Friday's Recap (200810)

We are all called to live life with passion, or with conviction. Living with passion means a life dedicated to living with meaning and purpose. Essentially we humans are restless creatures, born of a spirit to excel, to succeed, and to connect. Like the slant of plants towards sun and water, there is always an irresistible urge within us for growth. As Thomas Merton phrased it, “By the taste of clean water, follow the brook to its source.” Our urges are therefore as natural and essential to us as air and water. These urges to grow and bloom inspire us to move forward in life regardless of the adversity we face. These urges keep us on our toes until we attain a state of ultimate fulfillment, that is, when our spiritual quest have found the source of meaning in life.

In the book, passion for life, authors Muriel James and John James illuminated this life of meaning and purpose by calling it a path with heart. Have you followed a path with heart recently? The authors defined a path with heart as “a course of action that calls us to respond with passion – to act on the basis of a positive emotional and intellectual commitment to someone or something. It calls us to devote positive energy and enthusiasm to an activity or a cause that has personal meaning.”

Although a path with heart demands personal sacrifices from us, it is ultimately rewarding and fulfilling in itself. Moses followed a path with heart when he finally heeded God’s call to free the Hebrews out of slavery in Egypt. Gandhi did the same by following a path with heart by turning his heart away from material comfort and using his legal skills and sharp mind to set the wheels of India’s independence running.

Many youth nowadays are asked, what do they want in life? Without much reflection, the answers are almost carbon copies of one another. They want to be happy. General happiness is what the youth nowadays are chasing after. But little do they know, the search for happiness will never be found because happiness is not a goal or an end in itself. It is a byproduct of an activity. It is derived from working on a goal. It is a journey to be savored. It is joyful working towards a life-affirming goal.

More importantly, ultimate fulfillment comes when we seek to bless others with our talents. It is when we see a smile from the faces of those we have helped that we in return experience an irrepressible joy within and a buoyancy of hope to move us forward in our own lives. This is the water brook that King David is talking about, the river of living waters that Jesus sermonizes about, and the water and air of living that we cannot live without.

Let’s return to our God-given urges, which none of us can ignore. Ultimately, the challenge to grow is threefold; to get in touch with the urges that come from our inner core, to set goals that are compatible with the growth of the human spirit, and to develop the personal qualities that are needed to reach those goals.

In the book Passion for life, there are essentially seven basic urges that will determine the pathway that we will tread upon in life and they are as follows:-

The urge to live is the most basic urge that all healthy persons experience. A Chinese proverb reads, “When the winter is severe, the pine trees in this ancient land stay green throughout the year. Is it because the earth is warm and friendly? No, it is because the pine trees have within itself a life-restoring power.” The urge to live is expressed in striving to survive, in looking for ways to be comfortable, and in searching for meaning or purpose.

Even when survival and comfort are uncertain or not possible, people may seek for deeper meaning to life as the admirable struggle of Charlie Wedemeyer shows. Wedermeyer suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS. In this disease, all nerves and muscles below the face eventually deteriorate. Although his life expectancy when ALS was diagnosed was only three years, he has kept on coaching for more than twelve years.

Now a quadriplegic who cannot move and speak, his spirit is still robust. He speaks to community groups through his wife, Lucy, who reads his lips and interprets what he wants to say to the audience. With her help, he continues to coach a team that did so well that it made it to the state championships in 1985. When people ask how he is able to maintain his positive spirit and zest for life, Charlie responds, “There is one answer. I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for God.” Lucy, who was his high school sweetheart, echoed this. “We both feel as if it’s okay if it’s over at any time, because we’ve had such a joyful life.”

Now, you see how joy and true happiness are derived? It is derived from finding meaning and purpose in the seemingly mundane activities that we engage in on a daily basis.

Of course, I don’t expect us to be dancing all the way to work or singing merrily in the rain. The reality is that life is tough. For the majority of us with bills to pay, bosses to please, and family to uphold, life will not be granting us frequent “kit-kat” breaks. But the challenges can no doubt be met if we see the whole picture of it all. And the whole picture is captured beautifully in the words of the holocaust survivor, Dr Victor Frankl, “Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time.”

