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 passion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label passion. Show all posts
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Why Having Long Term Life Goals Might Save You
The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another, and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.
- J.M. Barrie, novelist and playwright (1860-1937)
How many people really do plan their lives, lay out the objectives and goals they hope to achieve? That would have to be in a meaningful and realistic way, as some people plan to make their first million by age 30 but few make it. Most of those people are divorced by age 30 instead.
Most people I have met have a vague idea of what they would like their lives to be like a few decades down the road. With divorce being so common today and security in jobs more a dream of the past than a reality of the present, surely most plans will go astray somewhere.
Not necessarily. Life plans can go astray the way we have to make detours around the roads we planned to take on a long trip because of construction. The destination or life goals can remain in place even if we have to take different routes to get there than we planned.
I planned what I wanted to be, the kind of person I wanted to be and position I wanted to be in life at my present age, when I was 15. I had no idea how to get there, took a variety of interesting detours along the way--some delightful, some petrifying.
Whether I reached the goals I had for myself may be less important that the fact that I explored many avenues, especially paths I didn't think I was suited for, and made at least modest successes out of each. In taking those unplanned routes, I learned how to turn weaknesses into strengths as I had to accomplish tasks and objectives I had not previously prepared for.
I don't want to set myself up as a role model. However, each young person needs to know that they should set life goals for themselves, that they may take diverse paths to reach them, but that the goals are worth having.
Life goals keep us from straying too far from our course, such as by seeking short term pleasures with drugs or other addictions, and such as taking liberties with the law when we find ourselves short of income and long on bills owing and finding ourselves in prison as a result. And such as destroying our marriage because we can't cope with some of the unpleasantness of it. Or allowing ourselves to sink into depression or another state of (manageable) mental illness because we can't cope with the problems of the day.
We need to have a clear idea of what we want from life and we need to keep heading in that direction, more or less. Expecting someone else to tell us what life is all about won't get us to a destination or life goal. If we don't set our own goals, we won't be committed enough to stick to the course along the way.
Life is complicated if we look at all the little problems and diversions along the way. It's much simpler if we understand that these are not very important over the long term, but our forging our way toward our goal is what matters. We are the architect of the person we will become.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to give some perspective to what life is about.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- J.M. Barrie, novelist and playwright (1860-1937)
How many people really do plan their lives, lay out the objectives and goals they hope to achieve? That would have to be in a meaningful and realistic way, as some people plan to make their first million by age 30 but few make it. Most of those people are divorced by age 30 instead.
Most people I have met have a vague idea of what they would like their lives to be like a few decades down the road. With divorce being so common today and security in jobs more a dream of the past than a reality of the present, surely most plans will go astray somewhere.
Not necessarily. Life plans can go astray the way we have to make detours around the roads we planned to take on a long trip because of construction. The destination or life goals can remain in place even if we have to take different routes to get there than we planned.
I planned what I wanted to be, the kind of person I wanted to be and position I wanted to be in life at my present age, when I was 15. I had no idea how to get there, took a variety of interesting detours along the way--some delightful, some petrifying.
Whether I reached the goals I had for myself may be less important that the fact that I explored many avenues, especially paths I didn't think I was suited for, and made at least modest successes out of each. In taking those unplanned routes, I learned how to turn weaknesses into strengths as I had to accomplish tasks and objectives I had not previously prepared for.
I don't want to set myself up as a role model. However, each young person needs to know that they should set life goals for themselves, that they may take diverse paths to reach them, but that the goals are worth having.
Life goals keep us from straying too far from our course, such as by seeking short term pleasures with drugs or other addictions, and such as taking liberties with the law when we find ourselves short of income and long on bills owing and finding ourselves in prison as a result. And such as destroying our marriage because we can't cope with some of the unpleasantness of it. Or allowing ourselves to sink into depression or another state of (manageable) mental illness because we can't cope with the problems of the day.
We need to have a clear idea of what we want from life and we need to keep heading in that direction, more or less. Expecting someone else to tell us what life is all about won't get us to a destination or life goal. If we don't set our own goals, we won't be committed enough to stick to the course along the way.
Life is complicated if we look at all the little problems and diversions along the way. It's much simpler if we understand that these are not very important over the long term, but our forging our way toward our goal is what matters. We are the architect of the person we will become.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to give some perspective to what life is about.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Monday, February 05, 2007
Should We Hang For Our thoughts?
There is no man so good, who, were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the laws, would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.
- Michel de Montaigne, essayist (1533-1592)
For most of us, the thoughts would convict us.
For some of us, the thoughts would be of retribution for hurts or perceived hurts committed by others against us. We suffer, they should pay. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view), many of the hurts we perceive against us were not intended by the perpetrators. Maybe they were thoughtless gestures or senseless words spoken in haste or anger. Maybe they were selfish thoughts that became words that were regretted later.
