Weather I Like

Traveler:  What kind of weather are we going to have today?

Shepherd:  The kind of weather I like.

Traveler:  How do you know it will be the kind of weather you like?

Shepherd:  Having found out, sir, I cannot always get what I like,
I have learned always to like what I get.  So I am quite sure
we will have the kind of weather I like.   -Anthony De Mello


It's taken me a very long time to reach a point of being able to accept almost anything.  One day I hope to be able to accept anything, for I know that if I ever reach that point, my life will be much richer and much more enjoyable.  I don't want to act like everything is acceptable and let people harm other people just because they're doing so, but I do know that until I accept something, I can't do anything to change it or improve it.

Today's weather is what it is.  There's nothing that I can do to change it, so why shouldn't I just enjoy it for what it is?  If it's too cold for me to go out and do something, I'm very blessed to have a home with heat where I can relax and enjoy the day; if I have to go out, I'm blessed to have a coat and scarf and gloves and other clothes to keep me warm while I'm outside--so I can not just enjoy the cold day, but actually like it for what it is.

I get a lot of students every year, and not all of them are all that easy to deal with.  Some of them actually make my life a bit difficult at times, but there's really nothing I can do about that except continue to be myself and to do my best to help them to learn, as they are.  And while they don't make my life any easier, they do test me--they test my patience, my skills, and my ability to deal with adversity.  In that way, they help me to grow as a person, so even if there are some negative aspects to my relationship to them, I can still like them.  And when I factor in my knowledge of some of the adversity that they've faced in their lives that has caused them to develop into problematic young people, it's hard not to like them, because at least they're still in school, and still trying.

If I were to get to know you, would you like me to accept you as you are, or to find you lacking in some areas and try to change you to fit my ideas of what you should be like?  I think we both know the answer to that question, so we have to ask ourselves whether we're accepting of other things and people as they are, or do we judge and wish things were different?  Sometimes we think something or someone should change and we don't take things just the way we are; when we do this, we become less than tolerant, less than loving, less than accepting.  Just because we think something should change doesn't mean that it should, no matter what our egos may tell us about how right we are.

If I like you as you are, I can relax and enjoy your company.  If I like the weather, I can relax and enjoy the weather.  There's no need to complain about it, no need to wish it were something different.  With this kind of acceptance in our lives, we can eliminate tons of dissatisfaction from our daily experiences, and we can add a whole lot of love and encouragement and compassion.  All it takes is a shift in perspective, as the shepherd above demonstrates.  What kinds of things might we actually learn to like, if we were to stop complaining about them and start accepting and even liking them?

http://livinglifefully.com/acceptance2.htm

Troubles, or Experience?

If you will call your troubles experiences, and remember that
every experience develops some latent force within you, you
will grow vigorous and happy, however adverse
your circumstances may seem to be.
-John Heywood


I think that it's far too easy to get caught up in our troubles.  It seems that we somehow get so caught up in what we see as the negative aspects of our problems that we don't even see that they can be some of the most important elements of our lives.  They're the things that most help us to grow and to learn; they are what allows us to become stronger and more compassionate people.  Without problems and troubles, our lives would be very bland, it seems, and we would often find ourselves without a sense of direction, without a sense of purpose.

If we could get in the habit of calling all of our experiences just that--experiences--then I think we could avoid many of the problems our own minds cause us.  When we see something as a problem, we give it a lot of power over us.  We allow it to diminish much of our energy, especially when we see it as a major problem.  We allow it to cause us a great deal of worry, and we may even lose sleep or start behaving differently when we're dealing with such experiences.  We fear that they will overwhelm us, that we'll end up having nothing, losing everything that we have or all that we've worked for.

As with so many other things, though, this is mostly a matter of perspective.  Perhaps the issue that just came up does have a drastic side to it; perhaps it can mean that we'll lose a job or a relationship or a place to live.  Experience tells us, though, that sometimes losing what we have is the absolute best thing for us--we lose a relationship because there's someone else who's going to come along who is much better for us; we lose a job because there's a job out there waiting for us that's much, much better than the job we have now.

