What Is A Friend?

Since the formation of Friend Ship Services many years ago, there have been many definitions of what the word friend means to the various people who have participated in our personal retreat programming.  The definition I have used for myself over the decades is one written by C. Raymond Beran.

What is a Friend?  I will tell you.

It is a person with whom you dare to be yourself.

Your soul can be naked with him.

He seems to ask of you to put on nothing, only to be what you are.

He does not want you to be better or worse.

When you are with him, you feel as a prisoner feels who has been declared innocent.

You do not have to be on your guard.

You can say what you think, as long as it is genuinely you.

He understands those contradictions in your nature that lead others to misjudge you.

With him you breathe freely.

You can avow your little vanities and envies and hates and vicious sparks, your meannesses and absurdities and, in opening them up to him, they are lost, dissolved on the white oceans of his loyalty.

He understands.

You do not have to be careful.

You can neglect him, tolerate him.

Best of all, you can keep still with him.

It makes no matter.  He likes you.

He is like fire that purges to the bone.

He understands.

You can weep with him, sin with him, laugh with him.

Through it all – and underneath – he sees, knows and loves you.

A friend?  What is a friend?

Just one, I repeat, with whom you dare to be yourself.

A concept that is easy to say.  A concept that is difficult to implement and make part of our everyday lives.

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Internal Goodbyes

When I ask someone how they handle the goodbyes in their lives, the response is almost always about the separation/departure between themselves and others. 

These goodbyes are very important to our emotional health and our socialization with other people as discussed in an earlier blog.  Usually there is some type of psychic pain and sense of loss.  We know that that these external goodbyes are part of our life pattern, but experience and practice seldom makes them any easier to manage.

Frequently overlooked are the internal goodbyes that we all experience in our life journeys.  First, there is the transition from being a baby to being a child.  Our world changes as we move from the absolute dependence of being a baby into childhood where there is still heavy dependence on others, but the slow process of growing into an independent individual truly begins.

Saying goodbye to being a baby and growing into a child where we learn to walk and talk can be difficult for some children more than others as evidenced by ‘the terrible twos’.  There are almost no expectations of a baby; the adult world is ready 24/7 to meet one’s needs.  With the arrival of talking and walking, we say goodbye to babyhood and adults develop expectations that we will behave in a certain manner.

In a way, each birthday is an internal marker that we are saying goodbye to one chapter in our lives and entering a new one.  This process can begin on the first birthday and continues throughout our lives until the last one we celebrate.

Some internal goodbyes are marked by our society as being more special than others.   When we leave the age of 12 and become an adolescent, we say goodbye internally to childhood and move on to the expectations of being a teenager.   There are even sub-chapters within some groups like adolescence when we say goodbye to 15 and become ‘sweet 16’ or when we move into some of the expectations of adulthood at ages 18 and 21.

This process continues throughout out lives with special celebrations for ages such as 40, 50, 65, etc.  At each birthday we say goodbye to our previous life chapters and move on until we reach the final goodbye of death.

While many internal goodbyes can be marked by age, there are others that are unique and usually are not necessarily age related. 

For example, when we leave our “first love”, this is an internal goodbye that will leave its mark on us forever.  The same is true when we say goodbye to a belief of our immortality and accept that life does have limits and all of us really do eventually die.

Our lives are full of many other internal goodbyes such as leaving our first job/career, burying our parents, changing some of the foundational beliefs that we held when we were younger, accepting that our youth has departed, saying farewell to the energy and good health of younger days, divorce, accepting that our children are now adults and we may now be the dependent ones, etc.

Many external goodbyes are visible to others, while only we can see and feel many of the internal ones.  While our lives are full of being able to say ‘hello’ to new people and life phases, it remains essential that we develop healthy ways to say external and internal goodbyes when they occur and be able to really let go of that person or situation.

Comments welcome.     Email:  silverchatline@gmail.com

Am I Rich?

There seem to be three traits that much of our society values a great deal:  youth, likeability, and wealth.  If we happen to have all three traits, or at least the appearance of having them, then our culture considers us to be very fortunate.  And our own self-esteem frequently seems also to be healthier and happier.

While the first two traits receive a great deal of attention during our daily lives, it is the trait of wealth that seems to receive the most focus as to our real value and worth as humans. 

Many persons who would be asked about a wish for their lives would probably respond with something having to do with receiving wealth.  We have so many who sincerely believe that wealth truly brings happiness into life.

