Are you about the “walk” or the “talk”?
Monday, May 26, 2008 was Memorial Day here in the US. It’s a day set aside to pay tribute to those who have died while in military service to this country. Like many such holidays in our nation, much of the original meaning has been lost, however, and most of us (myself included) think of it primarily as a day off of work. Fortunately for me, I recently woke up–not just intellectually, but all of me, heart, mind, and spirit–to how unappreciative I have been to those serving in our armed forces.
Wake Up Call
Mark Shields, columnist, commentator, and former Marine spoke with forceful elegance about what WE–yes, I mean all US citizens, not just the president or congress–have created for our soldiers and ourselves. Here are Mark Shields potent words (emphasis mine):
“…we went to war against a country that had never attacked us, that never threatened us, on the bogus claim that that country had weapons of mass destruction which were a threat to us.
And it was not a moral war, and it was not a just war. It was a war in which the United States sullied, stained and repealed one of the great American values, that is that, in wartime, war demands equality of sacrifice.
All the sacrifice in this war has been borne by the 1 percent of Americans who are in uniform and their families. The rest of us have been quietly by, especially those of us who opposed the war, and been moral defectors.
We haven’t protested the fact that this is a war that our children and grandchildren will pay for. We haven’t even — we’ve blithely accepted tax cuts, and no draft, and no burden, paid no price, bore no burden, and accepted leadership that demanded nothing of us, and we’ve demanded nothing of them.”
When I heard these words, they stung. I knew Shields was right. Sure I have been to Washington to march protesting the war. Sure I have written to my elected representatives asking them to come to their senses and stop this insanity. Sure I have sent care packages and prayers to my Army officer family member now serving his 2nd tour in Iraq. Sure I have been working to get Barack Obama elected as president to help bring our country back from this moral abyss.
At the same time, however, I know that I truly suffer no hardship on a day-to-day basis. Unlike past wars when Americans planted Victory Gardens, rationed goods, held drives to recycle materials necessary for munitions manufacturing, bought war stamps or war bonds, this “war on terror” requires only that civilians stay scared and go shopping. Our “sacrifice” is our peace of mind and our credit score. By contrast, our military families pay with years of lost family time, jobs that get taken away in their absence, 
psychological or physical wounds they bring back home, and more.
Actions to Support the Troops
So, while I can’t single-handedly bring our troops home, nor solve the pain they bear, I can put my money where my mouth is (literally). Of course, so can you. Below are ways you can support our troops with more than slogans, prayers, or a fleeting thought. If you know of other organizations that are helping soldiers and their families, please put a link in the comments area.
- America Supports You — lists numerous ways to offer support to troops (includes financial assistance, care packages, family member support, scholarships, support for wounded)
- SoldiersAngels — offers a variety of ways to support soldiers during and after deployment
- Forgotten Soldiers Outreach — allows you to write to soldiers or send them care packages
- AnySoldier — gives you contact info for deployed troops along with their specific requests for care packages
A soldier in Iraq can’t see your ribbon,
Or the flag at your front door.
But a letter they hold in their hands,
To them means so much more.~ Supporter Liam Sweeny (from Any Soldier website)
Is the US economy a metaphor for our lives?
Downturn. Crisis. Recession. Stimulus package. Tax breaks. Pink slips. Foreclosures. Falling stock prices. Overvalued. Overpriced. Unregulated. These are some of the words being used to describe the current state of the US economy. Words you’re not likely to hear–at least in mainstream media and definitely not from politicians–are greed, lust, gluttony, foolhardy, crazy, unrealistic, unhealthy, disconnected.
Now, in no way am I saying that people deserve to lose their jobs, their homes, or their retirement savings. I know there is much hardship that many are now facing due to the shifting sands of economic fortune. I do think, however, that their are many ways in which we ourselves brought on this reality. Here are a few.
Spending more money than we have to spend. I got my first credit card my freshman year in college. Though I’ve been responsible with how I use it most of the time, I have gotten myself into debt (revolving debt that stayed with me for months) three times in my life (in 17 years of credit card use, mind you). While there are plenty of forces outside of ourselves that encourage us to spend copiously, the true fault lies at our own feet. We are the ones who choose to buy it now and pay for it later. Now we’re finding out what paying for it later can look like.
Confusing stuff with a price tag with stuff of value. Yes, the media tells us that trinkets, toys, and the telltale symbols of the “good life” are what we need, but again, we’re the ones buying that line and filling our lives with many things that ultimately have little to no real value to us. Sure there are material things I’m grateful to have and some items which I truly treasure. The problem for most of us is that rather than spending our lives building lasting value–deep friendships, memories of time shared with loved ones, meaningful work–we busy our lives traipsing after things whose value is fleeting at best.
