need to tell them that their views are justified in any way, and no, I don't even need to feel that their beliefs are necessarily valid.  But I do need to respect their right to have those beliefs and to follow them.

But what if the acting out of those beliefs causes harm to others?  Then, of course, our principles of treating others with dignity and respect overrule any beliefs that cause people to harm others.  My principles cannot allow for the harm of anyone simply because I don't agree with them, but they also cannot allow for me to be wishy-washy and step back and do nothing when innocent people are being harmed.  If I were living in Minneapolis right now, for example, my principles would compel me to be out on the street, protesting, or working for justice in some other way.  Sitting quietly and saying nothing would simply contradict my principles that reflect my belief in social justice.

In short, we can look at it this way:

If one of my most important principles is for others to be treated fairly, then I must treat people fairly.
If one of my most important principles is that all people are created equal, then I must treat all people equally.
If I expect honesty from other people, then I must be honest myself.
If I expect my children not to swear, then I need to be careful of my own language.
If I expect other people to be loyal to me, then I must practice loyalty.

In short, if there's a disconnect between what we claim to be our principles that we hope will guide us in living our lives in certain ways and the ways that we actually live our lives, then we're most certainly NOT living life fully, and that's probably the case because of our own tendency to violate the principles that we claim to be important to us.

What are your most important principles?  Do you live by them all the time?  When you can answer "yes" to the second question, you'll be well on your way to living a full and fulfilling life.

A Run in the Cold--A Paragraph a Day

I went for a run after work today, even though the temperature was only about 37 degrees.  That was fine with me, though--with long sleeves and running pants and a nice warm hat, I practically didn't notice the temperature at all.  That's the way it usually is with a run after work on days like this--I don't feel like going outside because it's cold and my home is nice and warm and cozy, but I force myself to do so anyway.  And once I get out there, I enjoy it a lot.  Some of the best runs of my life have come on days when I would have preferred not to run at all due to weather conditions.  But I've run anyway, and it's been great.  It often makes me wonder what else in my life I might have been avoiding, and that I might have missed because it seemed like it might be unpleasant.  It's so easy for us to slip into comfort mode, to look around ourselves and say, "This is nice right here and right now--there's no need to do anything else."  The thing is, though, that running is the activity that most contributes to my good health, and if I don't do it, I gain weight and I lose fitness.  I'm not a fanatic about fitness, but I do want to stay healthy, and running is an important part of that.  What else could I be enjoying in life because I think it might be a bit unpleasant?  What am I avoiding that I should be searching out and enjoying?  I'm definitely not always the best judge of what's best for me, and it may be worth my while to start paying attention to things that I'm avoiding for some reason.  Who knows?  There's a chance that what I'm avoiding could be just what I need!  The run in the cold today was very enjoyable, even though it seemed that it wouldn't be.  What else is tricking me?

Sometimes Life Just. . . . --A Paragraph a Day

My wife and I were able to attend a wonderful concert last night in Canada, by an artist I had never even heard of until Tuesday, when I was listening to some music by a Quebecois group on YouTube.  Another artist came up as a suggestion, and I listened to a couple of her songs--they were wonderful.  So I made up my mind to look up some more of her music when I could, and went on doing other things.  Then we went to Magog, where we try to spend a weekend or two every year that we're near enough to do so, and as we were walking downtown we passed a concert venue.  I looked at the schedule and saw a picture of Ingrid St. Pierre, the singer I had heard.  I said to my wife, "Wow, it's too bad we're going to miss her," and then I looked at the date--she was playing there the following night, our second night in town.  Even though my French is quite poor and my wife speaks none, we decided to go see her--after all, what are the odds of "discovering" a singer on Tuesday and getting a chance to see her on Saturday?  We went, and we were treated to almost 90 minutes of wonderful music--she's a great pianist and singer, and her lyrics are not your standard pop fare--she sings with depth and with feeling, and it was easily one of the best concerts I've ever seen.  And since the show last night, I have to wonder at life--how did it allow me to hear her music for the very first time on Tuesday, when I was going to be staying in a bed and breakfast less than two blocks away from her next concert, in a completely different country, just a few days later?  Life fascinates me when it does things like that, but I know that I also have to give to it--I have to explore new music, I have to put myself in situations in which things like this can happen, and I have to be willing to spend the money to see a show in a language I understand poorly if I'm to get the benefit of life pushing me in this particular direction.

And if you ever get the chance to see Ingrid St. Pierre (if you're in Quebec), don't worry about any language barriers--she's a wonderful performer!