What does it mean to be “rich”?  Is this one of those words in our language where there are different definitions even when our usage indicates that we are all talking about the same thing?  How much does it take to be considered rich by our own self-image when compared to those around us?

For many of us, being rich means that we have some large amount of money.  I can recall my childhood when having a single dollar bill (or a silver dollar coin) would give me feeling of being VERY rich.   Now I feel rich and enriched with the blessings of kindness and generosity when a friend places a hundred-dollar bill in an envelope and sends it for the purpose of having me do something special for myself other than pay bills. As a child it was the money; as an adult it is the love and caring that create the positive feelings.

I know friends who do not feel rich with several million dollars that they have.  They believe they need even more money to be wealthy enough.  How much more money that is needed to feel adequate is always vague as they devote their life energies to earning more wealth.  My mind cannot comprehend a million dollars; I look for my  wealth in other ways.

So, who is rich?  Is it the one with a few dollars or the one with many of them?  Does the definition depend on how we see ourselves?  Or, is the definition measured by the individual who has more/less money than we do?  Or does it depend on our neighbors around us in our culture? 

Is being rich all about having money or can wealth be defined in other ways?  Can we have our wealth in different forms?  Can the love of friends,  grandchildren and pets be considered wealth?

I know individuals who have loving family and friends with little money who consider themselves wealthy.  And the reverse situation is also present for some in our society where having plenty of money does not guarantee that happiness and joy are present.  Does money equal wealth for you?
Have you clarified how wealth and money fit into your own personal value system?

I also know people who say that they would rather have the non-material aspects of wealth in their lives as long as they have enough money to “get by”.   Again, who decides what is enough?

Does our culture and personal value system ever allow us to be satisfied with having enough money?

These questions and answers from our personal value system in regards to wealth have an impact on much of our daily behavior and the worth we assign to ourselves  and others as humans. 

For example:  do we believe that people who have lots of money are more intelligent, more likable and have more important things to say than someone who has little money?   Is someone who is poor and homeless worthy of less attention and care from us than a person who may have more money? 

Are we afraid that if we associate with or give to the poor, that we may lose some of our wealth and others may think less of us, not to mention our own self-perception of being ‘losers’ without wealth?  Are we ‘winners’ in the game of life if we have more wealth at the end?   How do we choose to see ourselves?

Am I rich?  Will I ever be rich enough?  How does my value system about the role of wealth direct my daily behavior and how I see myself and other people?

As we continue the Life Journey on better understanding of ourselves, our attitudes, values and behavior in the area of wealth can tell us much us about ourselves.  As always, we are challenged in our learning to be honest with ourselves on this sensitive cultural topic.

Comments welcome.  Email:  silverchatline@gmail.com

Helping Others

A familiar story helps demonstrate the challenges of helping others.

A heavy flood came to an area.  As the rain fell, a man crawled to the roof of his house to wait for God to rescue him as his faith had taught. 

A man with a canoe came by and offered help, but the man stayed on the roof saying that help was coming from God.  Another person in an outboard motor boat came by and offered assistance, but the man did not get on board saying he was waiting for God to save him.  A helicopter came to lift the man off of his drowning house; he declined saying that he still had faith in his God to come for him.

Eventually, the house was washed away and the man died.  Upon his arrival in heaven, he complained to God about His neglect to save him.  God replied that He had sent three ways to save the man, but since it was not what the man expected from God, he had chosen to perish.

Many of us who have the desire and temperament to offer help to those around us sometimes face a similar predicament.  The gift of assistance we offer is not what the other person is specifically expecting, so they refuse to accept the gift. 

We usually then have two frustrated people:  the person who wants to give and cannot get his assistance accepted in the form offered as well as the person who wants help only in a certain manner and/or from a particular person/group.

For those who wish to help others, we often need to ask ourselves IF the assistance is wanted.  There are people in our society who do not want to receive help from others.  We could find ourselves in a situation like the Eagle Scout who tried to help the old woman cross the road when she didn’t want to go.  How much does one force another to take help "for their own good"?

There are also individuals who take pride in their independence and see receiving help as some form of dependence on others.  They do not want to bother others or they may believe that they are not worthy of the gifts that people want to offer.  It is difficult to help someone who sees themselves as unworthy of assistance.

Other persons want their assistance in a specific form.   For example, they may want money to handle their bills.  They do not see the absence of health problems as a gift that allows them more money for other areas of living.  It can be difficult to see that the old car that continues to run day after day is a valuable financial gift.  Instead people can often be waiting to win a lottery or receive an inheritance.  Like the man on the roof, they want their help from God to come in a specific format and at a special time.