Seeing continuous growth as the best, and only way, to live. I cringe whenever I hear people tout the many ways we can grow our economy. Is it good to have a market for our wares and demand for our products? Yes. Is it realistic or healthy to believe that growth is always good and should be a constant? No. Last I checked, unchecked growth went by another name — cancer. Life is cyclical. There are seasons of growth to be sure, and we reap our bounty at the harvest. Those times, however, are followed by months when the land is dormant and we allow the earth to regenerate herself in preparation for the next season of growing. Perhaps, living so far removed from the natural ways of life, we have forgotten that “there is a time for every purpose under heaven” and that growth was never intended to be a constant in our lives.
Being unwilling to make some of the “hard choices” in order to create what we truly want. While I don’t believe in suffering or having a mindset that we must deprive ourselves, I do also think that we’ve forgotten how to be discerning in our decision making. We’re currently working to pay off some debt we incurred last year. To do that, we shifted items in our budget to put more of our income toward elimination of the debt. So for a few months, we’ll have less to spend for entertainment or eating out, but I’m glad of it because this choice is enabling me to create something much more important — no debt.
Being afraid that less money will make us poor. I believe that one of the biggest lies in our culture is that money/material possessions equals happiness. By buying so many things and then needing money to maintain these things, we make it imperative that we must work, work, work. So addicted are we that the average US worker has less than 2 weeks vacation in a year, while our brothers and sisters to the north get nearly a month of vacation annually, and our European neighbors enjoy over one full month off from labor every calendar year. The rewards of less work include more time to use as we choose. In many countries, this time is spent savoring relationships, relaxing, and simply taking the time to live life day-to-day. I’ve rarely seen a correlation between money and happiness — in fact, after a certain point, money or material goods add no value at all to our lives.
Keep your life from becoming bankrupt of value
So here’s my advice for quick ways to add value to your life.
- Know what’s valuable to you. Is it more time for yourself? Time to cultivate new relationships? The ability to travel? Don’t let our culture or other people tell you what should be important in your own life. You make that choice.
- Start eliminating whatever doesn’t add value to your life. This might mean selling or giving away some possessions. This could look like changing your work, moving, redoing your household budget or otherwise making shifts in your choices. Again, don’t let the ideas of others overrule your own judgment.
- Be thankful for all you have. Each day remember that you’ve had enough air to keep you breathing and enough water and food to sustain your body. Once you start truly appreciating all you already have, chances are you’ll realize you need less than you once thought.
- Share what gives you value. When we generously offer the value from our lives to others, all of us become richer in the process. You can either give your valuable items away (e.g., donating your money or material goods to charity, allowing your neighbor to have food from your garden) or simply share them (e.g., loaning your favorite books and movies to friends, sharing your lawnmower with your neighbors).
- Live with the end in mind. Unless there are radical new scientific discoveries, we’ll all be leaving our bodily form some day. Envision your life at this end point. What legacy do you want to leave behind? What impact do you want your life to have had? Once you have some ideas clearly in mind, start making subtle shifts now to move toward a successfully fulfilled vision. Start putting money aside to give to a favorite charity. Give heirlooms you never use away to family or friends who will love and appreciate them now. Leave your legacy one step at a time and see how much richer every day starts to become.
If you have suggestions on how to live a rich, rewarding life, please share them in the comments section. I know your wisdom would certainly add value to this post.
Stop the catalog avalanche
Watching a recent episode of Bill Moyers Journal on PBS, we learned about CatalogChoice.org, an organization helping people who want to extricate themselves from the catalog avalanche that’s buried them and filled their mailboxes to overflowing. Similar to the “Do Not Call” service that prevents you from receiving telephone solicitation calls, CatalogChoice.org helps you reduce the clutter of catalogs crowding out the mail you really want to see in your mailbox.
Benefits of using the free service at CatalogChoice.org
- Reduce mailbox clutter and save time you spend sorting through unwanted mail.
- Help merchants lower their cost of distribution and better target their market. (Who knows, maybe they’ll pass the savings on to their customers.)
- Catalog Choice community collectively promotes the use of best practices in the direct mailing industry.
- Make a huge positive impact on our environment, by reducing energy consumption, carbon emissions, and the destroyed forests that result from the current annual production and discarding of more than 19 billion paper catalogs.
What effect do catalogs have on our environment?
- Over eight million tons of trees are consumed each year in the production of paper catalogs.
- Nearly half of the planet’s original forest cover is gone today. Forests have effectively disappeared in 25 countries, and another 29 have lost more than 90% of their forest cover.
- Deforestation contributes between 20% and 25% of all carbon pollution, causing global climate change.
- More than one billion people living in extreme poverty around the world depend on forests for their livelihoods.
