Category: Sunday Letters

If you’ve been reading these Sunday Letters for a while, you may have heard this story before. I tell it from time to time because it’s a favorite of mine. And as we slide into the holiday season with all the high emotions it brings, it feels like a timely reminder. So here we go:

One day, while riding in the car, my teen-age son and I were listening to the radio. Some guy was explaining that we don’t always feel warm fuzzies toward someone we love. “We like each other because,” he said. (Because she made you laugh. Because he did the dishes. You can imagine any “because” you like.) “But,” the radio guy continued, “we love each other anyway.”

We love each other even when. That’s because love can embrace even those things in each other that drive us batty, or that conflict with our own cherished viewpoints or beliefs. Liking usually can’t go there; it stops at the differences.

My son and I loved the radio guy’s statement: We like each other because; we love each other anyway. It was so true that it made us laugh, and from that day on we often said to each other, as a kind of affectionate joke, “I love you anyway.”

I thought about that this past week when I ran into a difficult situation with a friend. She was recently diagnosed with a serious medical condition and when she asked me to pick up a certain snack item for her, I said I would feel uncomfortable doing that and asked if maybe she could make a different choice. Later, I gently suggested that she see a dietician for help in changing her eating habits so her body could stay as healthy as possible as long as possible.

She told me that she knew I was trying to help, but that it was up to her to choose what she wanted to eat and what she didn’t, and she didn’t want any more of my advice on the subject.

I thanked her for telling me that, and promised that I would respect her wishes. And I will – even though in my version of reality, the things that she’s eating are killing her.

What do you do when someone you love is, in your view, choosing to do things that may cost her life? Things that make you furious, that make you feel helpless, that, according to everything you know and believe, are potentially deadly mistakes Do you abandon your relationship because it’s too painful to see your friend’s choices? Because she’s refusing to accept what you (of course) believe to be superior information?

Nope. You love your friend anyway. You love her enough to honor her free will to make her own choices about her own life.  That doesn’t mean you consent to enable clearly self-destructive behavior. You can draw lines and say what you are unwilling to do. Your free will counts, too. 

You can work to find compromises. You can even do things for her that you strongly disagree with, as long as you’re clear that you’re helping only because you honor her right to make her own decisions and not because you‘re condoning them.

In essence, it all boils down to the Golden Rule – treating others the way you want to be treated.

Yeah, it gets difficult when you and the other hold strongly conflicting beliefs. You have to face the fact that each of you has plenty of evidence for what you believe, and that, in the end, beliefs are just that.

Whether it’s which foods to eat or not eat, or what political party to support, or what treatment to choose for a medical condition, or what God to believe in or reject – each of us must choose for ourselves. And each of us has the right to expect those who love us to accept our choices – whether they agree with them or not.

Because, in the end, it’s really true. We may like each other because, but we need to love each other anyway.

Wishing you a week where liking triumphs almost every minute.

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by Ben Fleeson from Pixabay}

I was paging through the local newspaper this morning and happened across the area’s high school football scores. I chuckled as I remembered the year our junior high school’s team got off to a dismal start. After losing their opening game 37-0, they went on to lose the next one by an even more crushing 67-0. Ouch. But eventually, they tasted victory and held their own for the rest of the season.

When you think about it, all the games we play—even the ones we call “life”—are a bit like experiments. And as Buckminster Fuller said, “There’s no such thing as a failed experiment, “only experiments with unexpected outcomes.”

Losing isn’t the same thing as failure. You form your strategies and put them into play the best you can. You bring all you know to the game; you call on all your experience.

But life is full of mysteries and variables, and the only way to learn more is to do the experiment, to play the game. Sometimes it all comes together just the way you had hoped. Sometimes it doesn’t. Accidents happen. We make mistakes. We get reminded that we’re mere human beings. But win or lose, we always come away knowing more than we did before we took the leap.

It’s the unpredictability of life that makes it interesting, after all – and fun.

You may think that you’d like to know what the remainder of the day holds, or what tomorrow or next week will bring. But if you did know, life would soon become one long and tedious déjà vu. Surprises keep us awake – and show us where we need to be paying more attention. They teach us. They give us new opportunities to use our strengths and talents and to develop them.

I hope when the coaches of losing football teams sit down with their players that they point out what the team did well and help them to do it even better. I hope they’ll help the kids discover how they can bring their strengths and talents to improve in the areas where they’re weak. And more than anything, I hope they tell their players that losing isn’t failure, and fill them with enthusiasm for learning more about playing the game, and loving it, win or lose.

