“When someone you love dies, you are given the gift of “second chances”. Their eulogy is a reminder that the living can turn their lives around at any point. You’re not bound by the past; that is who you used to be. You’re reminded that your feelings are not who you are, but how you felt at that moment. Your bad choices defined you yesterday, but they are not who you are today. Continue reading
healing
Magnanimity is not a common term….
Magnanimity is not a common term. Many people do not recognize it when they hear it. But they know it immediately when it is explained, and most know it as one of the areas they can personally improve upon. For too many of us are quick to seek revenge, swift to criticize, fast to find fault, and speedy to get even. Yes, too many of us are slow to hold our tongues, slow to forgive, and even slower to forget. One of the leading reasons for a lack of magnanimity is what I call a scarcity mentality.
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To win in life means to give up the obsession of ‘who’s at fault’.
The key to painless growth is humility, which amounts to merely dropping pridefulness and pretense and accepting fallibility as a normal human characteristic of self and others. Continue reading
How can we talk it through?
Born on the northeast coast of England, of Viking and Welsh ancestry, I grew up as a granddaughter of the Empire and daughter of the Commonwealth. As a young girl in the years following the First World War, I puzzled and then grieved that the men came back so hurt—legs lost, difficulty breathing––and so many dead. How could we have done this? I wondered. Why couldn’t we have talked it through? This was a question that really mattered to me.
Later, studying the armistice conditions ending the war, it became very clear that the lack of ongoing and authentic dialogue among nations created conditions for future conflict. I determined that, when I grew up, I would study ways in which these mistakes would not be repeated.
But then, instead of peace, World War II came, and I spent almost five years in the Royal Air Force. The overarching mission was simple: survive, defeat Nazism, end holocausts, and make the world safe for democracy. In the course of wartime, I lost friends, comrades, and home. One searing experience in Europe, in which I encountered ambulatory Jews being brought out of the camps, caused me to ask my commanding officer: Sir, how could we have done this? He snapped that of course, we had not done this, they had. Yet I knew that, somehow, our human community as a whole had failed in the face of these atrocities.
In my contemplation and study of these questions, it became clear to me that every societal change process I knew of started with an informal conversation in which men and women—young or old—were witnessed and “heard into speech,” sharing their dreams and hopes for making a difference around something they cared about. In being truly seen and heard, people discovered their mutual commitment to act and were transformed.
the more I am willing to understand and accept the realities in myself and in the other person, the more change seems to be stirred up
The more I am open to the realities in me and in the other person, the less do I find myself wishing to rush in to “fix things.” As I try to listen to myself and the experiencing going on in me, and the more I try to extend that same listening attitude to another person, the more respect I feel for the complex processes of life. So I become less and less inclined to hurry in to fix things, to set goals, to mold people, to manipulate and push them in the way that I would like them to go. I am much more content simply to be myself and to let another person be himself. Continue reading
The Only Thing I can Change is Myself
The greatest reason for our need to know ourselves is that we may become greater channels for the expression of the living spirit in helpfulness to others.
It seems that only after great pain and struggle are we willing to let go of our obsession with self-preservation and let life flow a little….
While playing on a hot summer day, two young children notice a dripping garden hose. The drop-by-drop trickle provides them with a desire for a real thirst-quenching gulp. But as they grab the hose from one another they feel the lack of real fulfilment.
They spend all their time 
rather than using their creativity to follow the hose to its source and turn on the faucet. Continue reading
Voice of Intuition is suggestive yet not pushy
There’s an indescribable feeling of connectedness when you hear a random voice in your head offer a suggestion that you impulsively obey and later discover to be a wise choice or, in some cases, a life-saving choice. Continue reading
“Love till it Hurts”
Going to office and concentrating on an ordinary job itself becomes tough for most of us when a near and dear one is sick at home. Living with the knowledge that the new born son will never grow up to be a normal human being, continuing to take care of the boy for over four decades can be crushing enough. In addition, attending to wife hit by Parkinson’s disease over two decades ago. Still, achieving eminence in journalism, running a newspaper as an editor, serving as central minister of the country, continuing to produce book after book and deliver public lectures – are by no means ordinary achievements for anybody.
Arun Shourie👇
( Contributed by Mr. Balasundar)
Openheartedness—warmheartedness—is the antidote to loneliness.
The Dalai Lama was saying that when one is thinking about others with kindness and compassion, one is never lonely. Openheartedness—warmheartedness—is the antidote to loneliness. Continue reading
ONE TUSK 