You say you want a better world. The solution is to work toward a better you.
There are a lot of people, probably a couple of billion at this point, who are unhappy with the condition of the world. Everyone has their own idea as to what it might take to make the world, or at least their corner of it, great again. However, regardless of one’s political leanings, the reality is that the world is made up of some seven billion individuals. If we want our world to be better, our first move is to make ourselves better.
The Internet is chock-full of lists for how you can make yourself better. The problem is that, much the “news” on sees on Facebook, not all the information in those lists can be trusted. For example, the list linked at the beginning of this paragraph recommends taking a cold shower every morning because, allegedly, Tony Robbins jumps into a pool of 57-degree water every morning. DO NOT TAKE THAT ADVICE! There’s a damn good reason we take warm showers. In water below 77°F, one’s breathing begins to be affected. If one is in water between 70°-60°, most people should be in some kind of protective thermal suit to avoid loss of breathing control. Water temperatures between 60°-50° are considered extremely dangerous and possibly even life threatening for the majority of people. Total loss of breathing control. Maximum intensity cold shock. Unable to control gasping and hyperventilation. So, maybe the advice on that list isn’t all the good.
There are safe things you can do, however, that will help improve your life. You won’t see a big change all at once, but give it six months and then look back. You’ll be amazed. Let’s get started.
Develop A Routine
There are times when spontaneity is good for you, but it’s not the ideal way for living your life. Our minds process information and our bodies operate more efficiently when they have some sense of what’s coming next. Little things like getting up at the same time every morning, getting dressed in the same order, and taking breaks at the same general time all help us to put a maximum amount of effort into our day without becoming fatigued as quickly.
Follow your body’s natural biorhythms and do your best work when your mind is most alert and schedule less intense activities when you’re not likely to have a lot of access energy making you fidgety. The biggest challenge to a schedule, of course, is following it. You don’t have to be rigid and precise in all your activities, but having a regular routine can make a lot of difference.
Prepare for your day the night before
My alarm goes off at 4:00 AM every morning. Everyone else in the house is still asleep. Lights are off. Vision is limited. I have to try to get dressed and get the dog out of the house for his walk without waking everyone else. How do we do that? By preparing the night before. I lay out my clothes, make note of where I’ve put my shoes, socks, coat, and glasses, and make sure my path is clear before going to bed. As a result, even if I still have a little bit of a hangover I can still get up and take the dog on his walk without any confusion.
The same goes for children. Having their clothes ready and their school materials by the door before they get up helps make their mornings so much easier. They’re less cranky, which I’m sure their teachers appreciate. Yes, this takes some planning and means one can’t just fall asleep anywhere. However, just five minutes of preparation before going to bed can reduce the stress of the morning significantly. Couldn’t we all do with a little stress right about now?
Plug Into The World
I am convinced that one of the biggest mistakes we can make is ignoring what is going on in the world. While we like to focus on ourselves, we must realize that we are all part of a much larger organism. Not only do our actions affect the world, the world also affects our actions. We need to pay attention to know that needs are direct involvement and for what we might passively await. Not doing can leave us disconnected and uninformed at some of the most important and critical moments of our lives.
For example, I was on the highway driving into downtown Atlanta when the tragedies of 9/11 occurred. Fear overwhelmed me when the second plane hit the World Trade Center. To keep my stomach from convulsing, I turned off the radio. At the moment, that seemed like the most intelligent thing to do. What I missed, though, was the information regarding possible targets in Atlanta. As a result, I parked in the tower at CNN as I almost always did when downtown. 20 minutes later, the tower was evacuated and no one was allowed to enter until several hours later. I was stuck in the middle of a developing tragedy with no way to get back home.
I know the news isn’t always pleasant and at the moment there is a lot of concern as to which news is true. Personally, I use Reuters and NPR as my primary sources in the morning. They come about as close as anyone to getting it right. Plug into the world so you can proceed with knowledge rather than ignorance.
