When It Comes to Love & Your Relationships Are You Committed or Just Interested?

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There’s a difference between being interested in something and being committed to something.  When you’re interested in doing something, you do it only when it’s convenient.  When you’re committed to something, you make the time to do it.

The same goes for people and our relationships—marriage, parenting, friendships.

A commitment signifies a completely different level of personal involvement and personal investment of our time and energy and our care and concern and wisdom.

Thus our commitments—our ability to make and keep and honor our commitments—is dependent upon our level of personal development.

Our level of personal development is shorthand for / the sum of many things:

• Our level of emotional maturity
• The clarity of our thinking
• How well we have developed our critical thinking skills
• How much perspective we have (beginning with the end in mind; not sweating the small stuff; The Serenity Prayer)
• What our relationship to reality and to our own mortality is like
• How dedicated we are to ideals like truth, justice, love, beauty, virtue
• How well developed our conscience is
• How warm, kind, compassionate, and understanding we are (the so-called “heart qualities”)
• How resilient we are, et cetera.

There’s a world of difference between being interested in a person ( / being interested in being in a relationship with a person), and being committed to a relationship and a person.

Even saying that we’re committed to a person or even being married to a person doesn’t actually mean we’re truly committed to that person and that relationship.  It’s quite possible to be married and not very committed to the other person or the marriage.

When we’re merely interested in a person and a relationship, it shows: we prioritize that person and give him or her attention and time *only* when it’s convenient to *us* and *only* to the extent that it’s convenient to *us.*  We don’t stretch or extend ourselves.  We’re more self-centered and focused on what we’re receiving / getting out of the relationship and from the other person rather than the quality and quantity of our giving.  The other person isn’t essential to us, he or she is peripheral to us, an accessory—expendable and replaceable.  That person and that relationship are not at the top of our list or near the top of our list, but somewhere down the list —

1. Ego
2. Work
3. Pride
4. Greed
5. Status
6. Gratification
7. Then the other person, and the other person only as much as he or she is a means to these other things.

On the other hand, when we’re committed to a person and to our relationship with that person, we prioritize that relationship and that person.  We show up and not only when it’s convenient for us to do so.  We engage the person, we really look at and notice and appreciate the other person and his or her uniqueness, essence, core, and potentials and talents as well oddities.  We set aside and make ample quality time for the other person.  We don’t accept excuses from ourselves or make excuses for ourselves.  What we do speaks more loudly than what we say.  We show our level of commitment through our consistency and our behaviors, and through behaviors that show how we are extending ourselves for the relationship and the other person, prioritizing that person, honoring and cherishing the other person, not taking him or her for granted.

When we’re inconsistent in how we treat another person, it shows that either we’re not really committed to that person and that relationship, or it shows that we need to improve our level of commitment and our ability to live up to our commitment.

When we’re consistent in how we treat another person—and we treat that other person consistently in a way that is honorable, respectful, kind and loving—then it shows that we’re deeply committed to that person.

. Related articles:

• Are You Committed or Just Interested? (elainebaileyinternational.com/wordpress)

Only He Who Takes Off His Shoes Truly Loves (On Noticing — & Noticing What We’re Normally Not Noticing)

“Burning Bush” — a photograph by Michael Fatali (http://fatali.com/)

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Earth’s crammed with heaven,

And every common bush afire with God,

But only he who sees takes off his shoes;

The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.

― Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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This poem by Barrett Browning was inspired by these lines from Exodus—

“Now Moses was pasturing a flock and led it to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. The angel of the LORD appeared to him in a blazing fire from the midst of a bush; and behold, the bush was burning with fire, yet the bush was not consumed.  So Moses said, ‘I must turn aside now and see this marvelous sight, why the bush is not burned up.’  When the LORD saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, ‘Moses, Moses!’ And Moses said, ‘Here I am.’  Then the LORD said, ‘Do not come near here; remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground’.”

(Exodus 3: 1-5, abridged)

I wondered as I read Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poem (and even the verses from Exodus) if things might not actually be in reverse order here—the seeing of something extraordinary taking place first, and then there is the stopping and taking off our shoes.

Might it not be equally if not even more true that only he or she who first slows down long enough in life to take off their shoes truly sees?

Might it not be more often the case that only a person who dares to walk slower, more deliberately, less hurriedly, more relaxed, and even more carefully—perhaps in part because of unprotected and exposed toes—is more likely to “truly see”—to notice and appreciate more of what might ordinarily be missed?

The rest will simply hurry by.

Noticing takes time.  Allowing only a fixed amount of time to get from point A to point B means that we’ll have to block out and miss a lot in service of our goal of arriving on time.

And the more we do this—hurry—the better we get at doing this—missing life, beauty, a flower, a sunset, our children growing up—and the more desensitized we become.

And compound this with the advent of smart phones.

