“Once you choose hope, anything’s possible.” [Christopher Reeve]

CAUSE OF THE WEEK!

I am always right, and you should probably just agree with me — but I don’t want everyone to blindly follow me and do what I do.  There are a lot of problems; we should probably split up.

Every week, I will show you something to get excited about!  If you don’t get excited, hang out until next week.  Different strokes, folks.

Even better, if you or someone you know is doing something the rest of us should know about, leave me a note and let me know.  Maybe you’ll get me excited, and I can help.  I would love to help!

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Anne Lamott says that “hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come.”  This is the story of an organization doing just that.

[Confession:  This post feels like cheating two-fold.  First, I’m cheating by making my post on the virtue of “hope” the story of Project HOPE.  Second, I’m cheating by making another Cause of the Week something I am intensely passionate about.]

Project HOPE “delivers health education, medicines, medical supplies and volunteer help where needed.”  Since 1958, they’ve worked to make healthcare available to people around the globe.  Committed to long-term sustainable healthcare, they educate health professionals and community health workers, improve local health facilities, fight diseases such as TB, HIV/AIDS and diabetes and provide humanitarian assistance through donated medicines, medical supplies and volunteer medical help.  They’re “dedicated to providing lasting solutions to health problems” and believe in helping people to help themselves.  They are reaching out to more than thirty-five countries.

So why do I care?  Well, I’m not sure if you know it or not, but I’m actually pretty passionate about providing medical care to underserved areas.  Domestically and abroad, many people don’t have access to quality medical care.  Part of the reason I am actively pursuing health care education is to be able to effect positive change in this bleak situation.

You can help by donating, volunteering, or simply spreading the word.

 

Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.
Lin Yutang

“Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.” [Eric Fromm]

Love has been defined as an intense feeling of affection.  William Carlos Williams calls it “the response of our deepest natures to one another” and Zora Neale Hurston says it “makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.”  You’re hard-pressed to find someone who isn’t interested in romantic love — teenage girls drawing hearts around the name of their crush, college-aged ladies obsessing over finding the perfect mate, women of all ages packing the theaters to watch The Notebook (confession — I’ve never seen it).  And romantic love is important.  Love, romance, passion — these are things that make life seem full.

But love is a broader topic, as well — meant to be extended to not just everyone in your life, but to everyone you encounter and to humanity at large.  In fact, as David Byrne notes, “sometimes it’s a form of love just to talk to somebody that you have nothing in common with and still be fascinated by their presence.” 

It’s critical to remember that every person in your life craves love; it’s crucial to give love as freely as you wish to receive it.  Mother Teresa wanted us to know that the “hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.”  You can, and should, have an active part in helping to spread as much love in the world as you can, because love “unlocks doors and windows that weren’t even there before” (Mignon McLaughlin) and “is never a waste of time” (Astrid Aluda).

Once you’ve acknowledged that you should love everyone, it may take some practice to learn how.  I am one of those people who believes that loving yourself is essential to loving anyone else.  Loving yourself and loving others is one of those things that should be a lot easier than it is.  The link provided will give you a lot of awesome insight into getting started.  Among my favorite tips (at the bottom) are loving genuinely, accepting who you love for who they are, and not being ashamed to love.  The ultimate tip provided, however is this: Recognize that any feeling of jealousy is a clear sign of fear. Therefore the most appropriate response is to begin loving again (since we cannot love and fear at the same time).

One final thought worth noting is that many people are familiar with the feeling of love.  What might be even more necessary to familiarize ourselves with is the action of love.

 

Love doesn’t sit there like a stone; it has to be made, like bread;
remade all the time, made new.
Ursula K. LeGuin

“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” [Mother Teresa]

At this time of year, it’s particularly fitting for most to talk about the virtue of peace.  After all, we are supposed to find within ourselves goodwill to all men throughout this season, in order to create peace on earth.

One of the most poignant tales of peace is the story of the Christmas truce.  If you’re not familiar with the story, you should definitely review the page in depth.  December 24, 1941 was the thick of World War I.  But 100,000 or so British and German troops on the Western Front thought it might be more important to honor the spirit of the season through a cessation of hostilities.  “The Germans began by placing candles on their trenches and on Christmas trees, then continued the celebration by singing Christmas carols. The British responded by singing carols of their own. The two sides continued by shouting Christmas greetings to each other. Soon thereafter, there were excursions across the ‘No Man’s Land’, where small gifts were exchanged, such as food, tobacco and alcohol, and souvenirs such as buttons and hats. The artillery in the region fell silent that night. The truce also allowed a breathing spell where recently-fallen soldiers could be brought back behind their lines by burial parties. Joint services were held. The fraternisation was not, however, without its risks; some soldiers were shot by opposing forces. In many sectors, the truce lasted through Christmas night, but it continued until New Year’s Day in others.”

