Life

Selfish .vs Unselfish

/ James Browning

What a humbling experience! This was far from easy!!!!

Yesterday I wrote, If you know for certain you’d die in just one week and could have three wishes come true what would they be? Would they be selfish or unselfish? I ended by saying tomorrow I’ll share what three selfish wishes and three unselfish wishes I personally settle on. The self-given assignment turned out to be far more difficult than I first thought. Coming up with things for the lists was not difficult. Narrowing it down to two sets of three was!

Selfish Three Wishes
1 – Good health and long life for me and those I love
2 – Financial security and independence
3 – Getting to do everything on my ‘bucket list’

Unselfish Three Wishes
1 – World peace and harmony
2 – Good health for all
3 – No one going hungry

These may seem like quick things I came up with in a few minutes, but on and off all day yesterday things when on and off my lists. What became clear was the difference between the “me, me, me” stuff I kept putting on the “Selfish Three Wishes” list and the “them, them, them” items that came to mind for my”Unselfish Three Wishes” list. By bedtime I felt so guilty about wanting so much for myself.  The process softened me to think more broadly. The items on the first list would change life for only me and those I love. As I pondered things for the “Selfish List” I felt worse and worse. The second list would change the world for everyone in perpetuity. I am grateful for how good coming up with the second list made me feel.

Just for fun here’s three selfish/unselfish quizzes: 
http://www.quibblo.com/quiz/19DacVA/How-Selfish-Are-You
http://www.quibblo.com/quiz/84mxBWL/Are-you-selfish
http://www.blogthings.com/howselfishareyouquiz/

Selfishness is that detestable vice
which no one will forgive in others,
and no one is without in himself.
Henry Ward Beecher

A Few Baby-Steps Everyday

/ James Browning

Deeply felt and fully expressed gratitude is an effective way to positively influence attitudes and behavior, our own and that of others. Learning to feel and express gratefulness has a significant effect on my happiness and success and that of every one around me. Understanding there is more than one level or gratitude can have even greater impact.

Level I Gratitude… This is gratitude for your possessions and your immediate circumstances. It’s the kind of gratitude we learn as children: Thank you for the gift, for the candy, for the trip to park, etc. When you practice this as an adult, it spawns thoughts of gratitude for things like:
* a roof over your head
* your material possessions
* a car that runs
* your health
* your relationships
* your family
* your job
* your skills
* the holidays

Level II Gratitude… I think of this as “holistic gratitude” because it’s independent of situations and circumstances. This is a feeling of gratitude for life itself, for existence, for anything and everything you experience. But rather than being a temporary emotion that requires constant focus, Level 2 Gratitude is more of an underlying attitude. With practice it becomes part of your identity. It encompasses everything in Level 1, but Level 2 goes beyond that to include being grateful for:
* your life
* the universe
* time and space
* your problems, challenges, and hardships
* your foibles and mistakes
* your consciousness
* your ego
* people who treat you unkindly or unfairly
* your thoughts and emotions
* your freedom of choice
* ideas and concepts
Level 2 Gratitude says, “How wonderful it is to exist!” Circumstances are irrelevant because this form of gratitude is a choice that needs no justification. It is a sense of utter fascination with the very notion of existence.
By Steve Pavlina http://www.stevepavlina.com/

Without realizing I had moved into level II Gratitude, I am pleased to find I have.  Oh, how life has changed since gratefulness became a way of living. A few baby-steps every day becomes a lot of distance covered over time.

In daily life we must see
hat it is not happiness that makes us grateful,
but gratefulness that makes us happy.
Brother David Steindl-Rast

Good Judgement

/ James Browning

This has been around for a while, but just too good not to read again and share. I am grateful for the good memories of my southern farmer grandfather (PawPaw) these nuggets bring up.  They are most all the kind of things I remember him saying.  My memories of sitting in his lap while he let me think I was steering the tractor are fond memories.  I thought I was really driving it!