Life all around us becoming easier and easier to miss.

A burning bush in the midst of rush hour in Washington D.C. 

World renowned violinist Joshua Bell plays incognito, dressed as a street musician.  Of the 1100 people who passed by during the 45 minutes that he flawlessly performed several of most beautiful pieces of classical music ever written, how many people stopped and listened?  How many people “took off their shoes”? 

You can read the full story here — The Washington Post.com: “Pearls Before Breakfast“

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Promptness / punctuality and productivity are characteristics that understandably are highly valued in our society.  Productivity and driven-ness and inventiveness have given us this strange brave new Hi-Def world of technology that a hundred years ago would have been the stuff of science-fiction.

And dependability, reliability, predictability, all are critically important in this society to keep it orderly.  A certain amount of scheduling must take place lest chaos reign.  And respect for others includes respecting their time, not being more than a few minutes late (at least not without good cause and notification) to an agreed upon meeting or appointment.

And yet what about life being a journey and not a destination—or not just a series of destinations, appointments, meetings, obligations—one after the other after the other?

Can one build in to one’s daily schedule and one’s various commutes some free time wherein one can stop and smell the flowers, or at least have time to slow down and notice them?

Instead of only allowing just enough time to get from point A to point B, can one schedule in time to include opportunities to pay more attention to whatever sights and sound one normally misses or might miss when hustling and bustling along on one’s given route?

There are routes I drive several times a week, and much to my chagrin and to my shame, I will occasionally notice something I never noticed before but that was there all along—the color or architecture of a particular house, a particular tree or bush, et cetera.

And yet perhaps to my seeming credit, there are also many times I will pause because I am happening to notice something that is unique to this particular time on a given route—the way the sunlight is glancing off a certain tree, the way certain storm clouds look, the beauty of a sunrise or sunset on this particular commute.

Am I noticing and then taking off my shoes?  Or am I noticing because I’ve figuratively taken off my shoes—because I am slowing down, reprioritizing the journey over the destination?

Or maybe some of both.  Maybe these two feed each other.  The more we notice, the more we slow down, the more we slow down, the more we notice.  And so on and on, each perpetuating and strengthening each other, each helping us to become more sensitive to what we might ordinarily miss.

Some of the recent sights that have prompted me to take 

off my shoes(and take out my cell to snap a photo of it)

Storm clouds departing

In front of the bank

At the grocery

The light on this tree was amazing!

The sky was on fire — this was a sunset that was hard not to see!

A really BIG egg!

I had to pull off to the side of the road to photograph this sunset. It was so beautiful!

Taking up photography many years ago has helped me immensely in learning how to pay greater attention and to see more of what’s around, more of what I might ordinarily miss.  It has given me new eyes with which to see and look out upon the world.

Proust is recommending the ultimate stay-cation.
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As Rilke put it, “If your everyday life seems poor, don’t blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no poor, indifferent place.” (“Letters to a Young Poet,” letter no. 1)

Photography has helped and is helping me tremendously with this.

As have and are writing and reading, making time nearly every day to do these.

If we don’t make time every day to slow down and notice and pay attention to what’s around us—and to who’s around us—then not paying attention, not noticing, not questioning, will become more and more natural for us.  We will become more desensitized, more adept at tuning out. We will likely become more indifferent, more numb, more rote, more mechanical, more machine-like and less human—and less humane.  We will go more and more to sleep, and we will start sleepwalking more and more, just going through the motions, dying inside while alive.

Similarly, if we don’t slow down every day to think, reflect, contemplate, examine.  We are by that self-neglect choosing to sleep and to put ourselves even more to sleep.

reading, writing, thinking, contemplating, reflecting, meditating, walking in nature, practicing photography, drawing, painting–these can help us so much in learning how to listen to our own deeper currents and life’s deeper rhythms, helps us so much in becoming more sensitive and paying more (and better) attention, not only to ourselves, but to what’s around us, including those around us.

To become more loving, to become more alive and live better, to grow as a person, all require that we take practical measurable steps each day in that direction, that we choose and prioritize slowing down and spending some time each day in thought, really reflecting on what these things mean, reflecting on what’s truly important in life, what will matter most in the end.

And reading doesn’t mean just consuming other people’s thoughts and books and even blog posts, but slowing down and examining and reflecting on and exploring our own ideas and thoughts and inner currents.–

Ideally this is how we should read.

Maybe Browning’s words — “Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God” — are a bit of an overstatement, but perhaps a necessary one to correct how inattentive and insensitive many of us have become to beauty.

So often so many of us go through life tuned out to what’s really going on around us. We unknowingly let our sense of wonder, marvel, curiosity, amazement die off.

It’s a case of use it or lose it.