How many of us are living a life of no regrets? Those who can answer this affirmatively are few and far in between. Many of us secretly, if not openly, wished that we could have done things differently, or say it differently. In our words and actions, we have hurt many we love and disappointed many who had placed their hope on us.

If given an opportunity, we would have done and said it differently. We would have strived to make amends. But it is not too late. We have a whole future ahead of us to do it differently. We can still live as if we were living a second time and as though we had acted wrongly the first time. Seen in this light, building and restoring relationships ultimately become the reason for our living and the cause for our joy.

The urge to be free – physically, emotionally, and intellectually – is another basic force within the human spirit. This urge for physical freedom starts with the first grasp for breath at birth and continues throughout life.
Freedom necessitates two vital elements: self-determination and courage. The former is having the freedom to choose our own fate and course of action without being compelled to do so by others. The latter refers to the willingness to act positively in spite of fear.

When the goal of self-determination becomes a passion, people are willing to go to great lengths to achieve it. Sathaya Tor, a Cambodian, was, at age seven, taken from his family by Khmer Rouge soldiers and put into a child labor camp in the notorious killing fields of Cambodia. There he had to work twelve hours a day on only two scoops of rice. His urges to live and be free were so strong that he survived the hard reality: “I knew that when I was really starving, no one would take care of me. I had to take care of myself.” To do this at age seven was an incredible task.
Lastly, courage is taking a step forward with the hope that all will turn out all right. To repeat the words of Martin Luther King, “We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fears.”

The urge to understand is another universal aspect of the spiritual self. To understand is to comprehend the nature and significance of something. The search for knowledge lives in everyone and nobody can deny its existence. As Eleanor Roosevelt observed, “Life must be lived and curiosity kept alive, one must never, for whatever reason, turn his or her back on life.” To learn is to be alive. This sense of wonder and curiosity are innate and it is most evident in young children. Their endless questions about everything, sometimes even bordering on being most annoying, show how alive they are, how fascinated they are about living, and how learning comes so naturally to them. Albert Einstein once remarked, “Most people stop looking when they find the proverbial needle in the haystack. I would continue to see if there were other needles.”

To me, the dullest people in this world are those who think they have arrived on earth, who claim that nothing surprises them, and who have ossified into their own fixed-mindset - not open to any good persuasion and not excitable by any new corrective knowledge. Such are what fundamentalist, fatalistic and nihilistic fanatics are made of.

In the book entitled Curious? by psychologist Todd Kashdan, the author explained in one illuminating paragraph how a pervading sense of curiosity can power our growth and dynamism. Here is the paragraph for your reflective digestion, “Curiosity is about recognizing and reaping the rewards of embracing the uncertain, the unknown, and the new. There is a simple story line for how curiosity is the engine of growth.

“By being curious, we explore.
By exploring, we discover.
When this is satisfying, we are more likely to repeat it.
By repeating it, we develop competence and mastery.
By developing competence and mastery, our knowledge and skills grow.”

The urge to create activates our unique ways of thinking, being, and doing with goals that show we are capable of originality and innovation. Albert Einstein had a visual mind. His theory of relativity was based on a sudden flash of insight he had when he visualized himself riding on a ray of light at the speed of light. This was the symbolic image that pointed him in the direction of his work on the theory of relativity.

In short, the urge to create refers to a limitless potential within us to imagine the impossible and to transform it into our present-day realities. Einstein once wrote, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

The urge to enjoy is a natural urge of young children, as natural as the urge to live. Actor Bill Crosby is one example of a man who knows how to laugh and to make others laugh with him wherever he goes. Those who know him say he is this way all of the time, often telling funny stories and playing practical jokes. Crosby’s naturally playful spirit was encouraged in childhood by is grandfather, who served as a role model by clowning around and telling funny stories that had a moral point.

As a child, Crosby was a comedian who loved mimicry and would rather clown around than study. Now Crosby designed his own material, never stooping to include off-colored or ethnic jokes, and focused instead on normal family events that can be seen as hilarious expressions of the human spirit.