Karma? I Don't Want to Think about It--A Paragraph a Day

I believe in Karma to a certain extent--I'm not sure that I believe in it as many people define it, but I do believe that there is reward for people who consistently do good and act kind and give instead of take all the time.  I just don't want to think about it.  If I think about Karma, it seems to me, then I'm going to be committing acts of goodness only in order to be rewarded for them.  I'm going to help other people just in the hopes of the universe passing something good to me in return for my actions.  But I don't want to be thinking about my rewards when I perform an action that I think is good.  Rather, I want to commit such an act because I know that I'm doing something for someone who needs it.  I want to give knowing that I'm fulfilling a need, not because I'm hoping for some sort of return on my investment.  I don't want to be wondering constantly where my reward is--I simply want to do good things for other people because they're the right things to do.  I want to give because it's right to give; I want to share because I truly want to help someone else who needs for someone to share with them.  Yes, I love the concept of Karma, but I hope never to think of it as motivation for being kind or helpful or loving.  If it affects me, then fine, but if it doesn't, I'll still be okay because I know that when I saw a need, I did what I could to fill it, reward or no, promise or no.

Karma--A Paragraph a Day

Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.

Edwin Hubbel Chapin


It's hard sometimes to remind myself of this fact.  It's easy to forget the importance of our actions--each and every one of them.  And I think that our unwillingness to act is in itself an action, or at least a decision, that will reverberate in our lives for a very long time.  If I speak kind words to my wife today, I'm adding to the positive energy of the world, for sure.  If I think about saying something kind and I decide not to do so, what kind of effect will that have on my life?  We know the effects of neglect on young people, of course, and we know the effects of neglect on spouses and other people that we care for.  But is the decision to not say something that could be positive something that affects our karma, something that affects the world in which we live, even if in the slightest of ways?  I think that if I think of an action that will be positive for me or for anyone else, it's important to follow through with it and add that positivity to the world, and add that positive karma to my own life.  We get only one life, and I think that if I have the goal of making it as positive as I can, then I can only be sure of positivity by taking my own actions rather than waiting for something positive to come from some other source.

It's Going to Be a Beautiful Day--A Paragraph a Day

It's sometimes frustrating to see just how often I have to remind myself of the fact that every day can be beautiful, and that the quality of any given day is dependent more upon the attitude that I bring to it than to things that happen outside of my sphere of influence.  I'm going to school today, and I'm going to teach.  There will be stress, there will be annoyances and negative situations, but the positives of the situation far outweigh the negatives.  I get to work with young people who have their whole lives ahead of them, and I get to at least try to influence them in positive ways.  I often don't achieve this goal, but I often do--it's an up-and-down effort.  But I know that at least I have the chance to try, and on this particular day those chances stretch out before me in my very near future.  I may fail miserably today, but even in a day's failure there are things to learn that may make tomorrow better.  The chances are, though, that I'm not going to fail, and I get to say hello to some very nice young people.  I get to talk with some of them, and I have a chance to build them up by encouraging them and complimenting them (with only sincere compliments, of course!)  I get to eat some nice meals today (and some chocolate) and drink coffee and wine, I get to go running or bike riding, I get to feel the fresh air and listen to music and watch something on TV if I feel like it.  How this day turns out really is up to me, and I'm going to do my best to make sure that the day ahead of me turns out just as I've predicted in the title.

A Very Long Ten Days--A Paragraph a Day

It's been quiet here for a while.  It's pretty easy to explain--my wife and I needed to fly to Germany for a funeral of a very dear friend, and between preparations, the actual travel (with time change and being very busy), and recovery (including catching up on work that I missed), our time has been a bit short for the last ten days or so.  And that's okay--a paragraph a day is simply a goal for something that isn't going to affect anyone drastically if it isn't met.  I love doing the writing and the thinking involved with it, but it's important to remember that sometimes life is going to change itself up rather dramatically and force us to do something else than that which we've planned.  Though we would like to be consistent and though we would like life to unfold in completely predictable ways, it's not going to happen like that.  And it would have been a bit silly of me to try to fit in these paragraphs over the last ten days, for there was simply too much else going on that needed my attention.  And that's okay.  The funeral is over and we're at home and life is getting back into a bit of a groove, so there's plenty of time now (for the time being, at least) for doing the things that got pushed to the side.  In the Tao Te Ching, there's a strong focus on letting the Tao lead us through life rather than trying to be at the controls, and I do respect that perspective.  So I'm going to try to follow life's lead and do the things that life calls me to do, even if it means putting aside something that I do feel is rather important.  Life knows better than I do, after all.

