I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker; And, in short, I was afraid. T. S. Eliot
Most of us do the best we can on a daily basis. The problem is that our personal best changes on a day to day basis based on a lot of variables. If you have ever suffered from what I refer to as “functional retardation” you know what I mean. When we are under continual stress or dealing with a crisis situation, all sorts of biochemical changes occur in our bodies. One of these is the release of the stress hormone epinephrine.
Our pupils dilate, our blood pressure goes up, our ability to communicate is reduced, our ability to compromise is reduced, and even the way we use language changes. Although a lot of our normal functions are diminished, these are just the times when we may expect the most from ourselves.
One of the ways that we can call forth our personal best despite the circumstances in which we find ourselves is to work through fear. Fear is “the mind killer”. Paraphrasing this statement and using it as a personal affirmation can be really helpful. “Fear is the mind killer, I will face my fear, I will let the fear pass through me, And only I will remain.”
The important point of this statement is that fear comes, passes, and leaves. It does not adhere to us unless we grab hold, hang onto, and internalize it. Facing our fear may also involve embracing it and letting it go. Looking it in the eye, acknowledging it, then setting it free as being something that is not solid or lasting but meant to pass through and on. When we identify with our fears by making negative statements about ourselves, we have forgotten who we truly are. Each of us is a precious one-of-a-kind event that is necessary for the world to move forward. There is something that only we can do, a destiny that we create and fulfill for ourselves that impacts the whole. We may not feel that we are worthy or entitled but that is simply a byproduct of fear and as unsubstantial. It simply is not true.
We have more impact on the lives of others and the way things play out than we can ever imagine. We have more power than we can contemplate. Perhaps understanding the magnitude of this is the greatest fear of all. For then we understand that we are responsible for our own destiny and must let go of any thoughts of blaming anything outside of ourselves for who we are. In reality, this understanding sets us free. For though we rarely can control the situations that come to us in life or the word and actions of others, we can always control what we do with them. Situations come to pass, they never come to stay. And when we allow them to pass and disappear into the past like shadows, our vibrant spiritual selves remain, powerful in the present moment. That is the constant, the unchanging, in an ever changing world.
Be good to yourself. You truly deserve it!
Most of us do the best we can on a daily basis. The problem is that our personal best changes on a day to day basis based on a lot of variables. If you have ever suffered from what I refer to as “functional retardation” you know what I mean. When we are under continual stress or dealing with a crisis situation, all sorts of biochemical changes occur in our bodies. One of these is the release of the stress hormone epinephrine.
Our pupils dilate, our blood pressure goes up, our ability to communicate is reduced, our ability to compromise is reduced, and even the way we use language changes. Although a lot of our normal functions are diminished, these are just the times when we may expect the most from ourselves.
One of the ways that we can call forth our personal best despite the circumstances in which we find ourselves is to work through fear. Fear is “the mind killer”. Paraphrasing this statement and using it as a personal affirmation can be really helpful.
“Fear is the mind killer, I will face my fear, I will let the fear pass through me, And only I will remain.” The important point of this statement is that fear comes, passes, and leaves. It does not adhere to us unless we grab hold, hang onto, and internalize it. Facing our fear may also involve embracing it and letting it go. Looking it in the eye, acknowledging it, then setting it free as being something that is not solid or lasting but meant to pass through and on.
When we identify with our fears by making negative statements about ourselves, we have forgotten who we truly are. Each of us is a precious one-of-a-kind event that is necessary for the world to move forward. There is something that only we can do, a destiny that we create and fulfill for ourselves that impacts the whole. We may not feel that we are worthy or entitled but that is simply a byproduct of fear and as unsubstantial. It simply is not true. We have more impact on the lives of others and the way things play out than we can ever imagine. We have more power than we can contemplate. Perhaps understanding the magnitude of this is the greatest fear of all. For then we understand that we are responsible for our own destiny and must let go of any thoughts of blaming anything outside of ourselves for who we are.
In reality, this understanding sets us free. For though we rarely can control the situations that come to us in life or the word and actions of others, we can always control what we do with them.
Situations come to pass, they never come to stay. And when we allow them to pass and disappear into the past like shadows, our vibrant spiritual selves remain, powerful in the present moment. That is the constant, the unchanging, in an ever changing world.
Be good to yourself. You truly deserve it!
KISS YOUR LIFE
I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel that it’s my vehicle that is essential. I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel that it’s my education that is essential. I don’t think what is essential about me is my house or my car or my clothes. What is essential about me? Well, I think what is essential is that I live and embrace life right now, wherever I am. I grab it in my arms! Don’t spend time crying about yesterday…yesterday is over with! I forgive my past. I forgive the people who’ve hurt me. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life blaming and pointing a finger. I get so sick and tired of hearing people gripe about what their parents did to them. You know what your parents did to you? The best thing they could do. The best thing they knew how, the only thing in many cases that they knew how. Nobody has set out maliciously to hurt their child, unless they were psychotic.