Do Work That Means Something
Note immediately that I’m not necessarily talking about whatever one does for income. There are times in our lives, hopefully brief, where we take on work that is merely tolerable in order to secure the basic necessities of life. Regardless of how one feels about their occupation, though, one can still do work that matters. We’re not necessarily talking about anything elaborate or glamorous. Caring for your children or elderly parents isn’t likely to win any civic humanitarian awards but is some of the most important work on the planet. Work that matters is rarely glamorous but society’s success depends on that work taking place.
Work of compassion, work that perhaps involves some sacrifice, work that serves others, work that heals, and so many other things are all work that matters. Work that creates beauty, opens doors for others to succeed, and in any way benefits humanity are worth every minute of time we give them. Toss in educating yourself and sharing your knowledge with others while you’re at it. You did not get where you are, you have not survived to this point, without someone else doing work that matters. Now it’s your turn. Make sure the work gets done.
Listen to music
To me, it just makes sense that music be a part of our lives. I can’t imagine a day going by without it. However, over the past 30+ years I’ve come across a surprising number of people who, for a variety of reasons, either didn’t or weren’t able to listen to music at any point during their day. None of those were happy people. They had a dim outlook on the world and their attitudes reflected that outlook.
Music’s benefit our lives is extremely well documented and there are so many sources now that it seems almost absurd, at least for those in the US, that anyone would have to go a single moment without music if they don’t want to. I think it can also be important to share music that means something to us. As well all listen to different genres and styles, there are some songs that reach deep into our souls. Sharing that music can be just the thing that helps someone else get through the day. So, in that spirit, here’s the playlist I’m listening to while writing this article:
Be A Pet Person
Everyone needs a pet. It doesn’t have to be furry, it doesn’t have to have legs, it simply is any animal that depends upon you for its care. Pets do this tricky thing where they allow us to think we’re providing a service for them when what is actually happening is that they’re providing a service for us. They’re giving us something to love, something toward which we can exercise compassion, a companion with whom we can share our deepest secrets.
Again, multiple studies have proven the psychological benefits of having pets. There are too many times when we don’t feel as though we can trust our fellow humans, but we can trust our pets. We perceive emotion coming from them when we fail to feel emotion from anyone else. Sure, some people have allergies to different types of pets, but I truly believe there is a pet out there, somewhere, for everyone. Give it a try. You might be surprised how attached one can become to a fish.
Don’t Be Afraid To Nap
One of the things you’ll see on a lot of self-help lists is getting seven or eight hours of sleep per night. That’s nice, but for a lot of people that much down time in one setting just isn’t possible. There are clothes to wash, rooms to clean, and other matters that keep us up longer than we might wish. While consecutive hours of sleep is certainly ideal, when that is not possible there is absolutely no shame in taking a nap. Personally, I hold two different spots in my schedule as options for napping. While I typically don’t need both of them, maintaining that option gives me the flexibility to attend to that need at the point it seems likely to do the most good.
What seems to be the biggest issue here is that we associate napping with being lazy. Nothing could be further from the truth. Taking a short nap refreshes the mind and reinvigorates creativity to keep us going through the rest of the day. Naps can also play an important health role for anyone who might have heart or lung disease as the downtime allows our body a chance to recuperate from the exhaustion of activity. Don’t be afraid to give it a try. Just remember to set an alarm.
Love Someone
Note here that we’re not necessarily talking about romantic love, though I’m certainly not opposed to that. Romantic love can be difficult for some people to find, though, and even where it exists it can be fleeting and leave one empty. What’s more important is that we learn to love people in the non-romantic sense, caring about who they are as individuals simply because they are people. Showing compassion toward someone, giving of ourselves without expecting anything in return, exercising selflessness rather than selfishness are all ways of showing love to the people we have in our lives.
One example might be the conversations I have with the widowers in our neighborhood. I’m not sure why it is, but there is an unusually large number of widowers who live right around us. A couple of extended family, but three of them do not. They have no one. They’re all older, they all have dogs, and they all walk through the neighborhood on a daily basis, pretty much on the same schedule every day. Stepping outside to say hi, strike up a moments’ conversation, checking to make sure they’re doing okay, makes a visible difference in their lives. They frequently arrive with their head down but always leave with their head up, almost always smiling, and with a bit of spring in their step.
Loving people isn’t difficult when one removes the sexual relationship away from the equation. All we have to do is accept them as the humans they are and show compassion. A few seconds of our time can make someone else’s entire day go better.
