This is the last week of the “lessons for living” contest. Don’t miss your chance to win a $100 gift certificate and copies of the book 30 Lessons for Living!
Here are two wonderful contest entries received this week. Both made a very strong impression on me, as the year comes to a close.
Sandra shares her own elder wisdom: “Don’t forget the importance of play in life.”
There are certain human needs that are constant. One of them is the concept of “play.” As children we can easily write down about 10 activities that we love to do and can often remember the last time that we participated. We enjoyed being with friends, roller skating, sledding, playing games with family, jumping rope, etc. It is interesting that when adults are asked, they tend to have difficulty in listing 10 things that they love to do, much less when they last did the fun activity. Play is an essential. Many times marriages end because couples tend to stop playing. Friendships end because folks get sidetracked with responsibilities and lose touch. Family life becomes mundane when the parents and children omit family chat around the dinner table that leads to listening and laughing. Their time to play as a family can define their love for one another and add to positive memories. Having fun through playing remains with us from birth to death.
From Stephen, elder wisdom he learned from his father: “Have faith that things will work out.”
My dad gave me the best advice I have ever received. He said you may go through decades of your life where you think you are not going to make it. These will be times you are suffering, in pain, health problems and maybe bad relationships. You may be convinced your life won’t improve, but it can and it will. My dad’s statement was prophetic. There was a period of fifteen years I didn’t think I would survive. Nearly every problem you can imagine was dumped on me, and I had no one to help me survive them. However, inexplicably things got better. Some of the improvement involved my making some changes and others just happened naturally. Don’t ever give up on life. Life is a beautiful journey. Who are you to say that the most painful thing in your life might not be the most poignant thing at your death. It very well might be! Life is for living and every tree, leaf, person, object is filled with wonder if we would just open our eyes and see. Try to live in the present moment. Focusing on the past or the future is to distort the present moment. So try to just experience every moment in its simplicity and beauty and just wait and see what life has to give you. You will be surprised!
Good thoughts for the new year!
My parents were united in their efforts to raise children that could stand on their own feet and cope with life – practically and emotionally. For my mother, this meant encouraging independence through teaching basics of living: cooking, laundry shopping, paying bills and researching anything and everything – at that time, using the phone book and library. But it’s my father’s wisdom that I call upon on a daily basis. I had huge issues with anxiety as a kid, and whenever I found myself tied up in knots, he put forward a question and a directive “What’s the worst that can happen?” and, “Think it through.” Together, we’d ‘reverse engineer’ the worry. My mother’s wisdom made me self-sufficient for life’s practical, needs my father’s for (many of) my life’s emotional needs. That’s quite the legacy.