I hope the next time you stumble, when something doesn’t work out the way you wanted, that you’ll remember it’s just one of life’s unexpected outcomes, meant to lead you onward, to make you better next time, and to unveil a few more of its mysteries for you.

Wishing you a week winning – however things go.

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by Keith Johnston from Pixabay}

The host of the program I was listening to last Tuesday asked his listeners to send in their stories about a transcendental experience in their lives, one of those defining moments that you know you’ll always remember.

He read a couple of them, and you could feel the emotion in each one, the quiet power and beauty. Then he came to one that topped them all.

It was from a woman who identified herself as Maria. When her daughter was ten months old, Maria and her husband took her to the zoo. The baby fell asleep after a while and Maria was carrying her in her arms when they decided to visit the gorilla house. Someone had told them that a couple of the gorillas in there had babies.

They were barely in the door when Maria found herself across the glass from a seated mother gorilla, cradling her own baby in her massive, hairy arms the same way Maria was holding her daughter,

The two mothers stared at each other, each of them sharply aware of the bond that linked them. Maria bent down and held her sleeping daughter nearer to the glass so the mother gorilla could see her more fully. To Maria’s surprise, the big gorilla carried her sleeping baby to the glass for Maria to see. For about ten minutes, with only mere inches and a pane of glass separating them, the mothers showed off their babies, comparing their little hands and ears and faces and feet.

Those ten minutes with the gorilla mom were a defining moment in Maria’s life. They made it clear that the right decision for her was to turn down a job she had been offered. It was well-paying and would have been a definite step up on the career ladder. But it would have required her to put in a substantial amount of time. She took a lower paying one instead so she could spend more time with her baby. The moments she shared with the gorilla showed her that children come first. “That’s what nature directs,” she said.

Maria went on to have another daughter two years later, and now she’s expecting twin boys. And she credits her family life to what she learned the day she met the mama gorilla and her baby. May they all live happily ever after.

Wishing you a week in harmony with nature.

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by Candice from Pixabay}

In a current events forum I frequent, I noticed a signature line: “Carpe Diem [Latin for “Seize the Day”]—It may be the only one you’ve got.” The writer intended it as a comment on the current state of world affairs, as a caution that because our world seems such a powder keg, we had better make the most of today.

I know that in certain circles, it’s popular to suggest that you should avoid the news, given its typically distressing nature, and focus instead on thoughts of a positive bent. I’m all in favor of focusing on life’s goodness, and firmly believe that it far outweighs the bad. But personally, I prefer to know what’s happening around the planet, whether the news is scary or not, and even when it sometimes breaks my heart.

For me, keeping tabs on world events is a matter of satisfying my curiosity about the nature of outer reality. It’s engagement with the world and part of the stewardship of citizenship. Even when reading it suggests to me that the whole human race is galloping headlong toward cataclysmic disaster, I’m happier knowing the context in which I live than I would be not knowing. I figure I can’t be part of the solution unless I have some understanding of the problem, after all.

But getting back to that signature line, “Carpe Diem” has been worthy advice since a poet named Horace first penned the words over 2,000 years ago. The rest of the sentence that begins with those words is “and put no trust in tomorrow.”

Of course we all do put trust in tomorrow. Trusting in tomorrow is what lets us dream and hope and plan; it’s what gives meaning to many of the activities we invest ourselves in today.

Nevertheless, tomorrow is an iffy kind of thing, even in the best of times. And while we’d like to believe it will unfold more or less according to our expectations, that’s never a certainty. The advice to grab hold of today is recognition of that fact. “Carpe Diem” is a spirited reminder that today—in fact, this moment—is the only day we know we have. It’s meant to be grabbed with eager attention and lived with vigor and zest. And if we squander all its moments living for, or dreading, our tomorrows, we miss the riches it holds for us to enjoy.

It’s a reminder to be aware of those things that bring you happiness and satisfaction, and to take time to savor them in the here and now. It’s a reminder to smell the roses, to appreciate good company, to feel gratitude for the things that comfort and challenge and strengthen and uplift us. That’s how we make memories worth reliving, after all, and how we give our lives meaning and flavor and joy.

“Carpe Diem.” It’s a bit of happiness-counsel worth heading. Put it on a sticky note somewhere that you’ll see it and when you do, take a moment to live its advice.

Wishing you days of vibrant joy.

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by Jan Alexander from Pixabay}

I was doing a little reorganizing this week and ran across some old notes about an interview I’d heard with Neale David Walsh, author of the Conversations with God series that was so popular a few years ago. He had just released a fourth book, Awaken the Species, and he was talking about some of the main concepts it covers.