The area of helping and being helped by others can further be complicated by the self-image each of us has as to who we are.  

Often people who see themselves as a giver have a difficult time adapting to the receiver role.  It is difficult to go against the personal roles of how we see ourselves since we have spent a lifetime building them.   

Others who are in the receiver role can find themselves adapting to a victim-role or one who has expectations that others should help them.  Before offering help to these persons it would be beneficial for both to determine what expectations each have of giving and receiving various types of assistance.  Knowledge is helpful.

Being able to give assistance to others and receive help is part of what makes us the humans that we are.  We tell others and ourselves what values and beliefs we have when we exercise the process of giving and receiving to others in our world.

Comments welcome.      Email:  silverchatline@gmail.com

 

Aging As Happiness

One of the most fascinating parts of our American culture is the perception of many people that one grows unhappier as each birthday indicates another year of aging.

Most of us have met people who want to minimize any attention to their birthdays and the entire process of getting older.  These individuals perceive that aging brings on the negative aspects of poor health, limited physical activity, job discrimination, etc. 

Do some of these real characteristics of aging limit a person’s choices to be happy?   Of course they can be a factor.   There are negative aspects of being older just as there can be negative aspects of being young.  At any age we face the reality that our lives are constantly changing in some way and we have choices on how we manage those changes.

We live in a society where youth is highly valued.  We spend a fortune on keeping ourselves looking younger.  Our verbal comments of approval are often given to those of us who have a youthful look, especially after the ‘middle years’ of life.  To “look old” is frequently seen as a discounting the value of that person in the eyes of many.

Are many seniors in poor moods because they are older or because of some other factor like becoming “invisible” to the eyes of many young people?  Or is it because they do have pain as their body does age and, like any machine, develops parts that do not work as well after 70 or 90 years of use? 

Do seniors themselves buy into this cultural propaganda that aging should lead them to unhappiness?  Resisting this belief can be a challenge when one is constantly receiving commercial messages that happiness comes only when one is active and youthful in their behavior.  Resisting this biased message can be even more difficult when family and friends are sharing, often uninvited, their own views of how one should behave as we age.  If one hates to age, most of their energy goes to the hate rather than managing any positive aspects of life.

My own experience is that we seniors frequently see ourselves as more happy in our older years than when we were younger.   Do we miss some of the characteristics of youth?  Yes, many of us do, but we have also acquired maturity about living that was not available to us in our youth.

One asset of being a senior is that we have a good idea of who we are as an individual.   We can understand and accept our personal assets and liabilities.  We know our life accomplishments and how we have been blessed to give and receive from so many persons.

We have knowledge of what is really important to us such as relationships with family and friends.  Religion and spirituality are more understandable and we integrate them into our lives more easily.  We know that illness is one part of our life journey and we acknowledge the power we have to define ourselves as being more than a collection of illnesses.   With this knowledge of ourselves we can be less fearful of the future and we can be more open in expressing our beliefs and values to others.

Finally, one aspect of aging that contributes to our choice to be happy with our attitudes and behavior is the coming to a peace with the limitations of time spent on this earth.  We know that death will eventually come to all of us, even if our culture discourages us from openly talking about it.  As we age, we are able and willing to acknowledge that this gift of life will end at some point.  Making the most of what is left of our life gift allows us to choose to be as happy as we decide we want to be.

Comments welcome.     Email:  silverchatline@gmail..com

Is That All?

One of the most challenging tasks that many of us face is to convey an abstract or non-physical concept to another.  It can be difficult to have someone understand something that is not easily seen, or touched, and has no odor or sound.  An idea that does not fit into a person’s  “norm” of life can test the creativity of one who is trying to have another person understand.

One of the foundations of this blog series has been build on the concept of listening hospitality with the belief that truly listening to another person is a rare, but very valuable gift.  Yet with so many people who see listening as basically not talking, it can be difficult to convey the unique value of caring and loving listening.

 One of my recent projects has been to establish, organize and maintain a Listening Post in the county where I live.  The foundation of the Listening Post is to offer listening hospitality in a safe and confidential environment without any advice giving, judging, preaching, problem solving, or counseling.

While sharing the vision of this program possibility with a friend of many years, his reaction to offering the gift of listening in a program format was: “Is that all?”  It took some dialogue for him to see that people can need to give and receive listening without the exchange of monetary currency.

