Saying no

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Many of us seem to have great difficulty in simply saying “No” to requests made of us or even invitations to us. Somehow we assume – whether we are aware of it or not – that either the other person is too weak to cope with our refusal and will be offended or a relationship is impossible to maintain without 100 percent mutual agreement.

Daily examples of the results of this nonassertive belief can be seen when other people invite you out to join them in some social activity. How comfortable do you feel in assertively revealing your true state by saying simply and openly: “No, I just don’t feel like it this weekend. Let’s try it another time?” Instead you invent “good” reasons that will not allow the other person to get irritated, feel rebuffed and possibly dislike you. Most of us follow this inane behavior pattern because of our childish belief that we cannot function properly if we do things that cause other people to remove their good will toward us, even a little bit.

Although generalizations are suspect and typically useless, our behavior in this area is sufficiently childish to prompt me to make this observation: one cannot live in terror of hurting other people’s feelings. Sometimes one offends. That’s life in the big city!

Manuel Smith, When I Say No, I Feel Guilty

Expecting Initiative

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Holding people to the responsible course is not demeaning; it is affirming. Proactivity is part of human nature, and although the proactive muscles may be dormant, they are there. By respective the proactive nature of other people, we provide them with at least one clear, undistorted reflection from the social mirror.

Stephen Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Maintaining

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It’s the maintenance of life, the plumbing of life that we sometimes slip into and forget the prose and poetry. It’s easier to make lists, it’s easier to call the plumber, its easier to wonder why the car doesn’t work, and spend our life, worrying about the plumbing. And one day at 50 we wake up and say, “Why is there no juice? Why is there no joy? Why is there no pleasure?”

Roger Fransecky 

Choosing Prison

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Our capacity to choose changes constantly with our practice of life. The longer we continue to make the wrong decisions, the more our heart hardens; the more often we make the right decision, the more our heart softens – or better perhaps, comes alive.

Each step in life which increases my self-confidence, my integrity, my courage, my conviction also increases my capacity to choose the desirable alternative, until eventually it becomes more difficult for me to choose the undesirable rather than the desirable action. On the other hand, each act of surrender and cowardice weakens me, opens the path for more acts of surrender, and eventually freedom is lost. 

Erich Fromm, The Heart of Man

A Tale of Two Artists

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The first of two artists said, "I have traveled the world over and I have seen a lot. But I have not found one person worth painting. I have found flaws in everyone and just can't bring myself to paint them."

The second artist disagreed, "I may not be a great artist; I have never been to Paris - or even New York. But among my unimportant friends living in my small rural town, I have not found anyone too insignificant to paint. There is always a better side. I may not be a great artist, but I enjoy my art."

Which is one is the true artist? The one who finds nothing worth painting? Or the one who brings a certain something to his craft enabling him to see a world of beauty others are blind to? In the same way, some people find no one worthy of their love, while others find everyone worthy.

Should I search for attractive people to paint, to love? Or should I look for the attractiveness of the soul within?

A Steadfast Man

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When a man is faithful to one woman, he looks on other women in quite another way, a way unknown to the world of Eros; other women turn into persons instead of being reflections or means. This ‘spiritual exercise’ develops new powers of judgment, self-possession, and respect.* The opposite in this of an erotic man, a steadfast man no longer strives to see a woman as merely an attractive or desirable body... he feels, as soon as tempted, he has been desiring only an illusory or fleeting aspect of what is actually a complete life. Thus temptation recedes disconnected instead of making itself into an obsession; and fidelity is made secure by the clear-sightedness it induces.

(*‘Respect’, as I use the word here, means that we recognize in a being the fullness of a person. A person, according to Kant’s famous definition, is what cannot be used by man as an instrument or thing.)

Denis de Rougemont, Love in the Western World

I am Loved!

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We’ve heard a thousand times that God loves us. But one day the meaning hit us. WE ARE LOVED. Really loved! Not just for what we can do, or what we have, tor what we have to offer. Not out of pity or obligation.

People love like that. They love what they think we are. We all know that about each other. We play games to keep it that way.

We try to always show the side of ourselves that we think people love us for. And we have learned form harsh experience that if we don’t, we lose! (People can change their minds about loving us.)

Sometimes we play our games very well. Sometimes we fool everyone except ourselves, and deep inside we say, “You love me… But if you really knew, you wouldn’t.”

I think some of us have a hard time even liking ourselves. We think we don’t have enough to offer, and that makes it hard to love anyone else! Giving is then conditional, tentative. There is a wall of protection… that tough shell of “I’m not going to let you hurt me.”

We all know folks who aren’t very easy to work with because they don’t feel loved. They’re defensive and wary, often depressed and pessimistic.

