A Thought on Love

This evening I witnessed an older lady helping an older man out of a truck and into a wheelchair. They were both dressed rather nicely. She got a blanket and wrapped him up and gave him a kiss and they went in to a little coffee shop. I couldn't help but think: "Date night." It was so cute. It was a perfect little reminder that true love not only spans into the eternities, but that it can overcome all the hardships of this life: the maladies and infirmities, the jealousy and hate, the pride and contention and anything else mortality can throw at it. But the lesson to be learned from these two is this: lasting love is always a choice. It may begin with a feeling, but we must consciously choose to love another if there is to be any hope of that feeling growing into something more. And when we choose to love someone, it cannot be conditional. We can't choose to love someone based upon our circumstances, or what happens in the world. We can't choose to love parts or portions of an individual or choose to withhold our love when we think the person is undeserving. To do so is a sign of jealousy, fear, and selfishness. These are the antithesis of love. True love must be selfless.

To truly love someone is the greatest of all sacrifices because when we choose to, we remove our wants, our desires and our needs from the equation and instead choose to put someone else ahead of ourselves. Love can hurt though. It can wound us in such a way as nothing else can. It can come with such a high cost that some wonder if it is worth it.  I can tell you from experience that it is. Even with its cost, love will always be worth it.  Indeed, it is probably the only thing that ever was.

So when you choose to love someone, know what your undertaking. Know the risks, and the costs. Know what love entails. And then do it anyway. After all, as they say, "Love is what makes the world go round."

A Thought on the Good

What if I told you that everything is going to be ok? What if I told you that in spite of your fears, your doubts, and you worries, everything was going to work out? What if I told you that you will get through the trials you face? Because the truth is, you will. Everything is going to be ok.  That I promise you.

There are no guarantees in this life except this: it goes on. No one makes it through without scrapes and bruises and some of us wind up with some pretty traumatic injuries, but that’s ok. It’s just a part of living, of being alive. That is the price of experiencing what it’s like to live on this earth, to feel all of the joy and the happiness, all of the love and the hope and yes every once in a while, the pain and sorrow. And it’s such a small price to pay!

Whatever trials you facing, I promise you this: they are only temporary. They won’t last forever. In the end, good always wins out. The light will always triumph over the darkness, love will always defeat hate, and freedom will always overcome oppression. A lot of people see the world as a dark and dreary place, filled with poverty, and violence, and hate. But in reality, the world is a place filled with hope. The human race’s propensity for good is so incredibly immense compared to the bad. Even in the darkest, dreariest moments of our history, we find examples of good, honest people doing what’s right simply because it’s the right thing to do, with no though or expectation of reward. Take solace in that fact. Take solace in the fact that we live in a world where absolutely anything is possible. Take solace in the fact that you are a good person. Take solace in the face that tomorrow is a new day, free from the worries and cares of today. I know your weary and downtrodden, and that’s ok. Rest up this night and rise again tomorrow. A new dawn, filled with hope, beckons. Rest easy.

A Thought on Attitude

Each of us will face difficulties in our life. We will have trials and obstacles to overcome. We will experience defeat and we will suffer and bleed and eventually die. We will feel pain and sadness, misery and sorrow. We will lose loved ones and experience loss and grief. Very few of us are immune to the evils of this world, but as certain as I am that we will face these challenges, I am equally as certain that we are naturally endowed with the strength to overcome them. One of the tools that we are provided with for this task is the ability to control our attitude and how we react to whatever life throws at us.

 One of our tasks as individuals is to make meaning in our own lives. No one else can do that for us. And while I believe we are the product of our experiences, we are also defined in part by our reactions to those experiences in the first place. For example, a basketball player may attend grueling practices every day in preparation for a game. His coach may push him and make him run and do all sorts of painful exercises, hoping to strengthen him. The player may work hard, and at the end of each practice be so sore that he can hardly move. An outsider who doesn’t’ understand why the player does this might say “This is horrible. He’s in pain! This is torture. That coach should be imprisoned for inflicting such evil on that poor soul!”While the basketball player understands why he is being pushed and accepts that if he endures these hardships, he will do better in the game to come.

 Perhaps no better definition of this principal exists than that penned by Viktor Frankl:

“We who lived in the concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: The last of his freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

 And so it is with life. If we believe that the hardships we face are designed to make us better individuals, then the evils we face are diminished, until such as time as we don’t see them as evil anymore, but rather trials and exercises in faith. So the next time challenges are on your horizon, see them for what they truly are: opportunities to grow. Go out and meet them head on. Embrace them with a thankful heart and a determination worthy of the champion inside of you! Good luck!

A thought on Ethics.

There are moments in life when each of us is presented with choices to make. Sometimes these choices are easy, and sometimes they are difficult. I have always dedicated my life to trying to make the right choices as I see them. You see, I have patterned my life on a set of moral values and ethics that my upbringing and experiences have imparted in me, and for me the world is a very black and white place or at least most of the time it is. But as I get older, it seems to me that there are far more areas of differing shades of grey than I once believed. So how do we deal with those choices:  the choices where no action is one hundred percent morally or ethically right and yet the choice still needs to be made? What then?

The answer is sometimes there is no right answer. Sometimes there really are no win situations.  To some, this might seem like a pessimistic approach, but I disagree. I believe that if we acknowledge that fact, we can move on to facing whatever obstacle or challenge awaits us as a result of our choice. The key here is simply that you have to make the choice that you can live with. At the end of the day, whatever moral code or guiding principles that you subscribe to has to be satisfied. Otherwise, you will destroy yourself. There is a scene from one of my favorite TV shows that illustrates my point.  The hero is lying badly injured and perhaps dying in a hospital bed after undergoing immense hardship in order to save a major city from sure destruction. To do so, he has had to break many laws and do things that most of us would find, at the very least, unethical. However, there is still a threat out there that could potentially threaten the lives of the city’s inhabitants. The hero’s partner knows that she can stop the threat, but she will similarly have to disregard some of the same laws and rules that the hero has in order to do so. As he lays there she approaches him and asks his advice.

“ Hero: I can’t tell you what to do. I’ve been wrestling with this all my life. When I see fifteen people held hostage on a bus, everything else goes out the window, and I’ll do whatever it takes to save them and I mean whatever it takes. You know, maybe I thought, if I save them, I can save myself.”

Partner:  “Do you regret anything that you did today?”

Hero: “No. But then again, I don’t work for the FBI.”

Partner:” I don’t understand.”

Hero: “You took an oath. You made a promise to uphold the law. You cross that line, it always starts off with a small step. Before you know it, you’re running as fast as you can in the wrong direction just to justify why you started in the first place. These laws were written by much smarter men than me. And in the end, I know that these laws have to be more important than the fifteen people on the bus, I know that’s right. In my mind, I know that’s right. But I just don’t think my heart could ever have lived with that. I guess the only advice I can give you is try to make choices that you can live with.”

So folks, that’s my advice to you. Life can be difficult and eventually, we will all be faced with what seems to be an impossible situation. When no choice seems right, make the choice that is you can live with and have faith. We all have been granted the knowledge of right and wrong. We all have been given our agency to make whatever choices we choose.  But in the end, we all have to live with ourselves and God. Make sure that no matter what, when you look in the mirror, you can look yourself in the eye with self-respect, and dignity, and that on that final day, you will be able to say “I did the best that I could.”