Important Stuff I've Learned

Today, January 14,  is my birthday.  This year it falls on Saturday, which is the day of the week on which I was born.  This coincidence led me to discover that the calendars for 1956 and 2012 are the same. In other words,  every date in 2012 will be on the same day of the week as it was in 1956.  (This is not all that unusual an occurrence.  It also happened in 1984, the year my daughter was born.) Also, I was born in '56, and this year I am turning 56.  I wonder what cosmic significance that little co-inky-dink holds?   Probably nothing more than the fact that I am approaching decrepitude.  However, I think the coincidences are interesting, and sometimes they really  do mean something.....

I have heard it said that Time is the great thief.  When I look in the mirror, I notice a few things it has stolen from me. It would be easy to bemoan the parts of myself that are not quite like they used to be, and  like I wish they still were.  I often think of people I have loved that I won't see again this side of Heaven.  Time took them from me.  Those little children of mine are grown into a wonderful young man and woman with children of their own, but sometimes I get nostalgic for the days when I was the most important man in their lives, before Time moved us all into different stages of life.  So, I agree that Time has stolen things from me that I loved.  However, I also know that I traded the joys of my younger days for new joys, and for some insights that I didn't have back then, for lessons that Life has taught me, sometimes through hard times I would rather have gone around than through.  I'd like to share a few of those lessons.

It is important to learn to accept ourselves, to embrace who we are.  There are lots of things in life that seem to conspire to make doing this difficult.  Sometimes parents, schools, and religious institutions cause us as children to focus on the things about ourselves that are less than perfect.  Advertising today certainly makes it difficult for anyone who has ever been near a TV, a magazine, or the internet to feel good about the way they look.  Often, we see others and think they are closer to what we should be, smarter, better looking, or more successful.  Pardon me for saying so, but all this kind of thinking is just bullshit.  You are who God made you  to be. You have been shaped by your environment and your heredity. It doesn't change anything to hold yourself in low esteem, or to try to be something you aren't.  Jesus said we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. That implies we are to love ourselves.  This does not imply that we aren't to try to better ourselves when possible, to achieve all we can.  But despising and belittling ourselves doesn't change who we are.  Approaching life from a position of self-love empowers us to be who we were meant to be.  There is only one of each of us.  We should all be radically ourselves.

It is important to accept other people as they are.  This is sort of a corollary of accepting ourselves.  In fact, I believe that if we don't first accept ourselves, we probably won't do such a great job accepting others.  There will always be people in life that annoy, irritate, or  even enrage us.  There will be people who stand for things we oppose, people who believe in things we abhor, people who hurt us time and again.  I believe it is in our own best interest to accept people as they are.  This doesn't mean that we shouldn't sometimes suggest to people important to us things they could improve about themselves, or ways they could change to make our peaceful co-existence more easily attained.  It does mean, however, that people are who God made them to be, just like we are who he made us to be.  Hating someone for who they are or how they live does not change them.  Refusing to forgive someone who has hurt you does not change them.  Indeed, carrying all those negative feelings around hurts us more than those they are directed to.  Remember what Jesus said about loving our neighbor?  Spreading around God's grace freely is very liberating.  I recommend it highly.

It is important to laugh -- often.   This is an important lesson to learn.  I believe that God gave us laughter to help us deal with the stress and strain of everyday living.  You can worry and fret your way through life, but what good does that do?  What does it change?  Nothing.  If you can find a way to laugh every day, several times each day, you can more effectively deal with the things you have to cope with.    As e e cummings said,  "The most wasted of all days is one without laughter." There are all kinds of medical benefits that laughter provides us.  The other day at work, we were having a typically stress-filled day, and somehow several of us began joking around, and soon we were all laughing, and dealing more effectively with what we had to do that day.  Someone a few rows over in the cubicle jungle later told me that she didn't hear the jokes, but she heard what she called "joyous laughter," and her spirits were lifted too.  And have you ever noticed that if there is a strained relationship  between you and another person, laughing together seems to remove the tension?  It's miraculous.  My advice is to laugh often and laugh loudly. As the Eagles sang, "Lighten up while you still can "

So, if I could travel back in time, say to January 14, 1977, these are the things I would try to explain to the 21-year old Steve Fouse, because he did not know these things, and maybe he could have benefited from learning them sooner than I did.  There are other important things I have learned along the way, but a lot of them aren't very interesting, like, "the more you eat, the more you want," and "save early and save often," so I probably wouldn't bother him with those things.   It probably wouldn't matter anyway.  He'd probably have to learn his lessons the hard way, just like I did.