The irony is that it is actually in your best interest to be selfless. The things you do for the benefit of others not only make you feel fulfilled, they increase your chances of living a long and happy life.
God wants us to know that life is a series of beginnings not endings. Just as graduations are not terminations but commencements. Creation is an ongoing process and when we create a perfect world where love and compassion are shared by all suffering will cease.
To paraphrase something the anthropologist Ashley Montagu once said, the way I change my life is to act as if I’m the person I want to be. This is, to me, the simplest, wisest advice you can give anyone.
When we hate people who hurt us, we come to resemble what we hate, or worse, and then we suffer all the more. What is evil is our response. We have choices, and love is the most powerful eliminator of all.
I know patients who bring a dozen roses to the doctor’s office. And, boy, the next visit, nobody forgets that. You come in and hey – ‘Here’s the lady who brought the roses’ vs. ‘Here’s the lung cancer.’
If you are used to fending entirely for yourself, then when a catastrophe occurs you will expend a lot of energy looking for help at a time when you need your energy looking for help at a time when you need your energy for creative work.
My view of addiction, whether it’s drugs, food, alcohol or any list of other things, is the same reason I asked my mother why I wasn’t a drug addict or alcoholic, which is because when you’re not loved.
When guilt rears its ugly head confront it, discuss it and let it go. The past is over. It is time to ask what can we do right, not what did we do wrong. Forgive yourself and move on.