I think that in my life, the worst part of focusing on troubles rather than experiences has been the amount of time I've lost to worry and depression and fear.  There have been many hours that I could have enjoyed, that could have been rich and fulfilling rather than miserable.  And I realize in retrospect that most of the time, I was making myself miserable by the ways that I reacted to troubles.  They weren't making me miserable; I was.

And all these lost hours, too, I chalk up to experience because I know that I lose far fewer hours now because I learned many valuable lessons from the time I caused myself to "lose."

What kinds of experiences are you facing and having now?  How are you responding to them?  Are you giving them power over you by making them stronger than they really are?  Or are you learning from them, trying to become a better person with the help of the things that life is throwing your way?  It's very important that we keep in mind that when we see our trials as experience, we know that we can learn and grow from them.  We are always given the chances to become better people, but often we refuse to see the best learning experiences because we see them more as threats than as teachers.  It's time to allow our minds to help us, to let us learn from experience so that our lives will be richer and fuller.

As Rainer Maria Rilke once said, "Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses, only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave."


http://livinglifefully.com/experience.htm

What Can I Achieve This Year?

I hope that my achievements in life shall be these--that I will have
fought for what was right and fair, that I will have risked for that
which mattered, and that I will have given help to those who were
in need; that I will have left the earth a better place for
what I've done and who I've been.     -C. Hoppe

What shall I achieve this year?  I guess that depends on what I try to achieve, and whether or not my focus is on things that will benefit only me, or things that will benefit many more people other than me.  I can achieve a lot simply because I'm a human being and I have many chances to affect other people, but do I take advantage of those chances, or do I squander them in favor of doing other things, in favor of playing things safe all the time, in favor of withholding my help in an effort to make life easier for me?

How can I leave the world a better place?  It's tempting to think that I can't, since I'm simply one person in a very large world filled with billions of people, animals, and plants of all kinds.  When I think on that scale, though, life can seem to be overwhelming, and we may get discouraged before we even start trying to do anything.  Life is much easier if we're able to look at our own worlds and decide what to do there--do we work with other human beings?  Then we have the chance to encourage them and help them to see their own value, and we can trust that there will be a ripple effect of goodness that will affect their children when they get home, and other people whom they encounter.

Do we see something that we know is wrong?  Even though it's a very small thing, something that I feel very good about is the number of times that I've stopped to pick up the glass of broken bottles, for I know that it's the right thing to do.  It's made the world a better place in a seemingly insignificant way, but I don't need to be trying to make the world better in broad ways that are significant to millions.  Picking up broken glass is an achievement and a contribution to the world, and a decent one at that.

When we go to restaurants, my wife and I like to actually talk to waiters and waitresses, and find out something about them.  We like to compliment them and try to add something positive to their work time.  It's a very minor act, when all is said and done, but if we can make someone feel better about being at work, perhaps that achievement will also have ripple effects that we'll never know about.

I also try to take risks, though the risks I take are hardly earth-shattering.  Last summer I decided to move from teaching at college to teaching high school once more, because I knew that there's much more of a need for teachers in public schools than there is for college teachers--and that as a public school teacher I can make much more of a difference in my students' lives, especially academically.  Teaching college is much easier, but when I teach high school, my contribution is much broader and much deeper.  The risk was real because the job is extremely difficult these days, but it was worthwhile because I know I have the chance to do much more good for many more students.

There are many things that we can achieve that can help many others in very simple ways.  We can plant trees.  We can compliment sincerely and provide encouragement to those who need it.  We can stand up for someone who's being treated poorly.  We can pick up litter and recycle.  We can volunteer at an organization that helps others.  We're only limited by ourselves, really, and our fears.  What can you achieve this year that will be good for others?  What can you do to contribute to this world in a very real way, even if it is also a very small way?  It's important to remember that even the tiniest contribution is much more helpful than no contribution at all--so what will your tiny contributions look like, and how might they add up to or grow into something much larger?

What, Me Worry?