It is sad that as we age, we become more conscious of ourselves and less free to laugh at ourselves. We take things so seriously that we have lost our funny bone. We also fail to see the lighter side of things. Nothing is seen as playful fun anymore. Our work becomes as dry as bone and as mundane as wall curtails. Our relationships become routine, predictable and even boring. We somehow take life so seriously that we have lost the innocence, wonders and excitable fun of our childhood.

I urge you to see the fun side of all things, all activities. Sometimes, we have to act silly, play ourselves like a fool, and laugh at our own goofiness. In one author’s words, we have to open ourselves to the bloom of irrational bliss. There is much to be enjoyed in this life. We do not need to go far to experience this magical joy of irrational bliss. We can find it in the silly dialogues with our children. We can unearth it in the mutual cuddling with our loved ones. And we can discover it in the simple pleasures of life, like reading a book, eating a delicious dessert, and silly dancing in our living room. Martin Luther once quipped, “If you are not allowed to laugh in heaven, I do no want to go there.”

The urge to connect with people propels us to search for love in authentic relationships that are open and honest rather than manipulative or superficial. Love is the ultimate connection between people. Let’s work on our closest relationships. Start with our spouse, children, next of kin, and friends. Yesterday, at the cell group, we talked about love being an equation as Love equal One over Power. This means that love is inversely proportional to power. The more love means the less power. And the reverse is this: more power means less love.

In short, the more you love, the more vulnerable you are. And the more vulnerable you are, the more exposed you are to being hurt, getting disappointed, and even feeling betrayed. Love can be the greatest force of all as well as the greatest disappointment of all. So, the price of love can be costly but, at the same time, most rewarding. This paradox is the most incomprehensible and enigmatic of all human endeavors. “The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable; through the embracing of one of its beings,” so says Martin Buber.

Jesus understood this principle well. He was in fact the self-embodiment of it. He was the greatest as well as the least of us all. He was the servant king, an oxymoronic term.

Husbands would do well to remember this simple yet powerful principle. It is always easy for the husbands to throw the scripture in the faces of their wives that says husbands are the head of the household or family just as Christ is the head of the Church. And thereafter act as if they are the self-appointed lordship over the other sex. But this is so one-sided and unilateral. They often ignore the more important latter-part of the scripture which strongly reminds husbands to love their wives in the same way that Christ loved the Church. We all know the price Christ paid for his love for the Church. He paid with His life.

So the catch is simply this: Husbands who are deserving of being the head of the household have to demonstrate first their love for their wives in the same way that Christ demonstrated His love for the Church. The equation is simple enough and it is this: Wives can safely rely with sweet abandonment the stellar leadership of their husbands and defer to their wishes if they are equally assured that their soul mates are prepared at a skip of a beat to lay their lives for them.

Finally, the urge to transcend is defined as the ability to pass beyond a human limit, to reach up as well as out, to let go as well as hold on, to be open to the unknown as well as the known. To transcend is to rise above or pass beyond a human limit, to move beyond the everyday dimensions of life and its usual limitations.

The urge to transcend is also expressed as a yearning to transform our routine, habitual responses to ones that come more from the depths of our spirit. This happens when we appreciate the good that surrounds us, whether it is listening to the voices of children on a playground, watching the patterns of the rain rush down a window, or enjoying the brief encounters we have with different people throughout the day.

Generally, faith is the key to unlock our spiritual energies to reach for the unknown and to face adversity without nudging. Faith is the six-sense that transcends us to greater heights by believing in something, even when it cannot be proven.

The problem with most of us is that our faith fell short of that little leverage to lift us up. This accounts for the many times we are hit by the insidious darts of adversity. But this is because we got our priorities mixed up. We rely on ourselves instead of God to carry us through.

In short, don’t have faith in your own faith in God. But have faith in God’s faith in you. The former is stuff of what self-improvement is made of. The other is scriptural-based. The former is relying on your own strength. The other is relying on God’s promises.

Let me leave you with this quote from Dr Victor Frankl, “Just a small fire is extinguished by the storm whereas a large fire is enhanced by it – likewise a weak faith is weakened by predicament and catastrophes, whereas a strong faith is strengthened by them.”