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Up Close And Personal
Forget Me
I have a magnet on my frig that is there specifically to remind me daily of something that is important. It says, "Oh yeah, I keep forgetting! It's not about me!" I'm glad I found those words and have them captured for times when I can feel out of sorts with myself or people around me. Yes, that can happen to all of us, especially during times of stress, lack of rest or plain old selfishness. Even old habits we have conquered can work themselves back into the fabric of our lives if we aren't careful. Our society is so geared toward feelings that we sometimes forget there is something much more important and that is facts.
For most of us, our most powerful sense of meaning comes when we make a contribution that matters. The contributions I am talking about are not material things, but something like love, a smile, a kind word, a pat on the back. When we help someone with a problem, someone in physical, emotional or spiritual need, there is something that happens inside of us that is hard to explain. But it is healthy, it is contagious, it's worth becoming a habit.
This section has been devoted to looking at problems we can have with accepting our self or growing through problems that can potentially lead to life devastating consequences. But for this post, let's get our mind off self and realize there are people all around us that need what we can give them, someone that really cares.
A local Mississippi author, Shane Stanford, has written a wonderful book, You Can't Do EVERYthing...So Do SOMEthing: Small Ways to Change the World. He is right! With our own problems that overwhelm us at times, we wonder how we can do a thing about the longed-for cure for cancer, the AIDS patients in Zimbabwe or our own down turned economy. We can't change those things singlehandedly. But we can find a need and fill it somewhere. I can assure you, we don't have to look far. We are a nation of such luxury, that we sometimes forget there are poverty level people all around us.
It's important to remember that the "things" that make us feel good, in the long run, lack meaning. Life lived on a
deeper level, thinking of others makes a difference. This has been researched and proven for years. More recently I found that a Professor Carl Thoresen, at The Spirituality and Health Institute in Santa Clara University did a study and found that people who volunteer an average of 2 hours a week throughout their lives have a 40% lower mortality rate than those who don't! He is saying that regular volunteering actually is associated with longer life. There's just something about forgetting self and reaching out to others.
Holidays are a good time to start putting others first, as long as we remember seasonal thoughtfulness is not a lifestyle. I once read an anonymous quote that stuck with me. It said, "Life is not fair, but life is not fair for everyone. So that makes it fair." That means there are a lot of hurting people around us. As the song goes, "Go light the world"!
"It is one of the most beautiful compensations of
this life that no man can sincerely try to help
another without helping himself."
~Ralph Waldo Emerson.~
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