For some of us, the thoughts would be of committing crimes. The crimes may be regarding vengeance, but they may also be of doing things which would benefit us financially, personally, sexually or socially.
Most of us don't follow through on those thoughts. However, an increasingly large number of people do. They break laws about drugs or prostitution, for example. Others, driven by financial need--often it's to get money to buy drugs-- commit robbery, which sometimes develops into murder or other forms of violence.
More than one in ten US citizens is in prison today. Remember your grade school classes? An average of three of the people you went to school with in any given year are behind bars. The percentage is lower in other western countries.
We should ask ourselves not how we can deter people from committing so many crimes, but how to give them what they require so they do not feel the need to resort to criminal activity to solve their problems.
Or to drugs, alcohol, gambling, prostitution or other forms of addiction. Or to securing feel-good drugs through their doctor so that they can cope with their problems and stressors. Or to abusing their spouses or children (psychologically, emotionally as well as physically) just to work off their frustrations with life.
We have psychiatrists, psychologists and therapists galore who have the professional knowledge and skills to fix the broken people among us. What we don't have is enough money to pay them to fix all the people who are broken.
Here's a novel idea. Why not provide children and adolescents that same knowledge and the same skills so that they know what to do when they run into problems in their future lives? No one breaks if they know how to avoid breaking.
No child grows up wanting to be divorced, a drug addict, a convict, an emotional minefield, a single parent, an alcoholic, a patient of a psychiatric facility. Or just plain lonely. People become that way when they can't cope with their lives.
So let's give people the knowledge and skills they need before they need it. We know where the expertise is. The experts can teach the teachers, who in turn will teach the young people.
We spend fortunes trying to fix broken people, and more fortunes trying to correct through war the behaviour of others we perceive as threats to us. Let's use the expertise we have today in the place it's needed most. Let's protect people from breaking. Let's make friends, not enemies.
The cost? A trifling sum compared to what we spend today on police, courts, prisons, psychiatric hospitals, health care and war. What the "new" cost would be would be returned in lower costs for the other "services" within a matter of years.
And we could have much happier and healthier people. It's not as impossible as it sounds. A whole solution, including implementation program is provided in the book Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to make the big picture look clearer.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Michel de Montaigne, essayist (1533-1592)
For most of us, the thoughts would convict us.
For some of us, the thoughts would be of retribution for hurts or perceived hurts committed by others against us. We suffer, they should pay. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view), many of the hurts we perceive against us were not intended by the perpetrators. Maybe they were thoughtless gestures or senseless words spoken in haste or anger. Maybe they were selfish thoughts that became words that were regretted later.
For some of us, the thoughts would be of committing crimes. The crimes may be regarding vengeance, but they may also be of doing things which would benefit us financially, personally, sexually or socially.
Most of us don't follow through on those thoughts. However, an increasingly large number of people do. They break laws about drugs or prostitution, for example. Others, driven by financial need--often it's to get money to buy drugs-- commit robbery, which sometimes develops into murder or other forms of violence.
More than one in ten US citizens is in prison today. Remember your grade school classes? An average of three of the people you went to school with in any given year are behind bars. The percentage is lower in other western countries.
We should ask ourselves not how we can deter people from committing so many crimes, but how to give them what they require so they do not feel the need to resort to criminal activity to solve their problems.
Or to drugs, alcohol, gambling, prostitution or other forms of addiction. Or to securing feel-good drugs through their doctor so that they can cope with their problems and stressors. Or to abusing their spouses or children (psychologically, emotionally as well as physically) just to work off their frustrations with life.
We have psychiatrists, psychologists and therapists galore who have the professional knowledge and skills to fix the broken people among us. What we don't have is enough money to pay them to fix all the people who are broken.
Here's a novel idea. Why not provide children and adolescents that same knowledge and the same skills so that they know what to do when they run into problems in their future lives? No one breaks if they know how to avoid breaking.
No child grows up wanting to be divorced, a drug addict, a convict, an emotional minefield, a single parent, an alcoholic, a patient of a psychiatric facility. Or just plain lonely. People become that way when they can't cope with their lives.
So let's give people the knowledge and skills they need before they need it. We know where the expertise is. The experts can teach the teachers, who in turn will teach the young people.
We spend fortunes trying to fix broken people, and more fortunes trying to correct through war the behaviour of others we perceive as threats to us. Let's use the expertise we have today in the place it's needed most. Let's protect people from breaking. Let's make friends, not enemies.
The cost? A trifling sum compared to what we spend today on police, courts, prisons, psychiatric hospitals, health care and war. What the "new" cost would be would be returned in lower costs for the other "services" within a matter of years.
And we could have much happier and healthier people. It's not as impossible as it sounds. A whole solution, including implementation program is provided in the book Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to make the big picture look clearer.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
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