Can you forgive? Can you forget? Can you say it’s “OK”? Can you say, “They are people, too”? and you take them in your arms and embrace them? Then take your self in your arms. Find out again that you are special, that you are unique, that you are wondrous, that in all the world there is only one of you. Hug yourself, you sweet old thing! Sure you’ve screwed up, and sometimes you do dumb things and you forget that you are a human being, but the most wonderful thing about you is that, no matter where you are, you have potential to grow.
You are just starting. There is only this much of you now, and there is an infinite amount to discover and to find! Don’t spend your time crying! Forgive others! Forgive yourself. Forgive yourself for not being perfect and accept responsibility for your own life.
“You have your brush, you have your colours, you paint paradise, then in you go.” Do it! Take different colours and paint your paradise. You can do that! You can do it right now. It’s your life that is essential.
I don’t know how many of you are acquainted with Arthur Miller’s wonderful play called After the Fall. It’s probably one of the most underrated works of American literature. He wrote it right after the suicide of Marilyn Monroe, who had been his wife, and he tried to ask the question I tried to ask myself earlier, and that maybe many of you have asked yourselves: What could I have done to have saved someone in my life? This was a play that said, “I have to learn to forgive. Others and myself.” In it he has a beautiful thing that I’d like to share with you. One of the healthier characters says this: “I think it is a mistake to ever look for hope outside of yourself. One day the house smells like fresh bread, and the next, smoke and blood. One day you faint because the gardener cuts his finger. Within a week you’re climbing over corpses of children bombed in a terrorist attack. What hope can there be if that is so?
One must take one’s life into one’s own arms, and kiss it.” It doesn’t matter who you have hurt, if you’ve learned not to hurt again. It doesn’t matter what mistakes you’ve made as long as you don’t make them again. As long as you learn, as long as you’re willing to take your life in your own hands, and kiss it and go on from there. Then there is growth. Then there is life!
THE ART OF
GETTING ALONG
Sooner or later people, if they are wise, discover that life is a mixture of good days and bad, victory and defeat, give and take.
They learn that a person’s size is often measured by the size of the thing it takes to get his or her goat….that the conquest of petty irritations is vital to his or her success. They learn that they who lose their temper usually lose. They learn that carrying a chip on their shoulder is the quickest way to get into a fight. They learn that buck-passing acts as a boomerang. They learn that carrying tales and gossip about others is the easiest way to become unpopular.
They learn that everyone is human and that they can help to make the day happier for others by smiling and saying “Good morning!” They learn that giving others a mental lift by showing appreciation and praise is the best way to lift their own spirits. They learn that the world will not end when they fail or make an error; that there is always another day and another chance. They learn that listening is frequently more important than talking, and that they can often make a friend by letting other people tell their troubles. They learn that all people have burnt toast for breakfast now and then and that they shouldn’t let their grumbling get them down. They learn that people are not any more difficult to get along with in one place than another and that “getting along” depends about ninety-eight percent on their own behavior.
I STOOD YESTERDAY.
I CAN STAND TODAY.
I have been through many challenges of life. When people ask me what has kept me going through the troubles that come to all of us, I always reply, “I stood yesterday. I can stand today. And I will not permit myself to think about what might happen tomorrow.”
I have known want and struggle and anxiety and despair. I have always had to work beyond the limit of my strength. As I look back upon my life, I see it as a battlefield strewn with the wrecks of dead dreams and broken hopes and shattered illusions….a battle in which I always fought with the odds tremendously against me, and which has left me scarred and bruised and maimed.
Yet I have no pity for myself; no tears to shed over the past and gone shadows; no envy for the women who have been spared all I have gone through. For I have lived. They only existed. I have drunk the cup of life down to its very dregs. They have only sipped the bubbles on top of it. I know things they will never know. I see things to which they are blind. It is only the women whose eyes have been washed clear with tears who get the broad vision that makes them little sisters to all the world.
I have learned in the great University of Hard Knocks a philosophy that no woman who has had an easy life ever acquires. I have learned to live each day as it comes and not to borrow trouble by dreading the morrow. It is the dark menace of the picture that makes cowards of us. I put that dread from me because experience has taught me that when the time comes that I so fear, the strength and wisdom to meet it will be given me. Little annoyances no longer have the power to affect me. After you have seen your whole edifice of happiness topple and crash in ruins about you, it never matters to you again that a servant forgets to put doilies under the finger bowls, or the cook spills the soup.
I have learned not to expect too much of people, and so I can still get happiness out of the friend who isn’t quite true to me or the acquaintance who gossips. Above all, I have acquired a sense of humor, because there were so many things over which I had either to cry or laugh. And when a woman can joke over her troubles instead of having hysterics, nothing can ever hurt her much again. I do not regret the hardships I have known, because through them I have touched life at every point I have lived. And it was worth the price I had to pay. 2slL]�Nr/
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