An old Farmer’s Words of Wisdom we could all live by:  advice from Canman

– Your fences need to be horse-high, pig-tight and bull-strong.
– Keep skunks and bankers at a distance.
– Life is simpler when you plow around the stump.
– A bumble bee is considerably faster than a John Deere tractor.
– Words that soak into your ears are whispered….not yelled.
– Meanness don’t just happen overnight.
– Forgive your enemies; it messes up their heads.
– Do not corner something that you know is meaner than you.
– It don’t take a very big person to carry a grudge.
– You cannot unsay a cruel word.
– Every path has a few puddles.
– When you wallow with pigs, expect to get dirty.
– The best sermons are lived, not preached.
– Most of the stuff people worry about, ain’t never gonna happen anyway.
– Don’t judge folks by their relatives.
– Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
– Live a good and honorable life, then when you get older and think back, you’ll enjoy it a second time.
– Don’t interfere with somethin’ that ain’t bothering you none.
– Timin’ has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance.
– If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin’.
– Sometimes you get, and sometimes you get got.
– The biggest troublemaker you’ll probably ever have to deal with, watches you from the mirror every mornin’.
– Always drink upstream from the herd.
– Good judgment comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad judgment.
– Lettin’ the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier than puttin’ it back in.
– If you get to thinkin’ you’re a person of some influence, try orderin’ somebody else’s dog around.
– Live simply, love generously, care deeply,
– Speak kindly, and leave the rest to God.
– Don’t pick a fight with an old man. If he is too old to fight, he’ll just kill you.
And, finally…..

Position My Sails To Catch The Best Wind

/ James Browning

There are the parables of Aesop, the insights of Buddha, the stories Jesus told, the Muslim chronicles of Rumi, the anecdotes of Confucius and many teaching tales from Hindu, Sufi, Jewish and other spiritual and secular traditions. With origins in verbally passed on narratives, may are written down for our benefit today. Today I chose to begin my day reading a hand-full and here are the two whose message stuck with me the most this morning.

Teaching Tale #1:  A lady had a precious necklace round her neck. Once in her excitement she forgot it and thought that the necklace was lost. She became anxious and looked for it in her home but could not find it. She asked friends and neighbors if they knew anything about the necklace. They did not. At last a kind friend of hers told her to feel the necklace round her neck. She found that it had all along been round her neck and she was happy. When others asked her later if she found the necklace which was lost, she said, ‘Yes, I have found it.’ She still felt that she had recovered a lost jewel.

Now, did she lose it at all? It was all along round her neck. But judge her feelings. She was as happy as if she had recovered a lost jewel. Similarly with us, we imagine that we will some day realize the ‘Self’ we seek, whereas we are never anything but our ‘Self’ all along. (Ramana Maharshi)

Teaching Tale #2:  A man found an eagle’s egg and put it in a nest of a barnyard hen. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them.

All his life the eagle did what the barnyard chicks did, thinking he was a barnyard chicken. He scratched the earth for worms and insects. He clucked and cackled. And he would thrash his wings and fly a few feet into the air.

Years passed and the eagle grew very old. One day he saw a magnificent bird above him in the cloudless sky. It glided in graceful majesty among the powerful wind currents, with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings.

The old eagle looked up in awe. “Who’s that?” he asked.

“That’s the eagle, the king of the birds,” said his neighbor. “He belongs to the sky. We belong to the earth– we’re chickens.” So the eagle lived and died a chicken, for that’s what he thought he was. (Anthony de Mello)

So I go into my day reminded of two things:
1) The greatest treasure I possess is the “self” I already am. All that I will ever be will spring from there.
2) As I think, so I will be. Who and what I perceived myself to be, I will be.

I am grateful for the essence of those two traditional teaching tales. Each helps to place my ‘rudder” on course and to position my “sails” to catch the best wind for this Monday.

P.S. The mountain snow photo at the top is self-imposed distraction from 111 degrees it will be here today and tomorrow!