Worrying is carrying tomorrow's load with today's strength--
carrying two days at once. It is moving into tomorrow
ahead of time. Worrying doesn't empty tomorrow of its
sorrow, it empties today of its strength.   -Corrie Ten Boom


I have to be the first to admit that I spend much more time worrying than I want to.  This is a rather frustrating trait of mine--one that's been with me since childhood, it seems--especially since I've done so much studying about how destructive it is, how useless it is.  I worry about lots of things, and though I worry much less now than I used to, I still worry much more than is healthy or helpful to me, and much more than pretty much any situation warrants.

I believe that one of the reasons that I worry so much is that I have a heightened sense of responsibility for pretty much everything.  Again, this is something that I used to feel much more than I do now, but something that I believe will be a part of me my whole life long to some extent or another.  I want things to turn out well, and I often feel that it's up to me to make sure that they do.  If I don't make them turn out well, of course, then other people will be disappointed in me, or they'll criticize me, or both.  And I don't want that.  I want people to be satisfied with what I do and how I do it, so I worry about how tomorrow's going to turn out, or whether or not I'll have enough money to pay something important, or whether the students in my classes are going to do well on their tests.

But worry doesn't help anything at all, I've learned.  In fact, it hurts a lot of things--I could be spending a beautiful, restful Sunday, relaxing and reading or going for a long walk and thinking about pleasant things; instead, I'm so worried about tomorrow that today has a dreadful cloud hanging over it, yanking me from the pleasant present moment and dropping me into the worry about things not going well tomorrow, or about not having the resources to do what I need to do next week.

And this worry doesn't do a thing to help the future situations!  Maybe I'll work a little longer to prepare if I'm worried, but still, I'm preparing more instead of enjoying right now.  I've learned over the years that often, the best way to prepare for tomorrow is to relax and enjoy today, and that way I end up entering tomorrow's situation in a much better frame of mind.

Worry seems to have a very antagonistic relationship with the present moment, so it's best to keep them in separate rooms since they can't play together well.

Since I can't seem to shake worry, I've done the next best thing--I accept it as part of my life.  Once I've accepted it, once I tell myself, "I'm worried now," then I can follow that up by saying, "I am worried, but instead of letting that worry control me, I'm going to force myself to reject it and do something fun."  And then I read a good book, or go for a run or a walk, or call a friend, or make a cup of coffee and listen to some good music.

Some situations, of course, are so important or so drastic that they deserve our concern and our effort.  But they're fairly rare, and generally fairly easy to recognize.  For all our other worries, it's important that we find a balance between paying attention to them, being concerned about them, and letting them go because our attention would serve no real purpose.  Life's too short to spend it worrying, so we need to develop strategies to deal with worry when it rears its ugly head--and it will do so.  We don't want to be people who never show concern about anything, of course, but we also don't want to allow our lives to be held hostage by worry about everything, even the trivial and unimportant.

Worry will happen, but how far do we allow it to go?  Personally, I don't want to let worry control any parts of my life, so I accept it for what it is and deal with it.  I've developed ways to compensate for worry, and they're very effective--not just in dealing with the worry itself, but also in making me a happier, healthier person.

Challenges Ahead. . . .

I've got an interesting year coming up, one that's going to challenge me on several different levels.  Most of the challenges will be professional, since I'm teaching at a high school that has virtually no materials for me in a district that simply doesn't value literacy much.  My job is much more difficult than it would be at a school in a district that showed stronger academic support for their students, but now that I've gotten to know the students who are being underserved by their district, I face a very difficult dilemma:  if I stay, I may be part of the problem, contributing to the low quality of education that the students are receiving, but if I leave, then I'll be--in a way--abandoning the very students who are most in need of extra help, help that I know I can give them.

So my year promises to be full of conflict, at least internally.  But that's okay by me, because when I decided to return to teaching high school, I knew that I would be facing some difficult challenges, and I was okay with that.  This is an advantage to me, for I know that whatever happens that's negative, I'll be facing many of the problems that I already knew for sure were going to arise.  I knew that I would have difficulties with materials, I knew that I would have difficulties with other teachers who aren't really teaching much, and I knew that I would have difficulties with administrators who are okay with things like not having any textbooks for students, and who have extraordinary expectations of teachers, who are paid rather little but who have huge responsibilities--and more and more of them every year.

