There’s a lot of sickness, cold calculation, hatred and violence in the world. It’s easy to forget the opposite is also true and resign ourselves to the ills of the world. I don’t believe I can directly or easily change other people – nor do I necessarily have the ‘right’ to do so.
What I can do is start with myself and trust that it makes a difference.
There are three things I consider important:
- Look after myself
- Live with passion
- Choose compassion and peace.
1. Look After Myself
Maybe you’ve heard the story (or similar) about the favourite uncle who lived to 105 years smoking 2 packs of cigarettes a day and staying stubbornly overweight all his life. The conclusion is the secret to long life is to smoke and eat a lot.
Clearly this is false logic.
The uncle (if he indeed was real) was an exception and not the rule. Long life came despite the nicotine and excessive calories, not because of it. Just because it’s possible to live a long life no matter how I abuse myself doesn’t make it probable.
Looking after myself improves my chances I maintain the inner resources for a full, happy and meaningful life. It’s about looking after my physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health.
It’s about:
- choosing to put things into my body that are healthy
- keeping in shape
- developing my awareness of and listening to my emotions
- constantly questioning my assumptions and beliefs in the sure knowledge that I can never be certain of anything (except that I can never be certain)
- seeking out new experiences, people, ways of seeing the world, ideas, bodies of learning
- finding and maintaining a spiritual practice.
2. Live With Passion
Lisis over at Quest For Balance recently published an article ‘The Passion Paradox’ about passion. She writes about what she calls the modern day ’snake oil’ salespeople promising easy riches if only you follow your passion in life. She points out the same false logic as the ‘favourite uncle’ story – if Mr/Mrs X followed their life’s passion and got rich it does not mean everyone will do the same.
There are many people in the world who have accumulated a lot of wealth – and there are far more who haven’t. Wealth, of course, doesn’t define any of us as human beings unless we allow it. Passion is much closer to defining who we are.
As Lisis writes:
we should bring our passion into anything we do, with no expectation of profit
Passion is about how I manifest myself in the world – defining what I choose to do and what I give of myself when I do it. If I’m passionate about what I do, results are secondary. I might change the world. I might get ridiculously wealthy.
I might not.
If I do something out of passion – I do it for myself, not for others. If I live with passion – with all my resources – mind, heart and soul – the results don’t matter. When the results matter to other people, when what I do is valuable to them, I might get some feedback. I might receive praise, appreciation, and yes, perhaps even money. The more people touched by what I do, the more I’ll likely receive.
It’s about:
- Knowing what gets me excited, interested, motivated
- Doing things that give me pride and a sense of achievement
- Caring about what I do and how I do it
- Eliminating as many of the things that don’t excite me and I don’t care about.
3. Choose Compassion and Peace
How I relate and treat the people around me is a choice I make.
When I choose compassion over hate I build bridges, heal wounds in me and others, bring gentleness instead of harshness.When I choose peace over violence I calm things down, I connect rather than separate and I create in place of destruction.
Most importantly when I’m compassionate and peaceful with others I’m also loving to myself. And that’s much more powerful than hate and violence. It may not be as obvious, may not be as immediate but it’s effects are far deeper and last much longer.
It’s about:
- Valuing each and every human being
- Reaching out when I feel like withdrawing
- Holding out my hand not my fist
- Taking responsibility for my life and not pretending I’m a victim of others.
Finally
Healthy living doesn’t guarantee a long happy life. Following your passion won’t necessarily make you rich. Choosing compassion and peace won’t eliminate hate and violence.
These things don’t come with any guarantees – but that’s not a good reason to choose the opposite.
if you have any doubts!
.. now there’s a depressing read (important, but not exactly uplifting!). To get some balance I dip into something short and light (Kahlil Gibran’s 
works especially well)