You are the embodiment of the information
you choose to accept and act upon.
To change your circumstances you need
to change your thinking and subsequent actions.
Adlin Sinclair

Done Together

/ James Browning

Once in a while something meaningful touches me and I am rendered emotionally near speechless. One such case is this ABC News story from last fall:

A devoted Iowa couple married for 72 years died holding hands in the hospital last week, exactly one hour apart.

The passing reflected the nature of their marriage, where, “As a rule, everything was done together,” said the couple’s daughter Donna Sheets, 71.

Gordon Yeager, 94, and his wife Norma, 90, left their small town of State Center, Iowa, on Wednesday to go into town, but never made it. A car accident sent the couple to the emergency room and intensive care unit with broken bones and other injuries. But, even in the hospital, their concerns were each other.

“She was saying her chest hurt and what’s wrong with Dad? Even laying there like that, she was worried about Dad,” said the couple’s son, Dennis Yeager, 52. “And his back was hurting and he was asking about Mom.”

When it became clear that their conditions were not improving, the couple was moved into a room together in beds side-by-side where they could hold hands.

“They joined hands; his right hand, her left hand,” Sheets said.

Gordon Yeager died at 3:38 p.m. He was no longer breathing, but the family was surprised by what his monitor showed.

“Someone in there said, ‘Why, then, when we look at the monitor is the heart still beating?'” Sheets recalled. “The nurse said Dad was picking up Mom’s heartbeat through Mom’s hand.”

“And we thought, ‘Oh my gosh, Mom’s heart is beating through him,'” Dennis Yeager said.

Norma Yeager died one hour later.

It warms my heart to know such a lasting love really existed. Thank you Gordon and Norma for showing ‘ever after’ can be real.

What greater thing is there
for two human souls,
than to feel that they are joined for life
to strengthen each other
in all labor,
to rest on each other
in all sorrow,
to minister to each other
in all pain,
and to be with each other
in silent, unspeakable memories.
George Eliot

A Gift to Yourself

/ James Browning

Saying thank you or showing appreciation
is one of the best ways to make someone feel good.  
Expressing gratitude reflects multiplied back on the one expressing it.
It’s a gift to yourself.

Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors.
François Duc de La Rochefoucauld

Need Washing?

/ James Browning

It fascinates me how a friend who has passed on can continue to give to me long after he is gone. Sometimes it’s a memory of a special moment or something that was said. At other times it’s when I notice a physical reminder like a gift or a keepsake. Now in the age of computers, I found the story below saved on my computer from when my dear friend Bill (know to close friends as “The Banger”) sent it to me. I am uncertain of the original source of the piece, but it’s a touching parable that connected me closely to my old friend in a moving moment.  

 

Need Washing?

A little girl had been shopping with her Mom in Target. She must have been 6 years old, this beautiful red-haired, freckle faced image of innocence. It was pouring outside. The kind of rain that gushes over the top of rain gutters, so much in a hurry to hit the earth it has no time to flow down the spout. We all stood there under the awning and just inside the door of the Target.

We waited, some patiently, others irritated because nature messed up their hurried day. I am always mesmerized by rainfall. I got lost in the sound and sight of the heavens washing away the dirt and dust of the world. Memories of running, splashing so carefree as a child came pouring in as a welcome reprieve from the worries of my day.

The little voice was so sweet as it broke the hypnotic trance we were all caught in ‘Mom let’s run through the rain,’ she said. ‘What?’ Mom asked. ‘Let’s run through the rain!’ She repeated. ‘No, honey. We’ll wait until it slows down a bit,’ Mom replied.

This young child waited about another minute and repeated: ‘Mom, let’s run through the rain’. ‘We’ll get soaked if we do,’ Mom said. ‘No, we won’t, Mom.. That’s not what you said this morning,’ the young girl said as she tugged at her Mom’s arm.

This morning? When did I say we could run through the rain and not get wet?

‘Don’t you remember? When you were talking to Daddy about his cancer, you said, ‘If God can get us through this, he can get us through anything!’