But if we could all really see that God – the perfect, great omnipotent creator and orginal cause of the whole universe – really, loves us.. that “the One who knows us best, loves us most,” it would change our lives! God, whom we have wronged the most, loves us - and has found a way to come to where we are… and forgive us! No person, no power, no circumstance, no situation,, no station in life, nobody’s opinion – nothing- can ever make us fell unloved again. We are of value. WE have been redeemed. We are totally, unreservedly, forever LOVED!

We can dare to love back! We can risk hurt or rejection. We can try again, and even if we fail, we can win. We are loved by the only person whose opinion ultimately matters. We can LOVE. We can love even those who haven’t “earned” it. Even those who reject it. Even those who don’t need it. (Who’s that?!) We are loved!

Bill Gaither, songwriter

The Limits of Science

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The Ten Commandments of the Old Testament and the two great commandments (to love God, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself), according to Freud, come from human experience, not from revelation. The scientific method, he writes, is our only source of knowledge.

(CS) Lewis strongly disagrees. The scientific method is simply cannot answer all questions, cannot possibly be the source of all knowledge. He says the job of science- a very important and necessary job – is to experiment and observe and report how things behave or react. He writes, “But why anything comes to be there at all and whether there is anything behind the things science observes.. this is not a scientific question.”

Armand Nicholi, The Question of God

Shopping for Happiness

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What we’ve been seeing in my lab, over and over again, is that people have an inability to predict what will make us happy — or unhappy. The truth is, bad things don’t affect us as profoundly as we expect them to. That’s true of good things, too.

So the good news is that going blind is not going to make you as unhappy as you think it will. The bad news is that winning the lottery will not make you as happy as you expect.

We know that the best predictor of human happiness is human relationships and the amount of time that people spend with family and friends.

The interesting thing is that people will sacrifice social relationships to get other things that won’t make them as happy — money. That’s what I mean when I say people should do “wise shopping” for happiness.

People think a car will last and that’s why it will bring you happiness. But it doesn’t. It gets old and decays. But experiences don’t. You’ll “always have Paris” — and that’s exactly what Bogart meant when he said it to Ingrid Bergman. But will you always have a washing machine? No.

You couldn’t pay me $100,000 to miss a play date with my granddaughters. And that’s not because I’m rich. That’s because I know that a hundred grand won’t make me as happy as nurturing my relationship with my granddaughters will.”

Daniel Gilbert
Harvard social psychologist and
author of Stumbling into Happiness

To be in love

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To be in love is not necessarily to love. To be in love is a state; to love, an act.  A state is suffered or undergone; but an act has to be decided upon.  Now, the promise which marriage means cannot fairly be made to apply to the future of a state in which I am at the moment, but it can and should mortgage, the future of conscience acts which I take on – to love, to remain faithful, to bring up my children.  That shows how different are the meanings of the word ‘to love’ in the world of Eros and the world of Agape.

Denis de Rougemont, Love in the Western World

Black Swains

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We have a natural tendency to look for instances that confirm our story and our vision of the world. 

Seeing white swans does not confirm the nonexistence of black swans. There is an exception, however: I know what statement is wrong, but not necessarily what statement is correct. If I see a black swan I can certify that all swans are not white! If I see someone kill, then I can be practically certain that he is a criminal. If I don’t see him kill, I cannot be certain that he is innocent. The same applies to cancer detection: the finding of a single malignant tumor proves that you have cancer, but the absence of such a finding cannot allow you to say with certainty that you are cancer-free. 

We can get closer to the truth by negative instances, not by verification. 

Nassim Taleb, The Black Swain

Freshening Relationships

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Relationships often develop a certain tiresome predictability. You do what you usually do, other people respond the way they usually do, and around it goes. If you reverse course, act in a novel manner, you alter the entire dynamic. Do this every so often to break up the relationship’s stale patterns and open it to new possibilities.

Robert Greene, The 33 Strategies of War

Walls and Masks

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We need to be able to express ourselves, to talk ourselves out without fear of rejection by others. Too often the problems that we keep submerged within us remain, in the darkness of our own interior, undefined and therefore destructive.

We do not see the true dimensions of these things that trouble us until we define them and set lines of demarcation in conversation with a friend. Inside of us they remain as nebulous as smoke, but when we confide ourselves to another we acquire some sense of dimension and growth in self-identity and the capacity to accept ourselves as we are.

It may well be that our walls and masks will make this difficult. We may instinctively try to rationalize that there is really no one near to whom we can talk ourselves out. Many of us practice the self-deception of believing that there is no one in our supposed circle of friends that can be trusted. Very commonly these excuses that we have rehearsed so often are merely excuses. Our real fear is that we would be rejected, that the other person would not understand us. And so we wait and wait and wait behind our wall for the sufficient sound of reassurance in another or we gaze out of the windows of our towers looking for prince charming to come and rescue us. We excuse ourselves from all initiative seeking truly human interpersonal relationship with another on the grounds that the time is not ripe or the circumstances right. In the meanwhile, we can only perish.

John Powell, Why am I Afraid to Love