And there is where we begin to see the return. As we make our lives better, as we learn to love more people, to give of ourselves, we make a difference in the world. The one for whom we show compassion and kindness is more likely to share that compassion with someone else, creating a chain of humanity that compounds with every iteration. As we improve ourselves, we provide the seed for grown and progress around the globe.
No, we don’t always see the results right before our eyes. We rarely know the extent of the influence our actions have. However, to the extent we do good, both for ourselves and for others, we do good for the entire planet.
Very few people are satisfied with the world in its current state. Rather than complaining, however, perhaps we would do better to put our efforts more toward improving our own lives first.
Show Some Compassion
Humanity demands compassion but the president isn’t listening
The Short Version
After White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney referred to the president’s budget proposal as “fairly compassionate” this week, many were offended by the characterization because of the severe cuts to social programs. But when we look at what compassion actually encompasses, many of our own lives have room for improvement as well. As we demand more compassion from our government, perhaps now is the time to demand more from ourselves as well.
What We’re Talking About
Compassion is a basic human moral value that is embraced by every major religion and progressive philosophy for the past 4,000 years. Broad in its reach and interpretation, compassion requires one to think outside themselves, to consider strongly not only the needs of others but how one’s own actions affect other people. Compassion requires forgiveness, inclusiveness, and acceptance. Compassion requires giving of oneself to the point of personal sacrifice. Compassion requires setting aside what might make sense in order to do what is right toward another human being, or even the planet. Compassion puts lives before profit and before power. Compassion does not have a bottom line.
Embraced by every major religion in the world, the Christian bible requires feeding one’s enemy (Romans 12:20), and being forgiving, kind, and thoughtful (Ephesians 4:32). The Quran teaches Muslims to “compete with each other in doing good (Surat al-Ma’ida, 48).” The Hindu god Vishnu is motivated by compassion and incarnates to bring compassion to an unbalanced world. The Talmud requires compassion from those who would seek compassion. Nearly every belief system in the world, spiritual or secular, adheres to some form of the “Golden Rule:” Do unto others as you would have done to you.
Against such a background, we can confidently state that to not show compassion is globally immoral. The overriding question, though, is how much compassion is enough? White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney calls the president’s budget proposal “fairly compassionate” because, he alleges, taxpayer money is only used “in a proper function.” That statement has received considerable backlash, however, as many of the cuts proposed by the White House would spell an end to some of the most compassionate programs that exist. In fact, between the budget and the proposed health care law, the current administration and Republicans in Congress do not appear to have any concern for compassion at all. Between the two bills, these are just some of the items that could be eliminated or severely reduced.
I dare anyone to sufficiently explain how any of those programs are not “a proper function.” Compassion requires that we offer all the assistance we can to the poor, the sick, the homeless, and the underprivileged. There is no profit/loss line to the budget of compassion. One does not measure compassion based on an action’s return on investment (ROI). One cannot even measure compassion based on the success or failure of a program. Compassion is exercising our resources to meet a need. When it comes to compassion, it is better to have dome something and failed than to have done nothing at all.
Compassion requires we look outside ourselves, even outside our own country. The entire concept of “America first” lacks compassion as it ignores the needs of seven billion people world to focus on the narrow needs of some 376 million people in the United States. We cannot call ourselves compassionate if we support and implement programs that remove funding for international aid simply so that we can build an ill-conceived wall across a portion of our Southern border.
For example, yesterday (March 17) was Match Day for doctoral students graduating colleges this spring. This is where the soon-to-be-physicians find out where they will be doing their residency and what communities they’ll be serving. Of course, everyone wants the elite hospitals, but the truth is that all the graduates from all the medical schools in the US are not enough to fill all the residency vacancies. As a result, we have, for many years now, been dependent on foreign doctors to help take up the slack. Without those additional physicians, there would be gaping holes of service, especially in family-oriented fields of general practice. However, the president’s travel ban stands to severely limit the number of doctors who are able to apply for residency in the United States. Not only are doctors from the six directly affected countries prohibited from applying, doctors from other countries are finding their visas under increased scrutiny, delaying or eliminating their ability to accept much-needed medical positions in the US.