If these men could find peace within themselves during such troubled times, can’t we find it today?  Baruch Spinoza wants you to know “peace is not mere absence of war, but is a virtue that springs from a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, and justice.”  Find ways to bring peace to your life.  Here are some places to begin, if you can’t come up with any on your own.

Peace
United For Peace
Peace Action

 

It isn’t enough to talk about peace.  One must believe in it.  And it isn’t enough to believe in it.  One must work at it.
Eleanor Roosevelt

“We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.” [Joseph Campbell]

The fact that the first virtue mentioned in the the tale of the two wolves is joy does not escape me.  As far as I’m concerned, joy — having it and spreading it — is one of the true meanings of life.

Joy is defined in the dictionary as an emotion of great delight or happiness caused by something exceptionally good.  It speaks to living, as I like to say, the depth and breadth of your life instead of just the length of it.

If you are not especially familiar with Buddhism, you are probably at least familiar with the concept that life is suffering.  However, click here to learn what they have to say about finding joy among all the pain life can inflict (hint: you have to open up fully to your experience, not close down).  Charlotte Davis Kasl, who wrote Finding Joy, notes that “joy comes from spontaneity and going where the spirit leads us.”

It’s not as easy as it sounds, but actively pursuing joy is important.  Joy is “the holy fire that keeps our purpose warm and our intelligence aglow,” according to Helen Keller.  There is evidence that the path to joy can help relieve depression (which I have been known to suffer from), so maybe it’s pretty clear why I think it’s important.  The thing is, it’s not just me.

Soulful Living has an excellent series on finding joy, each article about how to bring happiness into your life.  And if you are truly intent on harnessing all the joy life has to offer, you can find more helpful tips here — because “when you’re happy, you feel better, look better, and live longer.”  They make it sounds like joy really is serious business, and they’re not making it up!  Studies show that simple activities really do increase joy, and joy increases your life span.  Progressive muscle relaxation increased feelings of joy and relaxation in a study of 42 students published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology last year.  Children who exercised aerobically for 15 minutes felt significantly more joyful afterward than those who watched a 15-minute video, according to a study published in Perception of Motor Skills last year.  Recent evidence also suggests that grown-ups find joy in brief bouts of aerobic exercise.  And last year, a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology showed a correlation between longevity and positive feelings in the diaries of a group of nuns. Those who lived the longest expressed the most joy about life.

Among my favorite tips on the list: get outside, pat a pet, know you’re loved, revel in simplicity, sleep in (quite possibly the ultimate pleasure in life), take a detour, croon in your car, and get active instead of watching TV.  Which ones are your favorites?

 

Let a joy keep you.  Reach out your hands and take it when it runs by.
Carl Sandburg

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting. [e.e. cummings]

If this blog is to be my true voice, it’s important that I never stop fighting to be myself.  An important part of that is to take a very warts-and-all approach to letting you into my life.

I am seeking a meaningful life, but I don’t have all the answers.

Re-read that if you wish, because I’m not likely to ever say it again.

Even more than not having all the answers, I have often let myself lose sight of the few that I once held so dear.  In college, I thought that the world would open like a flower as I stepped out into it; I fervently believed I could and would leave my mark.  Needless to say, as I sit here now, I don’t feel that I have.

But after a long journey through very dark times, I believe again that I will.  And I’m starting now.  Well, I started a couple of years ago when I began the arduous task of intense self-exploration.  In that time, I reclaimed my favorite childhood legend and created this blog.  Now I am going to explore the legend (and why it means so much to me) more closely in a series of posts on the virtues I am trying to open myself up to and embody more on a daily basis.

While you’re waiting (on baited breath, no doubt) for my posts, check out this one on the Top 10 Ways to Start Living a More Meaningful Life, especially if you agree that “too many of us live like goldfish, swimming in the same orbit day in and day out feeling uninspired, tired, bored and sometimes worse.”

I will let you find your own highlights, but this was mine: Make an effort to release the negative aspects of your past.  Try not to be imprisoned by your past.  Do not define yourself by your past.

 

It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are. 
~e.e. cummings