Opportunities Abound--A Paragraph a Day

There are many, many problems in this world we live in.  There's violence, hunger, greed, hatred, prejudice, anger, and so many other negative things that we could truly bring ourselves down if we were to think of all the bad all the time.  But that said, we also have to recognize that there are many, many wonderful opportunities, also, especially for those of us who live in countries that tend to be rather wealthy.  My wife and I are going to Germany this week to attend a funeral--something that wouldn't have been at all possible just 100 years ago--or at all affordable even 50 years ago.  We have an opportunity to do something that is very important to us, and we're able to afford it without going broke.  We have opportunities to work, to meet people, to travel, to eat great meals, to have wonderful things in our house like sofas and music and bookcases and books, to go for walks in neighborhoods that are safe, to call family members who live almost two thousand miles away--the list is very long, and it includes so many things that it's hard for us to wrap our minds around just how many opportunities we actually have.  I hope that by the time I leave this planet I'll have taken advantage of as many opportunities as possible, and that I will have squandered as few as possible.  And now that I'm older and (supposedly) wiser, I hope that I'm able to recognize even more of them and take advantage of them.  Perhaps that should be one of our major goals in life--to get good at recognizing legitimate opportunity and making sure that we don't squander it when it shows up.

Flowing with Life?--A Paragraph a Day

Sometimes life doesn't flow as smoothly as it does other times.  We go through periods of time when it's more difficult to focus, when things feel useless or hopeless, when there doesn't seem to be any "normal" to life any more.  I know that for me, these periods are marked by my inability to focus strongly on just about anything, and a lack of a sense of purpose in what I do.  These feelings used to disturb me and make me feel uncomfortable, but since I've learned to recognize them and understand that they're merely symptoms of something else, they don't bother me a bit.  I simply try to accept them and I accept the fact that for a certain period of time I'm not going to be as productive as I normally am, and I'm probably not going to accomplish much.  And that's okay.  One of the most important things I can do for myself as a person is to give myself a break when things aren't going perfectly and not expect more out of myself than I'm able to give at any given point.  As long as I'm not just rationalizing a desire to be lazy, then I'm fine with being unproductive, and I enjoy allowing life to take its twists and turns and to take me with it.  As Longfellow said so long ago, "Some days must be dreary," and I've come to accept those dreary days as being just as important as any bright and shiny day may be.

Too Much Self-Improvement?--A Paragraph a Day

The ego will always be able to find ways to keep the aspirant
busy in self-improvement, thus binding him or her to the
fact that the self is still there behind all the improvements.
For why should the ego kill itself?
-Paul Brunton


There's a part of me that's not really too interested in self-improvement any more.  Of course, I still want to become the best version of me that I can be, but that doesn't mean that I constantly have to keep improving.  Rather, at a certain point we simply have to live, to experience our lives for what they are without thinking of the shortcomings we have that we want to demolish.  We have to remember that when we seek to improve ourselves, there's an implicit assumption that there are shortcomings that we have to somehow "fix."  Perhaps we don't need fixing, though.  Perhaps the most important thing that we can do is simply let our lives be our lives, and live them as best as we can.  Maybe it's important that we remind ourselves constantly to be kind and gentle and compassionate, without thinking about a bigger picture or some sort of abstract ideal that we wish to attain.  I really do want to live my life to the fullest, but I think that in the past I've understood that to mean in some way that I have to fix my flaws.  Perhaps when we devote ourselves to our daily lives fully and completely, those flaws either fade away or become completely irrelevant.  Maybe we don't need to fix anything at all.  Maybe we just have to live our lives.

Those Special Songs--A Paragraph a Day

There are a lot of songs that are special to me, especially ones that I remember from long, long ago when I was very young.  Music was extremely important to me back then, for reasons that I've only recently figured out.  Since my father was in the military, our family moved a lot--every other year or so, and sometimes more often than that.  The only real stability in my life came on the radio--the songs that I heard in San Diego were more or less the same songs that I heard in Norfolk when we moved there.  I could depend on the music for a relative sense of consistency, pretty much the only consistency that I had in my life back then.  If we moved in the summer, I'd hear the songs on the radio before I left, and with a few differences I'd be able to find a radio station in the new place that played the same Top 40 songs.  And so music entrenched itself into my life as a solid, consistent companion, sometimes the only real companion I'd have for long periods of time.  And that's why music still means a great deal to me, and why when someone else has a strong attachment to something else, I try to withhold judgment about whether such an attachment is an addiction or whether it's healthy or whatever.  I know that some things just happen in our lives, and some things help us get through during times when we really need help.  Songs will always be an important part of my life, and I'm very grateful for them.