Not only do we need to practice gratitude & appreciativeness, we also have to practice (exercise) every day our capacities to marvel, be amazed, be awed, curious, find wonder. All of these faculties need to be stoked and nurtured regularly in us less they atrophy and slough off, less they wither and die, and in doing so take a very significant part of us and what makes us most human and humane with then.

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“It happens that the stage sets collapse.  Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or the factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep, and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday according to the same rhythm—this path is easily followed most of the time.  But one day the ‘why’ arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement.  ‘Begins’—this is important.  Weariness comes at the end of the acts of a mechanical life, but at the same time it inaugurates the impulse of consciousness.  It awakens consciousness and provokes what follows.  What follows is the gradual return into the chain or it is the definitive awakening.”

– Albert Camus, “The Myth of Sisyphus”

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At every moment we’re either becoming more aware and more sensitive or we’re becoming more self-preoccupied and numb; we’re either moving in the direction of becoming more alive inside or more internally dead, more ego-driven or more soulful and guided by perennial universal and noble principles.

Slowing down and taking off our shoes forces us to pay attention, walk more carefully, to really feel and notice the earth beneath our feet, to be vulnerable to the earth.  No more barrier of insulation between us and the ground.

If we don’t make it a point regularly to slow down and pay more attention, to disconnect from our smartphones and wireless devices—or at least lift our noses more often from them—and take off our shoes, we will likely become increasingly desensitized to much of what makes life worth living—truth, beauty, love, wonder, awe, appreciation, amazement, curiosity.

Cats looking towards the setting sun, warming themselves by the day’s last light

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How do you want to live?

Do you want to live?  Or do you want to *LIVE*!

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 Related articles:

• soul encounters stirring in the equinox (makebelieveboutique.com)

Distraction & Love

David Kanigan, over at Lead.Learn.Live, this morning posted this excerpt from a book by Tony Schwartz .  I read it and commented.  I’m reposting my commenting here as well, because it goes to the heart of what I write about on this and my other blogs.

http://davidkanigan.com/2013/02/28/the-addiction-of-our-times/

“I believe this is a very special moment in history, a kind of perfect storm. There is a growing recognition — to borrow language from AA — that our world has become unmanageable…The addiction of our times is digital connection, instant gratification, and the cheap adrenalin high of constant busyness. The heartening news is that more and more are beginning to recognize the insidious costs of moving so relentlessly and at such high speeds. Just below the surface of our shared compulsion to do ever more, ever faster, is a deep hunger to do less, more slowly. I saw proof of that a couple of weeks ago, when I wrote an article for The New York Times titled “Relax! You’ll Be More Productive.” It focused on the growing scientific evidence that when we build in more time for sleep, naps, breaks, and vacations, we become not just healthier and happier, but also more productive. The piece prompted an avalanche of response, much of it poignantly describing the sense of overwhelm people are feeling at work…Speed, distraction, and instant gratification are the enemies of nearly everything that matters most in our lives. Creating long-term value — for ourselves and for others — requires more authentic connection, reflection, and the courage to delay immediate gratification. That’s wisdom in action.”

- Tony Schwartz, How To Be Mindful in An “Unmanageable World”

(My comment.  And I edited this and slightly expanded on it, Fri., March 1, 2013, in the morning) –

Technology can be used for good or ill.  Certainly I see it in children, the attention-deficit, the hyperness, the inability to sit still for more than a minute or two.

Pascal, back in the 1600′s, wrote (and I’m paraphrasing this from memory) – ”All of our problems are caused by our inability to sit still quietly alone in a room.”

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” – Blaise Pascal, “Pensees“

Busyness isn’t new.  It’s just much much easier to do nowadays.

And this abundance of new technology also allows us to deepen and become wiser, if we’re selective and wise (mindful) about how we do it.

We can write and blog in a way that helps develop our own critical thinking skills and our ability to examine ourselves and our world.  We can write longer and hopefully thought-provoking posts.

Of course, based on personal experience, the lengthier the post I write, the less “likes” it tends to receive, not to mention the less comments as well.  So I must conclude that either my posts are off-putting because of their length, their content and possible depth, their subject matter, or their tone–i.e. maybe I’m just a huge off-putting bore, arrogant know-it-all, pedantic preachy pontificator, et cetera, et cetera.  Or perhaps some bit of all of the above.

I put constant twittering and facebooking and blogging in the same category distraction-wise as gossip magazines, frivolous books, most pop music, most TV shows and even movies.  We can’t tweet our way to a significantly better and more examined life.  (Can we?)  We can’t improve our lives and up our level of thinking by continuing to think in tweets and platitudes and cliches and soundbites.  We have to slow down, pause, reflect, think more deeply, more critically, with more breadth and depth, examine ourselves, be honest and candid with ourselves, read decent books, read something of substance, and do all of this every day.

And this takes time.  And effort.  (And discipline.)

There is so much out there competing for our already divided attention.  There is so much out there competing to numb us even more than we already are.