In case you’re not familiar with the Conversations series, or not even vaguely interested in reading what somebody says about God, you may find it intriguing that the first point the voice that Walsh identifies as “God” had to make was “You’ve got me all wrong.”

As Walsh pointed out in the interview, even if you’ve dismissed the idea of the existence of God entirely, if that sentence has even a smidgeon of truth to it, it suggests that you might want to ask yourself what you do believe about the possibility and nature of an infinitely conscious Supreme Being. (Maybe, for example, you picture God as the source of the code that makes up the matrix of existence.)

That suggestion—about questioning beliefs—reminded me of one of the most challenging and valuable assignments I was ever given in college. It was the final exam in a course called “American Thought and Language,” which covered significant (and often opposing) concepts that had arisen in the country since the time prior to the Revolution up to the present. The assignment was to write an essay entitled “I Believe,” in which we were to discuss a few of our own personal beliefs and give our reasons for holding them.

Every now and then, I assign that essay to myself again, just to take a look at the beliefs I hold now and to examine them. You’d be surprised how interesting that can be – and fun! It’s very revealing.

But that’s not the main thought that I brought away from that Walsh interview. The idea that struck me most deeply was one Walsh shared when the host asked him what was the biggest piece of advice he could give people, based on his latest book. Walsh said he would tell people what he was told was the most important thing: “Your life isn’t about you. It has nothing to do with you. It’s about everyone whose life you touch and the way in which you touch it.”

Think about the implications of that thought. Imagine what it would be like if each of us asked, “How can I help? What can I do to make your life easier, more comfortable, more peaceful, more pleasant?” What if we looked for ways we could give encouragement to each other? If we set out to make the environment a healthier, more beautiful place? If we listened to each other more? If we looked more into each other’s eyes? If we looked for ways to ease another’s burden or to alleviate some of their stress? If we did our jobs knowing that we were contributing, in however small a way, to the well-being of others and took joy in that?

So that’s the thought I leave with you this week, the message that it’s all about every life we touch and how we touch it.

I wish you the insight to see what’s needed, and the generosity of spirit to give as only you can.

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay}

“Congratulations on another day!” the radio host said. I don’t think I ever heard that before, but it certainly resonated with me. I deserved congratulations for keeping my balance so well despite a spate of disruptive events in my life.

As you may have noticed, I haven’t been online for a bit of a stretch. For years now I’ve been heard to utter, “Technology is so wonderful when it works.” This was one of those times when it didn’t. I was in Internet Connection Hell. But valiant knights swarmed in to rescue me, and they were fine, determined men, knowledgeable and most courteous. Still, it took many days to get to the root of the problem.

And it wasn’t just that. My cook top and washing machine died, too, all in the span of a couple days. Meanwhile, close friends were going through difficult personal struggles, and the horrific tragedy unfolding in Maui was breaking my heart.

In the midst of all this, I began to appreciate how valuable all my joy-warrior training has been. It allowed me to keep a perspective as unexpected circumstances pushed me from my accustomed routines. We do like our habits, especially the ones that let us go through our days with some order, efficiency and grace. It annoys us when they’re disturbed.

Still, I noticed, I was surprisingly unperturbed by fairly major interruptions to the usual patterns of my life. I recognized that they were posing some significant challenges. I would have to deal with the hassle and cost of getting service, repairs and replacements. Until I got back online, much of my usual work would have to wait. 

But I simultaneously recognized that being upset would only make dealing with everything more difficult. And I saw that understanding as a great gift, one that I had given myself by “walking the talk,” by finding and exercising the practices that lead to enhanced ease and joy. Instead of letting events devastate me, or hurl me into a pity pool, a heartfelt wave of gratitude washed over me for the peace and confidence I felt as, one step at a time, I navigated the challenges.

In a world where things frequently go differently than we wish them to go, it takes practice to keep a balanced perspective. Maintaining inner peace, which is what joy is all about, is a skill as much as an art, or a personality trait, or a product of a healthy upbringing. You need to practice it, to find ways to nurture and grow it. And that’s what the joy tools I find and enjoy sharing with you are meant to do – to help us learn to operate from a center of peace regardless of what circumstances surround us.

I’m always on the lookout for ways to build my joy skills. So when the guy on the radio said, “Congratulations on another day,” and it made me grin, I wrote the sentence down and taped it to my bathroom mirror as an experiment, to see what effects it would produce. It seemed to me a fine thing to say to myself at the end of the day – or at its start, for that matter. It wasn’t about accomplishing anything, or about being a certain way. It was just about being. Period. You’re here. Conscious. Experiencing. Despite all the odds. Congratulations!