Let’s cut this down to reality here: for every doctor who is denied entry to the US, an entire community of Americans has less access to health care. Show me the compassion in such a program.
What strikes me, though, is that perhaps our elected officials fail to show compassion in the legislation they author is, consciously or not, they don’t consider their constituents to be compassionate people. Part of the momentum that drove populists into important positions in the past election is an overwhelming message of selfishness. As a nation, we voted for what we thought best served our personal interest. We didn’t care how our decisions might affect other people. We didn’t care who might be hurt as long as it wasn’t us. Our votes sent a horribly selfish message to Washington and they have responded based on that selfishness.
We need a government steeped in compassion. However, we must first be more compassionate ourselves. We’re talking about more than just dipping into our pockets a bit more. As a nation, we’ve been stuck on this trend of giving approximately two percent of our national GDP for some time now. This makes us look better than we actually are. As the economy improves, so does the dollar amount that we’re giving. However, as a percentage of our income, we’re not actually giving any more. Add to that the fact that 32% of our giving goes to religious entities, of which less than three percent is distributed to social needs, and what we’re doing to help other people is, in reality, much less than we think.
There are opportunities to be compassionate everywhere we look. Just this morning, I was reading about rainforest-free clothing. Now, as a caveat, I have to say that I really don’t like rayon fabric myself, but I understand that for certain garments it is much more cost effective than silk or satin. That aside, though, when we purchase garments made with rayon and support fashion labels who don’t carefully source the fabric, we’re ultimately doing harm to communities dependent on the rainforests for their livelihood. While it’s great that labels such as Victoria’s Secret and Stella McCartney have started eliminating those fabrics from their collections, it is up to us to consciously decide to exercise compassion in choosing rainforest-free clothing.
What we do with our cast-off clothing is anther opportunity for compassion as well. While it is easy enough for us to just dump our closet rejects at the local second-hand facility, the more compassionate move is to work directly with those organizations that interface with giving away clothes to the poor. By avoiding the more corporate entities with huge overhead costs, we can get more clothes to the people who really need them rather than giving Millennials and others an inexpensive way to fund a trendy lifestyle.
Compassion often requires us to make difficult decisions, such as not seeking the death penalty despite pressure to do so, or allowing the terminally ill to die of their own accord without any interference. We don’t like issues surrounding death and often find it difficult to determine where compassion is best applied. Do we act in benefit of those who would die, or do we act for the benefit of those who still live? Compassion is not always an easy or popular choice.
Compassion also leads us to care for the mentally ill and this is where we need to pay special attention because I firmly believe that .many other social issues such as unemployment and homelessness are directly affected by undiagnosed and untreated mental illness. Our country has never recognized and funded treatment for mental illness at anywhere near the levels necessary to have a serious impact on other social challenges. We too often think that mental illness is something that is made up or contrived or created to manipulate a system. However, over 42 million Americans, by conservative estimates, suffer from some form of mental illness, whether it be depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia. If we were to be totally honest about veteran PTSD rates, the number would likely double.
Compassion for the mentally ill is challenging because when we get serious about treatment, many would do best with in-patient care but there are not enough facilities, not enough doctors and nowhere near enough funding to meet the inevitable need. Compassion is also complicated by the fact that, for many diagnoses, intervention and care has to be done at a professional level. There are times when the best we can do is to insist someone get professional help and make sure that happens.
For example, let’s take someone who is overtly paranoid and believing that important people are out to “get” them, someone who also lies on a regular basis without any reason for doing so, someone who exaggerates facts, and who lashes out at perceived criticism, someone whose sense of reality is off-base to the point of creating danger. Compassion for this person means not only providing appropriate psychiatric care but removing them from the situations that fuel and perpetuate their psychosis. Compassion also demands that we prevent this person from taking any action that might cause harm to themselves or others, either directly or indirectly. Compassion also requires severing the co-dependent relationships that facilitate the psychosis and allow it to continue.
We all know someone like that. We elected him to office.
We are required to be compassionate. To not be compassionate is immoral.
So, consider what you need to do. Be compassionate and then encourage Congress to do the same.
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