But all of this stuff wouldn’t appeal so much to us if we weren’t already susceptible to it, if we weren’t already deeply looking to divide ourselves and decimate our thinking skills and numb ourselves.

And from what are we trying to constantly numb ourselves?

It’s obvious.

The same stuff that the Buddha elucidated over 2500 years ago–our own impermanence, and the threats of illness, old age, death.  Loss, of one form or another.

Sit still quietly in a room, and deep down this is what we’re all afraid of and trying to deny and somehow circumvent.

So what’s the alternative?

Distraction is the well-traveled path.  The vast vast majority of human beings have been doing it for ages.

The alternative to the path of least resistance is the road less traveled by.  It’s a tough and lonely road.

Is there some middle way, some way of really facing our own mortality and still enjoying the fruits of technology?

We want to connect, but we don’t seem to want to face our own mortality and or that of others.  So how can we truly connect with each other if we’re not just constantly busy and distracted, but if we’re living in denial?

That’s my question.

Any suggestions, opinions, ideas, thoughts?

 Related articles:

• Practicing the Art of Losing: Are You a Good Sport in Life or Just Another Troubled Guest on the Dark Earth? (fullcatastropheliving.wordpress.com)

• 7 Ways Sitting Will Kill You (popsci.com)

• http://davidkanigan.com/2013/02/28/the-addiction-of-our-times/ (davidkanigan.com)

• Technology and Mindfulness (toddlohenry.com)

For the Class of 2013 (& People Everywhere) — Four Brief Pieces of Advice

Reblogged from Full Catastrophe Living and Loving:

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If I had one piece of advice for people everywhere, it would be this: think critically more often.  Try to spend some time every day thinking critically, examining yourself, your life, your relationships, your own deeds and words, your basic assumptions, your conscience and your principles.  Be a more reflective person.

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My second piece of advice would be to try to spend some time every day reading something of substance. 

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Four fairly brief pieces of good advice!

Vase or Faces: Is Life Fundamentally Easy; Difficult; or Both?

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How do you view life—as something that fundamentally is supposed to be easy (which means that difficulty and hardship are aberrations)?  Or is life something that is essentially / fundamentally difficult and painful, a struggle (“life is suffering” said the Buddha), and thus joy and happiness and comfort and ease are sporadic and more aberrant?

And not how do you *want* to see life or how do you hope that life is.  But rather, deep down, what do you really suspect / assume that life is—is it supposed to be on the whole more easy than difficult, more comfortable than stressful and hard, more pleasurable than painful?  Or life is life basically difficult?

Ortega y Gasset wrote:

“There is no doubt that the most radical division that it is possible to make of humanity is that which splits it into two classes of creatures: those who make great demands on themselves, piling up difficulties and duties; and those who demand nothing special of themselves, but for whom to live is to be at every moment what they already are, without imposing upon themselves any efforts towards perfection—mere buoys that float on the waves. . . . The decisive matter is whether we attach [to] our life . . . a maximum or minimum of demands upon ourselves.” – Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses, pg. 15

Maslow said that less than 2% of human beings are truly growth-oriented; the vast majority are deficit-and-repair oriented—more interested in finding comfort.

Pema Chodron wrote:

There’s a common misunderstanding among all the human beings who have ever been born on the earth that the best way to live is to try to avoid pain and to just try to get comfortable.

You can see this even in insects and animals and birds.

All of us are the same.

A much more interesting, kind, adventurous, and joyful approach to life is to begin to develop our curiosity, not caring whether the object of our inquisitiveness is bitter or sweet.  To lead a life that goes beyond pettiness and prejudice and always wanting to make sure that everything turns out on our own terms—to lead a more passionate, full, and interesting life than that—we must realize that we can endure a lot of pain and pleasure for the sake of finding out who we are and what this world is, how we tick and how our world ticks, just how the whole thing really is.

If we’re primarily committed to comfort at any cost, as soon as we come up against the least edge of pain, we’re going to run, and we’ll never know what was just beyond that particular barrier or wall or fearful thing.

(“The Wisdom of No Escape,” pg. 3)

And at the beginning of his seminal book, “The Road Less Traveled,” M. Scott Peck wrote—

 Life is difficult.

This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult—once we truly understand and accept it—then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.

Most do not fully see this truth, that life is difficult.

Instead they moan more or less incessantly, noisily or subtly, about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if life should be easy. They voice their belief, noisily or subtly, that their difficulties represent a unique kind of affliction that should not be and that has somehow been especially visited upon them, or else upon their families, their tribe, their class, their nation, their race, or even their species, and not upon others. I know about this moaning because I have done my share.

Life is a series of problems. Do we want to moan about them or solve them? Do we want to teach our children to solve them?

Discipline is the basic set of tools we require to solve life’s problems. Without discipline we can solve nothing. With only some discipline we can solve only some problems. With total discipline we can solve all problems.