The entire crowd stopped dead silent. I swear you couldn’t hear anything but the rain. We all stood silently. No one came or left in the next few minutes.

Mom paused and thought for a moment about what she would say. Now some would laugh it off and scold her for being silly. Some might even ignore what was said. But this was a moment of affirmation in a young child’s life. A time when innocent trust can be nurtured so that it will bloom into faith.

‘Honey, you are absolutely right. Let’s run through the rain. If GOD let’s us get wet, well maybe we just needed washing,’ Mom said.

Then off they ran. We all stood watching, smiling and laughing as they darted past the cars and yes, through the puddles. They held their shopping bags over their heads just in case. They got soaked. But they were followed by a few who screamed and laughed like children all the way to their cars.

And yes, I did. I ran. I got wet. I needed washing.

Circumstances or people can take away your material possessions, they can take away your money, and they can take away your health. But no one can ever take away your precious memories…So, don’t forget to make time and take the opportunities to make memories everyday. To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven.

I hope you still take the time to run through the rain.

Thanks “Banger”! I love you, miss you and am grateful for the true friend you were and always will be to me.

In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out.
It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being.
We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.
Albert Schweitzer

A Multi-Colored Continuum

/ James Browning

At four years old I had all the world I wanted: Davy Crockett gloves with fringe, a tricycle, parents I still thought were cool and grandparents who fussed over their oldest grand boy. The world was a giant mystery that I was busy discovering. Each morning I woke up liking life.

With no kindergarten where I grew up, the day I was thrust into first grade was scary. I didn’t want to be there. Quiet and withdrawn, in time I found a good friend that got me through. The buddy was school that came easy. I liked succeeding at something and being appreciated for it.

Before I knew it the age of ten rolled around. This was the year life began to bring real disappointment and even fear as a “nasty stepfather” came into my life. I learned to dislike and even hate through how he treated my brother and I. The lesson was some people truly are evil.

It was a Sunday afternoon and I was thirteen when something never felt before came over me. A magnetic attraction toward a girl was sparkling new and near startling, but felt deliciously daring. I didn’t understand what was going on but I liked what I was feeling during that sweet and innocent afternoon.

In what felt like only a month, two more years passed and almost abruptly I was sixteen years old, had a car (a blue VW) and was ‘in love’ for the first time. I witnessed an amazing sense of being vibrantly alive before the coin flipped to introduce me to romantic heartbreak for the first time six months later.

The world began to go crazy. I was kicked out of home for reasons I don’t understand even today. I was a good kid, a Boy Scout and an honor student but the “evil pretend father” feared me after I stood up to him the first time. He took my car and pushed me out of the house.  Walking down the street with a suitcase and enough money for a motel and food for two days was one of the most fearful moments I’ve ever experienced.

The words I spoke in the phone booth were “I have no place to go. Can I come live with you?”. On the other end of the line was my birth father who was near a complete stranger.  I had seen him only twice since I was seven years old. From two hundred miles away came the word “yes” and one of the best years of my growing up began; my senior year of high school.

Looking back at the plethora of emotions touching me for the first time, my memory is clear of how bewildering life was during those formative years. At the same time I felt vibrantly alive during the ups and downs. Living was filled with near constant firsts and fresh experiences and quite possibly the deepest range of joy and unhappiness ever experienced. Each and every one was a tile in the mosaic of the person I am today.

In recent years the view has arrived of seeing life as a multi-colored continuum instead of separate individual experiences. Each and every event and occurrence are connected. Like a “draw by numbers” portrait those first eighteen years shaped the outline of who I became and am today. I am grateful to be able to look back now and realize how important ALL those experiences were.

I believe that everything happens for a reason.
People change so that you can learn to let go,
things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they’re right,
you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself,
and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.
Marilyn Monroe

If You Have Something to Say

/ James Browning

Her Facebook page says “I am a myth. The myth is real”. If you go searching for information about C. JoyBell C. you won’t find much other than her quotes which are deep and frequently inspiration. All I can tell from a photo (above) and short interview I found on-line  is she is young with wisdom beyond her years.

