In a full heart there is room for everything, and in an empty heart there is room for nothing.
- Antonio Porchia, Italian poet (1885-1968)
A full heart makes room for everything, then expands to accommodate additions, as needed. An empty heart allows nothing to breach its lack of trust, thus nothing earns it an emotional investment.
The empty heart--known elsewhere as a cold heart--wants for nothing because it doesn't allow for the possibility that it is not already complete.
The empty heart carries no baggage. Neither does it earn true friendship or love along the way because it thinks of nothing more than its own best interests.
The empty heart dies believing that it lived life the way it should, which to the full heart would be meaninglessness.
The empty heart can be changed. But the investment by another to accomplish change in the empty heart requires so much time and intensive effort, punctuated by repeated failures and fall-backs, that almost no one is prepared to make that investment.
The empty heart stands as the worst failure of humanity. Yet it rejects even the slightest effort to help it to fill.
The empty heart makes you glad that human bodies are recycled after death, for it has added nothing to the sum total of progress of humankind.
The empty heart cares nothing for the damage it does through psychological abuse, believing that everyone else should suffer as it has in the past. And as it does with each passing day.
The empty heart believes that it is superior to everyone else.
The full heart believes it will never have enough, so keep adding love and goodwill as it gives to and receives back from others.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow full hearts from small children.Learn more at http://billallin.com
Showing posts with label economics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economics. Show all posts
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Friday, January 26, 2007
Life Lesson: What Makes Life Worth Living
"It is not enough to live; you have to have something to live for."
- Commander Adama, Battlestar Galactica (television program) (2003)
Life is not reflected well in science fiction television programs. Yet they often show excellent examples of human aspirations, foibles and life lessons.
In this case, the life lesson is about having something worth living for. But, what?
Many people fail to find what they want out of life. They die still wondering what they could have done to find it.
The problem is that they had been looking for something that would come to them, something that would enhance their lives, something they could acquire that would make their life complete. That never satisfies the desire to find what life is worth lviing for because we humans can never find enough to satiate our desires. We are, by nature, greedy.
By deduction, what makes life worth living must be outside of us. What makes life worth living is not what we can get, but what we can give.
Being greedy, many people never learn that lesson. The laws of economics say that you can't get more by giving away what you have.
But the laws of economics suck. They have destroyed more lives than wars have. According to economics, the only things worth having are what comes in to us, what we can acquire. Because of our greedy natures, if we style our lives around what comes in to us, we will never be satisfied and feel that our lives have been worth living.
Those people who give the most of themselves to help others know what fulfillment is.That's not just feeding the hungry, healing the sick, giving money to the poor or sending blankets to Kosovo. It's helping anyone who needs help with anything.
People are often free about telling others their problems, whether the others want to hear them or not. Sometimes we can offer to help them. Anyone standing by a vehicle at the side of the road needs help, or at least some company, maybe a sandwich or coffee.
Sometimes helping someone else means nothing more than helping them to cry, to grieve, to let out the emotion that is eating them from the inside. Sometimes all we have to do is to listen.
If you want to know what makes life worth living, help someone. Do it more than once because the first time you may not recognize within you the feeling of having done something good and right. The more often you do it, the more it will seem the natural thing to do.
The laws of economics may be natural, but so are tsunamis and earthquakes. If it really matters to you to understand what makes life wonderful, give of yourself to help others.
Until and unless you have tried it, you won't understand. I don't understand economics, tsunamis or earthquakes. You can teach me once you have learned the lesson I have to teach.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to show you how to make it all worthwhile.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Commander Adama, Battlestar Galactica (television program) (2003)
Life is not reflected well in science fiction television programs. Yet they often show excellent examples of human aspirations, foibles and life lessons.
In this case, the life lesson is about having something worth living for. But, what?
Many people fail to find what they want out of life. They die still wondering what they could have done to find it.
The problem is that they had been looking for something that would come to them, something that would enhance their lives, something they could acquire that would make their life complete. That never satisfies the desire to find what life is worth lviing for because we humans can never find enough to satiate our desires. We are, by nature, greedy.
By deduction, what makes life worth living must be outside of us. What makes life worth living is not what we can get, but what we can give.
Being greedy, many people never learn that lesson. The laws of economics say that you can't get more by giving away what you have.
But the laws of economics suck. They have destroyed more lives than wars have. According to economics, the only things worth having are what comes in to us, what we can acquire. Because of our greedy natures, if we style our lives around what comes in to us, we will never be satisfied and feel that our lives have been worth living.
Those people who give the most of themselves to help others know what fulfillment is.That's not just feeding the hungry, healing the sick, giving money to the poor or sending blankets to Kosovo. It's helping anyone who needs help with anything.
People are often free about telling others their problems, whether the others want to hear them or not. Sometimes we can offer to help them. Anyone standing by a vehicle at the side of the road needs help, or at least some company, maybe a sandwich or coffee.
Sometimes helping someone else means nothing more than helping them to cry, to grieve, to let out the emotion that is eating them from the inside. Sometimes all we have to do is to listen.
If you want to know what makes life worth living, help someone. Do it more than once because the first time you may not recognize within you the feeling of having done something good and right. The more often you do it, the more it will seem the natural thing to do.
The laws of economics may be natural, but so are tsunamis and earthquakes. If it really matters to you to understand what makes life wonderful, give of yourself to help others.
Until and unless you have tried it, you won't understand. I don't understand economics, tsunamis or earthquakes. You can teach me once you have learned the lesson I have to teach.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to show you how to make it all worthwhile.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