What makes life difficult is that the process of confronting and solving problems is a painful one. Problems, depending upon their nature, evoke in us frustration of grief or sadness or loneliness or guilt or regret or anger or fear or anxiety or anguish or despair. These are uncomfortable feelings, often very uncomfortable, often as painful as any kind of physical pain, sometimes equaling the very worst kind of physical pain. Indeed, it is because of the pain that events or conflicts engender in us all that we can call them problems. And since life poses an endless series of problems, life is always difficult and is full of pain as well as joy.

A paradigmatic shift is an experience where our view of life and our primary assumptions are turned on their head.  It’s a new way of seeing that once we start really seeing things in this new way, we can’t unsee.

For example, if we look within ourselves and see—actually truly see—how pervasively and deeply we assume and expect and want life to be easy, fun, relatively pain-free and low stress, and then we suddenly grasp how very incorrect this may be, how perhaps life isn’t something that can always be made easy and more comfortable, that perhaps life is at bottom difficult, uncertain, that stability and certainty are the exception, and only temporary, and that on a long enough timeline sickness, old age, death, loss, difficulty, loneliness, aloneness, all these grim things, are inevitable, inescapable, that would be a paradigmatic shift.

It would be tantamount to looking at the above figures and only seeing the vase (or the faces), and then suddenly seeing the opposite.  A figure-ground reversal has taken place.

What these authors and thinkers are attempting to communicate is how deeply engrained our assumptions and expectations are that life is supposed to be easy, comfortable, low stress, and that that assumption / expectation exacerbates and compounds so many of our problems, it makes life even more difficult, makes us even more unhappy and anxious.

The reality is that vast majority of us, of we human beings, go through life only seeing the vase (or the face, whichever we see most naturally and often), assuming that life is supposed to be this way, this vase-like experience of comfort, happiness, pleasure, ease, low stress, no loneliness and no awkwardness.  This *IS* what we all assume, it’s our default setting, it’s how we’re hard-wired—that comfort and ease and safety and the absence of stress and uncertainty and fear is how life is supposed to be.   We’re each born with this built-in expectation that life is supposed to be an easier and a more pleasant and happier affair than it likely is.

And so again and again, at nearly every turn, and with nearly every choice, we opt for the path of least resistance, the option that promises greater comfort and ease rather than challenge and difficulty.

In our relationships we’d rather be ruined by praise and flattery than perhaps bettered by a little criticism or debating a differing point of view.  We rarely slow down in life enough to really examine ourselves and to work on our conscience and our character.  We salve and numb ourselves with wine and drink, shop our stresses away, read frivolous books, turn to yoga and meditation, all in an effort to escape / lessen the background hum of whatever pain and stress and unhappiness and anxieties we might have.  Life is supposed to be happy and fun; love is supposed to be about romance, not work.  We are supposed to feel excited and cheery.  Days are supposed to be temperate, full of blue skies and puffy white clouds, not cold, damp, overcast, drizzly.  Again and again we work to tilt the balance toward fun, easiness, certainty, comfort.

What the above authors and thinkers are saying is that if we can begin to see life differently, if we can cultivate a paradigmatic shift in our way of seeing ourselves and life, then everything may paradoxically change for the better for us.  We may find more inner peace, become more grateful, a bit more easy-going, relaxed, less tense, less of a struggle.

How does it happen?  As an epiphany or an a-ha moment?  Or gradually?

Do you see the sharks?

My experience is that paradigmatic shifts tend to be epiphanous a-ha moments—breakthroughs, metanoias, startling figure-ground reversal type experiences.  Your life will never be the same afterwards as it was before.

One day something happens.  Something helps to break in the shell.  A heartbreak, divorce, death of a loved one, job loss, a significant rejection or loss or blow befalls us in some form.  Usually something negative, devastating or near devastating.  Something happens to us that’s a shock to the system, that causes us to begin delving deeper, to begin asking why, to begin examining our lives and ourselves.

Or at least it can.  Because the old ways and the old temptations are still there—the path of least resistance, self-numbing, going for ease and comfort and playing it safe.

So that’s the crux:

Do we rise to the occasion and begin asking these questions that normally we’re too timid too, that are taboo, that we don’t ask or speak of in polite company, that normally would frighten us (and those around us)?  Do we start looking for real answers, start reading the right effin’ books?

Or do we shrink from the questions and numb ourselves even more urgently out of even greater necessity, and thus go for comfort again?

Or do we opt for half-baked answers, turn to conventional solutions, start reading the comfortable feel-good books?

The old ways and the old temptations will still be there, wanting to be tried, again.

Or do we get it?  Does something change in us, change fundamentally, radically in how we look at life, ourselves, others?  Do our thinking and our perception change, does their level change, increase, deepen?  If it does, and if changes us fundamentally, changes how we relate to life and life’s difficulties, changes how we think and process things, changes our perspective, changes our heart and mind, then we may have just had a metanoia or a moment of satori.