If you were to talk to a hair stylist, bartender, barber, sales person or almost anyone who deals with the public, you will learn that much of their daily job duties involve listening to other people, regardless of whether it is part of their official job description.

If you attend a social gathering like a party or an organization like a church, you soon realize that the leaders and the ones who are liked the most are the ones who are skilled in listening to others.  They are at the center of any sub-groups because people like being with them.

Several years back there was a movie called “Oh, God” with George Burns and John Denver.  In the last scene of the movie Denver’s character asks God (Burn’s character), if we “could talk together sometime” as he had enjoyed and learned so much from their conversations.  God responds with the true essence of prayer by saying: “You talk, I’ll listen”.

Carrying that same thought a bit further, one can see that one of the major values of having a prayer life is that one gets to talk about anything they wish.  There are no proper or forbidden topics.  One can be open about whatever is in their head and heart. 

There is no time limit or interruption from any heavenly deity.  As one old song goes “there is no busy signal on the hotline to God”.   Many people are often amazed that they get “answers” to their prayers by learning to listen to what they themselves are saying in prayer regardless of the format one chooses to use.

The Listening Post program is offering this same gift coming from a human being rather than a deity.  The volunteer is present for the people who need the concrete presence of a caring human to listen and respond. 

There will always be people who do not recognize the true difficulty of keeping their mouth closed (two eyes, two ears, and only one mouth to be used in this proportion).  Yes, we do live in a society that rewards talking, which makes a true and caring listener even more rare.

So, the next time someone says “Is that all?”, when you are offering the gift of listening hospitality without any prerequisites, you can remind yourself what a loving and powerful gift you are truly giving even when many do not understand the concept.

Comments welcome.   Email:  silverchatline@gmail.com

Value of Life

Recently a dear friend of mine told me that she was considering having her pet dog “put down”.   I then recalled a time last year when a family dog had to die after she ate anti-freeze put out by a neighbor who dislikes animals.

These experiences elicited a series of questions within me about the value of life and the similarities and differences we have in our value systems toward people and animals.

My self-inquiry as to the reasoning for putting these dogs to death exhibited the physical and mental dysfunctions that the dogs had.  Pain was present and there seemed to be no way to ease it.  

One had bodily functions that were not working which caused problems for the dog and the humans around him.   Being able to hear had virtually disappeared.  He had behavior around the family with depression-like characteristics. The other was going to die soon due to poison and immediate death seemed kinder.

What are the values of letting these dogs die when their body and mind reach a high degree of dysfunctionality?   Do we have an obligation to release them from misery by administering a system of humane death?  Who makes the choice and what is the appropriate degree of dysfunctional characteristics necessary for a decision of life or death to be made?

Do we make every effort to keep the animal alive regardless of his condition?   Do we make financial investments in the animal health care system that place a strain on our own financial resources?   Do we keep the dogs alive out of our own love for them and our own unwillingness to let them leave our lives and being part of our family?  Many persons really do love and care about their pets equally, if not more, than they do their relatives and make their pets ‘human’.

These questions come to mind each time I see the choices being placed on human beings who have family members who are experiencing some of the same characteristics as the dogs described above.  Is there some point where it is best for all concerned to cease intervention in the degeneration of a person’s mind and body so that our loved ones can follow the natural progression of life that ends in death?  Are we kinder to our animal family than we are to our human family with all of the efforts made to keep humans alive?

While willing to discuss the pros and cons of taking an animal’s life, our society has a difficult time facing the issue of whether an individual has reached a point in their life journey where their body and/or mind indicates that being allowed to die is the most humane outcome for that person. And the discomfort may grow with the role of investing extensively our personal and societal financial resources in their care.

How each one of us feels about this different way we treat the severe illness of humans and animals usually depends on our personal value system.  There are those who see no need to discriminate between treatment of humans and animals regarding the death process.  We should/should not intervene in either.

There are people who believe we should encourage death in both animals and humans when certain illness characteristics are met.

Other see the value of humans as being totally different and much more important than how we treat animals when it comes to handling the decisions on either letting a human die without intervention or maybe helping the death process along due to humane concerns.

One of the cornerstones of personal growth is “Different Strokes for Different Folks”.  We all have our personal value systems on subjects such as the process of death at the end of one’s life journey.

As I get older, I find myself with more and more questions about such things and fewer answers.  I expect to die the same way.

Comments welcome.     Email: silverchatline@gmail.com