Life without Music?--A Paragraph a Day

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space
between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.
-Maya Angelou

I try to imagine life without music sometimes, but I can't do it.  I don't know why or how, but all my thinking seems to made stronger with music.  I can concentrate better when I'm listening to music, and the quality of my work--whatever I'm working on--is higher.  I don't absolutely need music, of course, and silence is also one of my best friends, but music certainly is a wonderful element of my life.  And good music is simply good music to me, and I can listen to the same songs over and over again, as long as they're good (to my mind, anyway).  I tend to think in melody, and the songs that have the strongest effect on me are the songs that have the strongest melodies.  I think that's why jazz isn't a musical genre that I enjoy, because the lack of strong melodies is almost a trademark of jazz.  My life is richer because of the music that I listen to, and while I would be just fine without it, everything certainly is fuller and more enjoyable with it.  Music is a wonderful element of my life, and I'm very grateful that it's here with me in so many ways!

Is This All Illusion?--A Paragraph a Day

The idea that what we consider to be our "reality" is actually illusion intrigues me.  I've seen many movies and documentaries that make the argument that what we see isn't really what we think it is, and I've read many books and articles that claim the same thing.  It's a fascinating idea to think that what we think is surrounding us every day could actually be all or mostly in our heads and our imagination, rather than what we think it is.  This is a hard concept to wrap our minds around, it's true, especially when we consider things that we consider to be "solid," like our houses.  Is it possible that the reality of our houses is simply an illusion that we all agree to, and which therefore manifests itself as reality in our minds, where it really matters?  The idea was explored in the film The Matrix, which shows our reality as a computer program that's being fed into our brains to make us think that we're actually living our lives, while in truth we're functioning as living batteries, a power source for the electronic beings that are now in charge of the planet.  I think it's important to consider such ideas as possible--even remotely--whether we actually believe them or not.  It's only when we look outside of what we've come to consider as "real" that we can start to appreciate the vast amount of possibility that this life provides us with.

One Power of Music--A Paragraph a Day

I listen to a lot of music, and I have my entire life long.  It's soothing to me, especially when there's a strong melody and good vocals.  Some songs I can listen to over and over again, without ever growing tired of them.  Music has been a friend to me since I was very young--since I was in a military family, we moved pretty constantly, and the music was about the only constant in my life other than my family members.  And quite honestly, I often preferred the music to the family members, given the amount of conflict that they liked to create.  We could move from the west coast to the east coast to the midwest, and I could turn on the radio anywhere and hear the same songs.  Even the disc jockeys sounded the same, oddly enough.  It was pretty much the only stable element of an early life that completely lacked stability, the only consistent element in a life that completely lacked consistency.  Some people like music for scholarly reasons; others are musicians and they love music because they have a strong relationship with the sounds.  Me, I appreciate music definitely for the sound, but mostly for the way it was always there for me when I needed to be comforted or reassured that the world wasn't completely falling apart, that there was at least one thing that I could depend on.

I Want to Be Happy--A Paragraph a Day

I really do want to be happy, just as almost anyone else does, I suppose.  I think that the major problem with this desire is that I really don't know what it means to be happy.  After all, if we ask twenty different people what happiness is, we'd probably get twenty different answers--with lots of overlap, probably, but still twenty different answers.  As I read more Zen thought, for example, it seems that the main path to happiness is letting life be as it is, and going with the flow without trying to make it into what I think it should be.  On the other hand, Western thought focuses more on achievement and accomplishment and the gathering of abundance as a way to be happy.  A person in a rural farming community can find happiness just living on their own farm and taking care of each day's tasks in the best ways they know how.  Someone who loves fishing will be out in rivers, while someone else may sit in their home all day long, watching television and claiming to be happy.  So what does this all mean to me, as far as my own happiness is concerned?  That's the problem, I think--I don't know.  I can be content and satisfied and fulfilled, but do those things mean the same as happiness?  Perhaps I'm simply thinking too much, as I often do.  All I know for sure is that I want to be happy, and my gut tells me that happiness has to do with accepting things as they are and doing my best to find my own place in things as they are, a place where I can give and love and help others as much as possible.  Happiness?  Perhaps I'll never know.

Visit our pages on happiness here.

Growing Old--A Paragraph a Day

I think that one of the more fascinating things about growing old is the fact that I don't feel any older now than I ever have.  The world still interests me, I still see lots of fascinating and beautiful things, I still enjoy a lot of the activities that we have here, and I still like things like weather and little kids and coffee and quiet evenings at home.  I honestly don't feel a bit different than I did at twenty or thirty, though, except for the fact that I have a lot more memories and a bit more wisdom to help make my life a bit more pleasant.  It's not bothering a bit to get older--in fact, I think that overall I'm happier and more stable now than I ever have been.  When I look around at the other older people around me and I notice that so many of them are carrying around tons of bitterness and regret, that they're mad that the world is changing and isn't like it used to be, that they're upset that young people don't live up to their expectations that were forged decades ago, I feel pretty fortunate.  The world is going on, no matter what my age, and it will continue to go on long after I'm gone.  I'm just going to try to enjoy this stage of my life while I have it.