Archaic Torso of Apollo – Rainer Maria Rilke

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit.  But his torso
still glows from inside like a lamp, in which
his gaze, now only slightly turned down, still

shines in all its power. Otherwise the curve of
the breast wouldn’t dazzle you so, and from the
light twist of the hips and thighs a smile wouldn’t
flow into that dark center where the generative

powers flared; otherwise this stone would stand
defaced under the transparent fall of the shoulders,
and wouldn’t shine like a wild animal’s fur;

it wouldn’t be breaking out, like a star, on
all sides.  For there is no place on this stone
that does not see you.  You must change your life.

 

Fulton J. Sheen: Lent

Reblogged from Rubber Tyres --> Smooth Rides:

"We can think of Lent as a time to eradicate evil or cultivate virtue, a time to pull up weeds or to plant good seeds. Which is better is clear, for the Christian ideal is always positive rather than negative. A person is great not by the ferocity of his hatred of evil, but by the intensity of his love for…

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Wise stuff! Reminds me of Burke's (attributed) words, paraphrasing--"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." And as Martin Luther King Jr wrote (and it's quoted in the post below this one on my blog [realtruelove.wordpress.com]), and again paraphrasing, cooperation with what is good and right is as much as a moral imperative as is noncooperation with what is evil / wrong." If we were to be really honest about ourselves and our society, I think we could all perhaps admit that (a) apathy is a problem, and (b) we tend to be more reluctant to stick our necks out in the direction of standing for something good and virtuous than abstaining from something bad and unjust. Actively doing real good--real charity and love--tends to be more difficult than refraining from doing bad. Wise words from Bishop Sheen!

Martin Luther King on Love (and Loving the Enemy)

The meaning of love is not to be confused with some sentimental outpouring. Love is much deeper than emotional bosh.

Jesus said, “Love your enemies.” We should be happy that he did not say, “Like your enemies.” It is almost impossible to like some people. “Like” is a sentimental and affectionate word. How can we be affectionate toward an enemy—toward a person whose avowed aim is to crush our very being and place innumerable stumbling blocks in our path? How can we like a person who is threatening our children and bombing our homes? That is impossible. But Jesus recognized that *love* is greater than *like.* When Jesus bids us to love our enemies, he is speaking neither of eros nor philia; he is speaking of agape—understanding and creative and redemptive goodwill for all men.

We are to love human beings not because we like them, nor because their ways appeal to us, nor even because they possess some type of divine spark; we are to love every person because God loves him.

Hate is too great a burden to bear. Somehow we must be able to stand up against our most bitter opponents and say: We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you. We cannot in good conscience obey your unjust laws, because noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. Throw us in jail, and we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still love you. But be assured that we’ll wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we will win our freedom, but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.

(adapted from “Loving Your Enemies,” in “The Strength to Love” by Martin Luther King, Jr., pp. 52-7)

The Pursuit of Happiness Doesn’t Always Make You Feel Happy—and, in Fact, it Shouldn’t; and Here’s Why

Reblogged from Full Catastrophe Living and Loving:

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Becoming a “better” person—becoming more centered, emotionally mature and stable, principled, conscientious, (yes, all of these nice adjectives and virtues I like to list), pensive, reflective, composed, affable, joyful, (you’re almost at the end of the list o’ adjectives), good-natured, kind-hearted, generous, patient, courageous, humorous, happy—isn’t always an easy or a happy and joyful process.  At times it can be quite difficult, quite a struggle—and even make us feel bad.

Read more… 1,786 more words

I posted this on one of my other blogs today. Much of what is said applies to Love as well.

.“Six months into my happiness project, although each day I felt more joy and less guilt, had more fun and less anxiety, the areas that had been toughest for me when I started were still the toughest.  I was continuing to struggle to keep my temper and to be generous.  In some ways, in fact, I had made myself less happy; I’d made myself far more aware of my faults, and I felt more disappointed with myself when I slipped.  My shortcomings stared up at me reproachfully, in the form of X marks instead of checkmarks, from the page of my Resolutions Chart. “One of my secrets to adulthood is ‘Happiness doesn’t always make you feel happy,’ and  a heightened awareness of my failings , though salutary, wasn’t bringing me happiness in the short term—but in the long term, I was sure, I’d be happier as a consequence of behaving better.  I was comforted by the words of my model Benjamin Franklin, who reflected on his own chart: ‘On the whole, though I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet as I was, by the endeavor, a better and happier man than I otherwise should have been had I not attempted it.’ ” (Gretchen Rubin, "The Happiness Project," pp. 163-4)

Passion & Reason: Following Your Head & Following Your Heart (or Tuning Both & Following Both)