- There are other significant environmental impacts from the catalog cycle. The production and disposal of direct mail alone consumes more energy than three million cars.
- The manufacturing, distribution, collection and disposal of catalogs generates global warming gases as well as air and water pollution. Reducing the number of unwanted catalogs that are mailed will help the environment.
Facts above come directly from CatalogChoice.org website.
Remember, if you’re truly wanting to reduce the amount of junk mail you receive, get your name on the Direct Marketing Association’s Mail Preference Service which can significantly decrease the amount of national advertising mail you receive. You can also opt out of pre-screened credit card and insurance offers by using OptOutPreScreen.com or calling 1-888-567-8688.
The transformative power of gratitude, thankfulness and appreciation
Gratitude is something I consciously bring into my life on a daily basis. At the evening meal, my husband, Bruce, and I express gratitude for one or more things that happened or simply were during the day. Some days our words of thanks flow easily from hearts filled to the brim with appreciation. Other days we might really have to think about what we actually feel grateful for. Regardless of how easy or hard it is for us to identify that for which we are thankful, we have maintained this practice for over 5 years.
How gratitude has changed my life
People who know me would have said that I’ve always been a grateful person. This is true. Actively choosing to identify and name that for which I am grateful, however, has, in itself, been a blessing in my life.
- Gratitude makes even the toughest days easier. To me, practicing gratitude is like standing in the dark woods with the flame of a candle the only light and saying, “wow, look at that light” rather than, “man, it’s dark out here.”
- Gratitude reminds me of how rich and blessed I truly am. In American culture, we’re bombarded with messages that tell us to think we need more stuff or better stuff to be truly happy. The truth is, I’m happy and blessed regardless of the amount or quality of stuff in my life.
- Gratitude opens my heart with compassion. When I am conscious of how blessed I am, I also realize that there are people throughout our world who do truly suffer. I tend to then take action to do what I can to help ease that suffering, so they too can feel grateful for their lives.
- Gratitude makes me more grateful. Like an ascending spiral staircase, feeling grateful for one thing often triggers gratitude for another which reminds me of yet another thing for which I am thankful. Taking that first act of noticing opens my eyes to other blessings which I might have missed if not for that initial choice to see with thankful eyes.
- Gratitude simplifies my life. Like many people, I sometimes get caught in the tsunami that is modern culture. By practicing gratitude, I become aware of how little I truly need to be happy, healthy, and fully alive. Gratitude slows me down and kindles peace in my heart and mind.
- Gratitude makes me attractive. My gratitude practice makes my inner light shine brighter and others (people, animals, energy) are drawn to me to bask in that glow. It’s like being your own generator of positive, life-affirming energy when you consciously choose gratitude.
I would be grateful to know about your experience with gratitude. How has it changed your life? What keeps you from feeling grateful? What most profoundly evokes your gratitude? Please use the “comments” area to share or trackback to this post from your site.
Gratitude Quotes
“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion to clarity. . . . Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.”
~ Melody Beattie“I do not think of all the misery, but of the glory that remains. Go outside into the fields, nature and the sun, go out and seek happiness in yourself and in God. Think of the beauty that again and again discharges itself within and without you and be happy.”
~ Anne Frank“It seems to me that we often, almost sulkily, reject the good that God offers us because, at the moment, we expected some other good.”
~ C.S. Lewis“Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me learn from you, love you, bless you before you depart. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may, for it may not always be so. One day I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky and want, more than all the world, your return.”
~ Mary Jean Iron
Hugs are bad for you (not!)
Back in October of 2006, I wrote about Juan Mann who offered free hugs to others because, as he said in an interview, “…everyone just seemed so miserable. So I thought I’d try to do something to just see people smile and cheer up a little bit.” The post about Juan’s free hugs also includes a moving video of the response to his hugs.
Though the hugs seemed to produce wonderful results for the hugger and huggie, authorities were not pleased (maybe because they didn’t allow themselves to be hugged). Now it seems that hugs have undergone another attack by people who don’t want any more affection being shared. An Illinois middle-school student received detention because she hugged two classmates. Yes, hugging people is against this school’s policy.
When did affection and hugging become a bad thing?
I was once a middle-school student and my stepmom was even a high school principal, so I know that “public displays of affection” (PDAs) can be disruptive and inappropriate in a school setting. What I don’t understand is how we allow ourselves to be talked into rules that prohibit kindness, compassion, and amicable ways of interacting with each other.
- If anything, kids today need more affection, not less.
- They need more room to be friendly and sociable with each other, not less room.
- Kids need more displays of love and appreciation, not less.
- Kids, and grown up kids alike, need less fear in life and more freedom.