Because even though I knew I would have difficulties, I also knew that I'm a good teacher, and that I would be able to help young people learn many of the things that they need to know about reading and writing.  I knew that I would be able to encourage them and help them to grow in ways other than academically, too.  I knew that I would be able to prepare them for college in ways that other teachers struggle with, mainly because of my extensive experience teaching at both levels, as well as my extensive work in earning three master's degrees and a doctorate.  These aren't things that I brag about, of course--I consider myself very fortunate to have been able to achieve these things--but I do recognize them as strengths and I know that they benefit the young people I work with.

Challenges always have their bright sides.  Bright sides always have their challenges included.  I think that one of the things that helps me get through life well is that I keep in mind that challenges aren't there to bring me down--they exist to help me to become better at what I do.  I don't hate challenges, and I don't try to avoid them.  I face them and I do the best I can, either in spite of them or by turning them into something else.

I haven't always had this perspective.  I used to see challenges as unfair obstacles, things that brought me down and added to problems I faced, such as depression.  I used to try to avoid them when I could, rather than face them and learn from them.  Fortunately, I didn't continue with that behavior.  Now, I welcome challenges because they help me to learn much more than unchallenging situations do.

In this year ahead, I'm going to face frustration and aggravation.  I'm going to be overworked and undervalued, and I'm going to have people criticize what I'm doing in my classrooms because it doesn't fit what they think I should be doing.  I'll have students who do little work and then complain when they fail my class.  And all that's okay.  It will wear on me, and by the time summer comes along I'm going to be in desperate need of a break.  But when all is said and done, it will all have been worth it because of the contribution that I'll be able to make to the students who do the work that will help them to improve their skills; I know that if they simply do what's asked of them in class, they'll be much better prepared for college and for the work force that they'll eventually be entering.

I have challenges ahead, and I'll face them.  There's really no other way to deal with challenges if we want to make the most of these lives we've been given, for when we face them, we learn from them and we grow.



Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you;
they're supposed to help you discover who you are.

Bernice Johnson Reagon

A Season for Sharing Love

We get it all wrong if we think that Christmas is anything but a season for love.  From the origin of the day--the story of a woman and a man who traveled far and ended up in a stable where their child was born--to this very moment, the heart of Christmas is love.  If we see it as anything other than that, we're looking at it through a warped perspective--not necessarily a negative or terrible perspective, but a warped one nonetheless.  And that happens--we can get so caught up in buying gifts and preparing food and decorating the house and buying and wrapping presents that we stop seeing the holiday for what it truly is:  an opportunity to share love with the people whom we love.

When we think of the origins of all that we do, the love is quite obvious.  We invite friends and family to our homes because we want to share what we have, and we want to show the love that we feel for them.  And when friends and families are coming over, we naturally want to cook for them--sharing a meal is one of the oldest and most common traditions that is based on sharing love, for when we feed someone else, we're literally contributing to helping them live.

We buy gifts for people because we think of what they need or would like to have, and we want to provide for that need or fulfill that desire, simply because we love them, not because we want anything from them.  We spend time thinking of or looking for just the right gift for each person, and then we purchase it or make it for them, just because we want to show that person how much we care for them.  After all, if we can give just the right gift, then we show that we actually know a person, and how many of us feel loved when someone else knows us well enough to know what we like?  I know that I do.

I think that much of the stress of Christmas comes from taking on too many tasks--too many ways to show others that we love them.  Rather than enjoying simple holidays with simple gifts, we tend to feel that what we have to offer just isn't enough, so we decide to offer more.  After all, more is better, right?  Not at all.

Showing our love is a tremendously important part of our lives, but when we try to overdo it, a lot of things can happen.  We get stressed because we have so many things to do, and when that happens, what we're doing becomes less an act of love and more a task that has to be done.  When we don't see what we're doing as something that benefits those we love, we see it as something else, don't we?  If we can focus on the love, we can do the tasks lovingly; if we're worried that we won't finish baking in time to wrap all the presents, then we start to feel stress and our baking is one of the causes of stress.