My challenges were what they were, I decided, and the rest of the world remained as my laboratory and playground. Acceptance is always such a fine first step.

Then my curiosity kicked in: What would I do with the time I couldn’t spend as I normally did?

I pulled an old set of instructions from my mind’s files that said, “When you don’t know what to do, clean or create.” I decided to start by creating a list of things I could do with this sudden appearance of free time. After all, free time is a great gift when you think about it.

I’m pleased to say that I accomplished a host of worthwhile projects, and had fun doing it. Despite it all. One night while I was wrapping up a journal entry about my responses that day to my restructured world, I found myself writing, “Life is rich.” And so it is. And we get to live it.

Carry on, my friends, and remember to look for the good, regardless. Oh, and Congratulations on another day!

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by QuinceCreative from Pixabay}

While digging around in my archives the other day, I found this “Blast from the Past” that I wrote in 2010. I was writing about character strengths at the time and this one was about the strength of optimism. I called it . . .

“The Breakfast of Champions”

None of it matters: Where you were born, who your parents are, how tough you had it growing up, how many boulders you had to climb over, what the competition was doing.

What matters is whether you’ve got heart, how much you want to be, how deep you’re willing to dive into the life force within you, what stories you believe and tell.

Especially the stories. You either have excuses or you have reasons. It’s up to you. You either let it get you or you don’t. You see people who came from the sorriest of life’s lot wearing medals, champions risen from the dregs. What kinds of stories do you suppose they listened to and chanted to themselves in the dead of night? Tell yourself those kinds of stories.

The ones who win life’s prizes don’t let a missing leg or drunken dad or empty wallet tell them that the whole deck of cards is stacked against them. They see what they have, not what they lack.

If they stumble, they don’t decide they’re worthless. They tie their shoes or watch out for cracks and keep on with the race. They remember the times they did well, beat the pack, sunk the putt, hit the target, aced the test. They believe in themselves. They tell themselves “I can,” and “I will.”

They fly the banners of hope and high expectations. They eat optimism for breakfast and dine on their victories at night, and even if the victories are small, they find enough of them to make a satisfying meal.

Life is for the brave. It sings like a riot of trumpets for the ones with the daring and guts to keep going even when things are tough. And it sends happiness to dwell in their hearts and applauds them with standing ovations.

Wishing you a week of courage and joy.

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by Pexels from Pixabay}

When you visit here, maybe you’ll notice that my subtitle is “A Joy Warrior’s Journey.” “Joy Warrior” is a title I gave myself back when I was immersed in my studies of positive psychology. It started out as a game. I imagined it as my joining a kind of order or school where you dedicated yourself to learning to live in joy, no matter what. I invented an ever-growing story around it. I couldn’t help it; it’s the writer in me.

It turns out that it’s serious business being a Joy Warrior. It’s not like all of a sudden you step into a pair of magic happy shoes and tra-la-la your way though life. It’s not a game of let’s pretend.

Its goal is to master the art of dissolving anything that stands between you and perfect, radiant joy. And these days, the heap of things cluttering access to joy seems astonishingly deep and tall. It extends from right under our feet to the edges of the sky. As a joy warrior, it’s your job to figure out how to keep those things from stealing your attention and peace. And let me tell you, that’s one heck of a challenge.

So here I am, slaying the dragons that would devour my view of joy, passing along clues as I find them. I’ve learned that joy-stealers are devious, malevolent things. And they love to upset you. To them your rage is like a charred marshmallow to devour around a fire as they chortle with scorn. Remembering that is a good tool to keep in your basket. Don’t feed the joy-stealers.

Another things I’ve learned is that you’re best off when you play to your strengths. Do what you’re good at, what attracts you, what gets your heart beating. Back in the hippie days they said it, “Follow your bliss.” You go farther faster when you move in harmony with your personal strengths than you do when you try to fight against your weaknesses. Smile at your reflection in the mirror every day. Maybe wink at yourself. Remember what it feels like to have fun, to be at ease, to feel a sense of appreciation floating up from somewhere inside you.

You see things more broadly when you’re at peace and content with things just as they are. Even when they’re not what you wanted them to be. It’s a discipline to look for the silver lining, you know. And there always is one. It’s a world of contrasts, of dualities, a kind of “can’t have one without the other” place. When you can see that, and allow it to be okay, the problems of the world, even your personal ones, lose their density and the light of joy, glowing soft and silver, shines through them, and there’s more clarity, and perspective, and a kind of wordless understanding of how everything really is okay.

I didn’t mean to go on and on. I just wanted to expand a little on my experiences as a Joy Warrior. You can decide to be one, too, you know. Or invent a school of your own. Or just be who you are and have the most fun being you that you can possibly have.