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We’re all at the helm of something with an impressive amount of horsepower—this body, with its heart, ego, and genitalia, each full of their own passions, motivations, preferences, desires, aversions.  The ego wants fame, attention, power, immortality, runs on a sense of tit for tat and quid pro quo at best and exploitativeness at worst, wants to receive rather than give, does not want to die or suffer losses of any kind, and is afraid of feeling inferior, ashamed, inadequate.  This body, instinctively seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, wanting adventure, exercise sometimes and comfort at other times; plus it needs to fed and given rest and water regularly, and most of all wants to survive, wants to go on breathing.  And then there’s the “heart,” this heart that wants passion, emotion—to be loved, to feel a sense of belonging, connectedness, to be appreciated. And it’s no great secret what the genitals want.  And, in general, we as human beings want to laugh, feel alive, have our way, have things go our way, not be forced to change too much nor too quickly.

All that horsepower—all those powerful engines with a lot of horsepower—competing to drive and steer us.

And not a lot of braking and steering power.

That’s what reason is and where it comes in.  Reasoning, critical thinking, wisdom, discernment, learning, conscience, principles—these are our braking and steering systems.  These are the last to develop, and often don’t develop very fully, because our emotions and ego and genitals are running the show and not willing to give up their time at the controls.

Unless something stops us dead in our tracks—a massive betrayal, a near-death experience or cancer scare or heart attack, or a moment of clarity (like the Buddha had, or like the author of Ecclesiastes must have had) where we see very clearly how fleeting life is, how vain all of our strivings and schemings are.

Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon which your reason and your judgment wage war against passion and your appetite.

Would that I could be the peacemaker in your soul, that I might turn the discord and the rivalry of your elements into oneness and melody.

But how shall I, unless you yourselves be also the peacemakers, nay, the lovers of all your elements?

Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul.

If either your sails or our rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas.

For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction.

Therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion; that it may sing;

And let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may live through its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes.

I would have you consider your judgment and your appetite even as you would two loved guests in your house.

Surely you would not honour one guest above the other; for he who is more mindful of one loses the love and the faith of both.

Among the hills, when you sit in the cool shade of the white poplars, sharing the peace and serenity of distant fields and meadows—then let your heart say in silence, “God rests in reason.”

And when the storm comes, and the mighty wind shakes the forest, and thunder and lightning proclaim the majesty of the sky—then let your heart say in awe, “God moves in passion.”

And since you are a breath In God’s sphere, and a leaf in God’s forest, you too should rest in reason and move in passion.

– Kahlil Gibran, “The Prophet”

“Appetitus Rationi Pareat”—”Let your desires be ruled by reason.” – Cicero

“Self-respect is the fruit of discipline; the sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself.” – Rabbi Abraham Heschel

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Passion is feeling of great depth. The fact that a feeling is uncontrolled is no indication whatsoever that it is any deeper than a feeling that is disciplined. To the contrary, psychiatrists know well the truth that ‘Shallow brooks are noisy’ and ‘Still waters run deep.’ We must not assume that someone whose feelings are modulated and controlled is not a passionate person.

And while one should not be slave to one’s feelings, self discipline does not mean the squashing of one’s feelings into nonexistence. I frequently tell my patients that their feelings are their slaves and that the art of self discipline is like the art of slaving owning. First of all, one’s feelings are the source of one’s energy; they provide the horsepower, or slave power, that makes it possible for us to accomplish the task of living. Since they work for us, we should treat them with respect.

“One type of slave-owner does not discipline his slaves, gives them no structure, sets them no limits, provides them with no direction and does not make it clear who is the boss. What happens, of course, is that in due time his slaves stop working and begin moving into the mansion, raiding the liquor cabinet and breaking the furniture, and soon the slave-owner finds he is the slave of his slaves, living in chaos.

The opposite style of slave-ownership, which the guilt-ridden neurotic so often exerts over his or her feelings, is equally self-destructive. In this style the slave-owner is so obsessed with control and fear that his slaves (feelings) might get out of control and so determined that they should cause him no trouble that he routinely beats them into submission and punishes them severely at the first sign of any potency. The result is that in relatively short order the slaves become less and less productive as their will is sapped by the harsh treatment they receive. Or else their will turns more and more toward covert rebellion. And if the process is carried out long enough, one night the owner’s prediction finally comes true and the slaves (feelings) rise up and burn down the mansion, frequently with the owner inside. Such is the genesis of certain psychoses and overwhelming neuroses.

The proper management of one’s feelings clearly lies along a complex (and therefore not simple or easy) balanced middle path, requiring constant judgment and continuing adjustment. Here the owner treats his feelings (slaves) with respect, nurturing them with good food, shelter and medical care, listening and responding to their voices, encouraging them, inquiring as to their health, yet also organizing them, limiting them, deciding clearly between them, redirecting them and teaching them, all the while leaving no doubt as to who is the boss.

