Category: Spring 2013

Allowing our inner voices to be heard is an act of peace.

Too often we stop ourselves in order to make a “right” or “safe” choice. We worry that not doing the right or safe thing is selfish or self-indulgent.

Indeed, in our culture we seem to have made synonymous the prioritizing of ourselves, of our inner voices, with self-indulgence, selfishness, and even arrogance. But I think in our hearts we know the difference.

And in learning to listen to our hearts, to our inner voices, we bring peace to ourselves and to the world.

When Ella was in elementary school I’d walk her to her school bus stop in the morning and sing her a variety of songs, among them some by Jim Croce. A week ago tonight, she and I watched a Jim Croce documentary.

I don’t want to take for granted having this kind of connection with my 16 year-old daughter, that she’d want to watch a Jim Croce documentary with me on a Friday night.

On that note, look at this compilation CD I just discovered on Amazon. Think I should buy it?

50 years ago this month both Melinda and I were born, she on the 13th and me on the 24th (does that makes her, what’s that term, a cougar?). By the end of the month that means we’ll have been alive for a combined 100 years.

Go ahead, check my math.

In honor of this I’ve created something I’m calling “The 12 Days of Kindness.” From May 13 to May 24 I’ll be making a daily kindness suggestion via an email list. If you want to receive it, subscribe here.

Childhood has the feelings but not the words to describe them. Adulthood has the words but, in learning them, can lose the feelings the words describe.

How can we have the feelings of childhood AND the words of adulthood?

Be awed every day.

Listen inwardly. Doing so allows one’s inner and outer lives to come into alignment.

But in our society, one that puts so many external pressures on us to behave certain ways, it is difficult to do. In his book “A Hidden Wholeness,” author Parker Palmer helps people understand the importance of learning how to listen inwardly.

He refers to the direction one gets when doing this as coming from the soul.

You know that old adage, “We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children?”

I was reading the book “Brain Rules,” specifically a chapter on exercise and its impact on how we age, and it got me thinking. What if I tweak the adage to, “I’m not inheriting my body from my childhood, I’m borrowing it from my old age?”

How might I treat myself now, on the dawn of my 50th birthday?

We are all connected, each of us being a link in the chain of humanity. When your link performs an action, be it a kind or an unkind one, a positive or a negative one, it starts a vibration that resonates down the chain, impacting the entire chain.

Those closest to your link are most impacted, of course, as you are most impacted by those closest to you. But in impacting those close to you, you carry influence as to how these links impact those on down the line.

Your kind smile can literally change someone’s day, thus sending ripples of warmth down the chain.

To understand this story you first have to know some things. One, my mom is an only child. Two, my dad is the oldest of four children. Three, I’m the youngest of three (all boys). And four, my dad was on the road a lot when my brothers and I were kids, meaning my mom had to sometimes do some heavy lifting parenting on her own.

Okay.

One night when my dad was home and my mom was at a meeting, I got into it with my brother, Steve, who was in the process of dragging me up the stairs. Now if my mom was home, I’m pretty sure she would have handled it differently than my dad. He heard the commotion, came out of his office, noticed my new pair of glasses, and said, “Don’t break his glasses.”

There is wisdom in there somewhere.

Years ago, the mother of one of my students shared with me her concept of how to raise children in the most “fair” way. She told the story of purchasing a new winter coat for one of her two sons and the other had complained, saying, “It’s not fair. You bought Jimmy a new coat but you didn’t buy one for me.” The mom explained that she bought Jimmy a new coat because he’d outgrown his old one. Billy, the complaining son, could still fit into his coat and it was perfectly fine. She told Billy, “I’ll buy you a new coat when you need one.”

The logic and brilliance of this was immediately clear to me. As a parent, her philosophy is to provide what each of her children needs when they need it. To do otherwise creates competition and materialism. Treated this way, each of her children could relax, knowing that their needs would consistently be met.

This was actually the most “fair” thing she could do, she told me.

I believe human synergy is among the strongest forces in the universe and that the next phase of human development is related to learning how to better make use of it. Defined simply, human synergy is when two or more people come together in a way that accomplishes more than the people could do individually. It’s the age-old concept of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

I try to describe it to my students this way. There is “you.” There is “me.” And then, coming together, there is “us.” Each alone, there are only two things, “you” and “me.” Together we have three things, “you,” “me” and “us.”

What kind of “me” do I bring to the “us?”