Wishing you a week sparkled with smiles.

Warmly,
Susan

Chances are, since you’re human, you’ve had one or two of those times where you’re right at the edge of absolute despair and, looking over the edge into the abyss below, think the tumble might be worth it. You’re not about to find out. But you sure won’t mind when this all ends.

First of all, as someone who has the tattered tee-shirt from that place, let me tell you I’m sorry you had to feel that pain. I’m sorry any of us do. But we do. Every last one of us. It comes, it seems, with the package.

I was reminded of those bleak stretches of the road when I happened across a little wall poster that said,”Don’t you DARE give up now!” I was having a fine morning when I saw it, and it made me grin. Such a poke! Such encouragement in so few words.

“That’s right,” I said to myself. Then I watched a whole string of cliches roll through my mind:
Things change. Things get better. Light follows dark. Calm follows storm.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I thought. I don’t want to hear a bunch of truisms now. Not if I’m chest deep in the messiness of life. If that’s where I am, I’m hanging on to this big bag full of disgust and
sick-of-this-had-enough-ness. And somehow I can’t quite get myself to set it down.

So, you’ve probably been there a time or two, right? Sucks.

One of the best ladders I’ve found for digging myself out of that particular kind of a pit is Tara Brach’s mantra: “This is suffering. Everybody suffers. May I be kind.” Saying those words, for me, softens things, lets me let go of some of the stubbornness that’s holding onto my disgust bag. It’s one of those phrases I like to keep nearby to grab when I’m in trouble.

Now I have “Don’t you DARE give up now!” to add to the mix. It feels spicier. It’s bracing. It carries a challenge. Mind you, it doesn’t say you can’t take a rest. A nap might be just what you need before you take on the next round. It’s just saying that you need to take on the next round.

A scene from a movie I can’t remember comes to mind where these two men are having a raging fist-fight in the mud in a terrible downpour. The hero is taking a pretty bad beating. He slips in the mud and falls to his knees a couple times. Then he’s hit with a powerful blow to the jaw and falls whole body into the slimy mud. Calling on every bit of reserve he has, he pulls himself to his feet. “Why do you keep getting up?” the bad guy asks him incredulously. The hero looks him in the eye, his face covered with mud, and snarls, “Because I can.”

That’s one of the things that made him a hero. He didn’t give up. He kept on going, regardless of how bleak the odds seemed.

Things change. Sometimes – more often than we credit – things get better. And light really does come after darkness. So, yes. I’ll put this one in my pocket: “Don’t you DARE give up now!”

Stick one in yours, too. You never know. It might come in handy one of these days.

Wishing you a week where light dances gently all around you.

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by TheDigitalArtist by Pixabay}

Every now and then somebody up the road sets off a volley of fireworks. Sometimes it’s the little ones that are like popcorn. Sometimes it sounds like a cannon. Once it was a sudden deep boom so loud it made me jump in my chair. It’s that weekend. The Fourth of July, even if the fourth isn’t until Tuesday. We know a holiday when we see one.

Independence Day. I wonder how many of us give any thought at all to its origin, to the context of the times from which it arose, to the meaning of it and how it reflects on the times we are living today. I suppose that sort of thing belongs to a past era. And personally, I think that’s a failure and a shame.

When I was a kid, every Independence Day I used to sprawl on the living room floor with a thick, leather-covered volume of The Encyclopedia Britannica and read The Declaration of Independence all the way through, even though I didn’t understand it. It was sort of like the Bible that way. It felt important and like something you should know.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident,” it said, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

 That’s a pretty deep thought when you consider it. It’s one of those you can visit time and again over the years and have a more insightful view each time as your life experience grows.

Basically, as I see it, the Declaration is a group of people saying they can no longer go along with oppressive treatment from their government and will, going forward, govern themselves, thank you. It’s kind of like when somebody keeps telling you all these things you have to do for their benefit no matter how you feel about it, and then one day, you say, “Wait a minute.” You decide you’ve had enough of that game and you’re not going to play it any more.

Doing that, deciding you will be following your own rules from now on, can create a ruckus. And it did, back then, when those colonists reached their “wait a minute” moment. And here we are. Flying our flags and grilling our burgers and hearing the fireworks pop off from all directions.

I’ll be flying my flag, too, this weekend. I fly it every day that it doesn’t rain. And I’ll be thinking, as I unfurl it and place it in its standard, about the things it represents to me. Even if such thoughts aren’t currently in vogue. Truths endure regardless.

May we be free.

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by picjumbo_com on pixabay}