This is the path of healthy self-discipline.

Among the feelings that must be so disciplined is the feeling of love. As I have indicated, the feeling of love is not genuine love. It is to be respected and nurtured for the creative energy it brings, but if it is allowed to run rampant, the result will not be genuine love but confusion and unproductivity.

(M. Scott Peck, “The Road Less Traveled,” my abridgement of pp. 156-8)

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Whether the above illustrations are indeed correct or not, it does help make a similar point to the excerpts and quotes above: that the good life (our best self) will require a wise (i.e. disciplined) mix of both head and heart, feelings and thinking.

Our capacity to balance out and manage our passions and emotions with our reasoning will depend in large part on the quality of our thinking and reasoning—how asleep (disconnected from reality, lost in a world of fantasy) or awake (clear-headed and adjusted to reality) we are, how lost or not lost we are, and what sorts of books we’re reading.

Make no mistake about it, the quality of our relationship with reality, the quality of our thinking, and the amount of perspective we have, how aware and mindful we are, depends in large part on the quality of the thinking and the amount of perspective and self-awareness of those we surround ourselves with, *as well as* the quality (wisdom) of the books we and they choose to read.

Love (& a Whitman’s Sampler)

Image from: http://salvatoregigantephotography.com/blog/?p=585
(& for more on the sampler, see the link to the video at the bottom of this post

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“For children love is a feeling; for adults, it is a decision. Children wait to learn if their love is true by seeing how long it lasts; adults make their love true by never wavering from their commitment.”

― Orson Scott Card, “Pathfinder,” pg. 360

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For children, or for those in whom love has not yet matured, love tends to be a passive / reactive and emotional experience. Love is thought of as a feeling. According to this perspective, the more “real” the love—the better the love-match, the better the two are matched, the more the two people are “supposed” to be together—then the more intense the feeling (of “love,” infatuation, limerance, romance) and the longer and more effortlessly this feeling will last.

When the intense feelings for the other person begin to wane—as they always always always will—then the doubts begin to creep in: “I don’t love him/her” “Maybe I never did.” “What if this is the wrong person?” “What happened to all of the intense feelings?” “Why am I not tingling inside and as happy around this person as I used to be?” Et cetera.

The next step is usually to focus on trying to resurrect and reignite the feeling, the spark—date night, books on how to rekindle the feeling, couple’s therapy, et cetera—; or end the relationship and look elsewhere for someone new who will reignite the feeling, make us come back to life, make us feel alive, who we can talk to (and who will listen to us) effortlessly for hours, who seems to magically understand us, and who seems deeply into us and to love all of our little eccentricities and uniquenesses.

But there is also another—a third—and a much less tried way. It is the way of (what Covey calls) the “character ethic,” it is the way of inner growth and true self-development, it is the way that is advocated by and written about by the likes of David Schnarch, M. Scott Peck, Erich Fromm, Stephen Covey, Murray Bowen, Thích Nhất Hạnh, (and you can add St. Paul and Jesus and the Gospel writers to this mix as well).

These writers and thinkers all realized that the more a person becomes—not externally, in terms of prestige and power and physical beauty and worldly influence; but rather internally, meaning the deeper, the more reflective, the more self-developed (emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually, and morally), and the better able to cope (in a non-medicated way) with daily life anxieties and stresses—then the more that will wean the person from relying so intensely on the feeling of love (and rekindling these) to motivate him or her into acting lovingly, and the more the person will behave in ways that are consistently warm, respectful, thoughtful, intelligent, virtuous, caring, considerate, good-hearted, win-win.

Therapy (of any sort) will always work best when it focuses on the self-development of the person or persons coming in for therapy. If you want a more loving relationship or marriage, consider working on yourself and becoming a more loving partner and human being, consider reading and thinking more and trying to learn more and more what love actually might be (in other words, begin weaning yourself of the likely childish worldview that envisions love as feeling and perhaps begin investing a bit more in the worldview where love is viewed as an expression of our level of person / personal development (depth of character, amount of spiritual growth, level of development of our conscience [Kohlberg]).

“For children love is a feeling; for adults, it is a decision. Children wait to learn if their love is true by seeing how long it lasts; adults make their love true by never wavering from their commitment.”

And to become more mature in love—to become an adult in love—means developing those traits and capacities within ourselves that will allow us to deliver better on our end of our commitment and our decision to love another.

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Now go on out and get your sweets a Whitman’s Sampler for Valentine’s Day!

Daym Drops Reviews the Whitman’s Sampler for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon

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Related articles:

• How to Fall in Love Again (realtruelove.wordpress.com)

• Limerence and the Biochemical Roots of Love Addiction (huffingtonpost.com)

• What Is Limerance, And How Long Does It Normally Last? (abcnews.go.com)