C. Joybell C. is self-described as “an American born self-taught writer of Asiatic Anglo-Celtic European descent… grew up in-between cultures and crossing borders… great-grandfather was a Taoist High Priest… other great-grandfather was a Southern Georgia Baptist Herald. Fighting to live life for herself and not for others, she is defying her status quo in being a writer and this is exemplary of who she is.” She is the author of “Saint Paul Trois Châteaux: 1948” and “The Sun Is Snowing: Poetry & Prose.”

I can offer no more, except to gladly include here three quotes by C. JoyBell C. from goodreads.com.  I find her words moving and pass them on here with hope you find worth in them as well.

I have come to accept the feeling of not knowing where I am going. And I have trained myself to love it. Because it is only when we are suspended in mid-air with no landing in sight, that we force our wings to unravel and alas begin our flight. And as we fly, we still may not know where we are going to. But the miracle is in the unfolding of the wings. You may not know where you’re going, but you know that so long as you spread your wings, the winds will carry you.

There are people who are generic. They make generic responses and they expect generic answers. They live inside a box and they think people who don’t fit into their box are weird. But I’ll tell you what, generic people are the weird people. They are like genetically-manipulated plants growing inside a laboratory, like indistinguishable faces, like droids. Like ignorance.

The person in life that you will always be with the most, is yourself. Because even when you are with others, you are still with yourself, too! When you wake up in the morning, you are with yourself, laying in bed at night you are with yourself, walking down the street in the sunlight you are with yourself. What kind of person do you want to walk down the street with? What kind of person do you want to wake up in the morning with? What kind of person do you want to see at the end of the day before you fall asleep? Because that person is yourself, and it’s your responsibility to be that person you want to be with. I know I want to spend my life with a person who knows how to let things go, who’s not full of hate, who’s able to smile and be carefree. So that’s who I have to be.

Anais Nin wrote “The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say”. That describes well how I feel about my discovery of C. JoyBell C.’s work. I am grateful to have the path of life bring me stumbling across what she has to say.

Writing comes more easily if you have something to say.
Sholem Asch

Mac and The Banger

/ James Browning

While not a first-hand personal experience, I have had friends who knew they were in the last few months of their life and had them share some of the wisdom facing death brought them. To a person the near end of days brought a kinder and a gentler nature.

My friends who were faced with a soon to come reality of dying seemed to love more deeply and express how they felt more openly. Things mattered little and people were about all they cared about. Their primary regrets I recall them sharing were not doing things they had wanted to do, working/chasing money too much and not spending more time with people they loved.

No one close to me wrote down their thoughts as death drew near, but what is just below I believe expresses what they left behind in their own way.

– STOP
Give yourself permission to take a moment to really look at yourself & where you are.

– CLEAR
Create some room for those voices in your head to speak their mind, & then try to hear them.

– SHIFT
Be fearless with change – it might be the best thing you ever did.

– RELEASE
Let go those things that aren’t a reflection of who you want to be & who you really are.

– EMBODY
Be what you were meant to be in all its crazy shapes and guises – why wait?

– ADORE
Love who you have been, who you are now & who you are going to be – it’s all you.

– ENRICH
Move in a direction that enhances, empowers and deepens your life.

It turns out that no one can imagine what’s really coming in our lives. We can plan, and do what we enjoy, but we can’t expect our plans to work out. Some of them might, while most probably won’t. Inventions and ideas will appear, and events will occur, that we could never foresee. That’s neither bad nor good, but it is real.

From a last post by Derek K Miller of Vancouver, Canada on May 4, 2011, shortly before his death from cancer.

Two friends now gone taught me a great deal about living by how they acted facing death. Tears well up as I think about Mac and Bill (better know as “The Banger”) and how much I love them still, even in their absence, and how grateful I am my life was blessed with their presence.

Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying.
Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day.
Do it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now!
There are only so many tomorrows.”
Pope Paul VI