We've all seen it happen:  good people with good hearts take on too much and they become cranky and stressed.  They snap at people and they're not in nearly as good a mood as they usually are.  Because they're stressed, the work that they're doing loses much of its meaning and they may even start to resent the work.  The love becomes secondary, or even tertiary--if it's even there at all any more.  And Christmas becomes, in their eyes, almost an enemy, a time of the year that brings stress and frustration and hectic days and nights.

Of course, it doesn't have to be that way.  We can refrain from trying to do everything for everyone, and when that question comes up, "If I don't do, who will?", then maybe the best answer is "No one."  Perhaps that particular task doesn't need to be done this Christmas, and we can take a step towards simplifying our holiday season.  Or perhaps there's someone else who is more than willing to do that certain task--a young child who wants to take on a new responsibility, maybe--and we can make things easier on ourselves by letting someone else do some of the things we normally feel that we need to do.

It is a shame when we lose the beauty of the season to the stress of the season.  But we really do have a choice in the matter--it's not always an easy choice, but the choice is there.  And one thing I know for sure from experience is that I would much rather do without certain things and see the people I love enjoying the holiday than have "everything" at the cost of some people I love being so stressed out that they forget the message of love around which this holiday is based.  Be the loving person, and put yourself in a position in which you're fully present to each moment the season brings, sharing your love actively with the people around you.  You'll feel much better when you do so, and just as importantly, the people you love will be glad to have the full, loving you present.

A Diverse World

I don’t paint things.  I only paint the difference between things.
Henri Matisse


Sometimes, differences are the most important parts of our world.  If there weren't differences between people and things and colors and sounds, our lives would be devoid of diversity and art and music.  While differences are definitely something that should be celebrated by all of us, we unfortunately seem to react negatively to many of them.  If someone doesn't do something the "right" way, if someone is wearing "weird" clothes or even "acting weird," we tend to react in ways that tell that person that he or she is doing something wrong by not conforming to the "norms" that are so important to us.

But if I'm a green and you're a yellow, that's a wonderful thing.  And it's wonderful simply because it is so, not because of any sort of inherent value in either of the colors.  What tends to happen to us, though, is that we like to fit in ourselves, so I would tend to gravitate towards other greens.  I feel safe if I do so because we share something very important, and I'm never going to get mocked for my color by other greens, because they're green, too.  And once I'm together with other greens, we like to look for things that set us apart from others in order to reinforce our self-images.  We greens, after all, believe in A, B, and C, while I met a yellow yesterday who actually believes in D and E--those yellows sure are strange, aren't they?

But Matisse understands something very important from an artist's perspective:  our differences are worth looking at because they're what allow us to distinguish between things.  On a canvas, the ocean is blue and the sky is a different shade of blue--or even yellow or red if you're painting a sunset.  Or the ocean can be grey, and the sky a different shade of grey.  The trees are green while the pond is blue and the flowers are yellow and red.  The differences make the things stand out, and we don't fault an artist for pointing out the differences between yellow flowers and red ones.

For some reason, though, we may find it offensive to point out that one person's skin is darker or lighter than ours.  We stay quiet and don't talk about someone else's sexuality, because it's their business.

The important thing to remember, though, is that if no judgment is included in a statement, it's not offensive.  If a person is simply making an observation, then what's the problem?  Your skin is darker than mine.  Cool.  You're gay, and I'm not.  No big deal.  The problems arise when we tie in judgment with our observations--then we're judging others for something as simple as the pigments in their skin, or something as private and personal as their sexual preferences, or for their gender or age.

Matisse didn't judge when he painted differences.  If he saw blue, I hope that he used blue paint to represent what he saw.  Can you imagine an artist with this plan:  "I won't paint any yellow flowers because yellow flowers aren't as good as orange ones"?  It would be ridiculous.

Our differences make for an amazing world.  None of us really want to imagine a world of identical beings thinking in identical ways and doing identical things--it would be a horrible nightmare.  We really must celebrate our differences and accept others just as they are if we're really going to live full and fulfilling lives, for not to do so would be to deny the diversity of life, to limit ourselves to what we consider to be safe, while judging things that make us uncomfortable.  And once we start judging other things, we'll never actually learn from them--and that's a terrible tragedy.


More on diversity