Hugs are good for you and aren’t something that we should pass rules to prohibit. If anything a rule mandating more hugs would go a long way toward making middle-school — and even the world — a more friendly place. Now go out there and hug someone (and hope that your school, shopping mall, company, or city doesn’t have rules or laws prohibiting your act of love).
When what you know won’t help — the problem with omniscience in relationships
Has your omniscience ever gotten in the way of one of your relationships? I can almost guarantee that it has even if you don’t think so. I’m certain of this because all of us have a God-complex where we “know how things should be.” We don’t know this, of course. At best we know how we want things to be. It’s this all-knowingness that can create barriers in our relationships, walling us off from the people with whom we’re trying to connect.
I was reminded of this concept when I read Pyrrhic Victories, by Jan Matney, in which she wrote, “We begin our conversations with others, having predetermined the relationship, projecting onto 
them what we know to be true. ‘I know’ is an immediate disconnection from others. Not knowing, being curious and open is a state of being that is both humble and alive with possibility.” Her story reawakened me to the fact that sometimes I too, unintentionally create a disconnection from others when I forget that I don’t know. So now I’m doing my best to remember that I do not know what others think, believe, feel, want, or need unless they tell me.
Steps to build relationships from a place of not knowing
- Remind yourself that you do not know what others think, believe, feel, want, or need unless they tell you
- Be open to learning what you don’t know and show your curiosity
- Ask others what they think, believe, feel, want, or need (Or verify what you think they think, believe, feel, want, or need)
- Be willing to share what you think, believe, feel, want, or need because others are no more omniscient than you
“‘I know’ is an immediate disconnection from others. Not knowing, being curious and open is a state of being that is both humble and alive with possibility.”
~ Jan Matney
Inventing yourself anew
“As soon as we succumb to someone else’s definition of who we are, we lose our sense of true self and of our right relation to the world. It makes no difference whether those projections make us the hero or the goat: when we allow others to name us, we lose touch with our own truth and undermine our capacity to cocreate in life-giving ways with ‘the other.’”
~ Parker Palmer in A Hidden Wholeness
I’m a recovering people pleaser. To me what this means is that I’m learning not to take things personally–the “good” or the “bad”–and also to not judge myself (Yes, I worked hard to keep everyone, myself included, happy.). The beneficial part of being a people pleaser is that I’m attuned to the wants and needs of others and I’m considerate of those around me. The main down side is that I often based my “okay-ness” on the opinions of the people around me. One of my transformational goals, therefore, is to stay attuned to others wants and needs without being a slave to them.
Is there part of your way of being in the world that doesn’t serve you? Do you have a behavior or habit that makes it easy for you to stifle the best part of who you are? Rather than completely abandoning your “former ways,” consider how you can adapt them so that they serve you and others simultaneously. Make micro adjustments in your actions until you find the right balance for you and the life you now choose to live.
Are your needs expendable?
Is your plate full? Too full? What do you do when something else gets heaped on top? What do you sacrifice to make room for your new responsibility? Where do you make adjustments so you can do this additional task?
If you’re like many people when they first come to me–achievers with full plates, lots of drive, and a penchant for “doing it all”–you likely do something automatically without even thinking about it. Can you think of what that something is? In case you’re not sure, I’ll remind you. You drop yourself out. Whether this means you choose to get a little less sleep, skip one of your workouts, or stay late at work instead of joining your spouse for dinner, you sacrifice your own needs and even your values just so you can get this new thing done.
I’ve got two questions for you:
- If “dropping yourself out” describes you to a T, what would have to change in order for you to change your ways?
- If you don’t “drop yourself out,” what strategies do you use to ensure that your needs and your responsibilities get fulfilled?
Ways to help ensure that your needs get met
- Know what your needs and wants are. If you don’t know what they are, getting them fulfilled will be much more difficult.
- Ask that your needs and wants get fulfilled. Expecting others to do this without telling them what you want will set you up for disappointment.
- Don’t deny your needs. If your habit is to say “it doesn’t matter” or “I don’t care,” people may stop consulting you altogether. You’re human. You have needs. Admit it.
- Fulfill your own needs. Sometimes we’re on our own, so it’s invaluable to know how to satisfying yourself rather than being dependent on others to “take care of you.”
- Distinguish between your needs and wants. Needs – water, shelter, love, respect — are essential to our physical, mental, and psychological well-being. Without fulfillment of our needs we could die (physically or spiritually). Wants – positively impacting the world, getting the “perfect” color of shoes, fitting into size 2 jeans — are optional. We might ultimately be happier with our wants fulfilled, yet even with unfulfilled wants, our life can still be rich and rewarding.
“The healthy and strong individual is the one who asks for help when he needs it. Whether he’s got an abscess on his knee or in his soul.”
~ Carol Burnett
