open-source education
Learning During Challenging Times
We live in challenging times. These are also opportunities for learning.
Many of us are dealing with major losses. It's easy to find ourselves clinging to narrow self-interest when we encounter difficulties. But we can choose another way. Our daily choices can emanate meaning, beauty, hope and reciprocity. We can accept what is happening in our lives as a process. Resisting what our lives are at this moment blocks the creative approach to new possibilities. When we complain, blame or remain in the past we hold on to what we don't want, and therefore aren't open to the generative impulse.
We can choose to love the lives we are living exactly as they are right now. We can demonstrate to our children that no matter the circumstances, we have a choice. That choice is attitude. Some people who have survived the most dire circumstances--- refugees, concentration camps, war----have taught us that they learned to sing and laugh in the face of misery, to joyously share what little they had with others, to celebrate a deepening of their faith and understanding, to give up anticipated rewards for the fullness of living each moment, to develop greater courage. We can learn from their experiences as we live through much less serious trials. We can help our families find pleasure and meaning in simpler lives no matter how many other things we may need to give up. As a side benefit, we often we find that choices such as more basic foods, unpackaged education and self-generated fun have a wondrously positive effect on the body and mind. Finding meaning in those things that are not pleasurable helps us learn the lessons inherent in any struggle, and that transforms what we experience as fully negative into a valuable experience.
On a larger scale, these conditions of economic chaos and environmental decline are exactly those which necessarily lead to beneficial change. The limiting structures around us are breaking down. We see this as inflexible corporate structures collapse. Awareness increases that there are more egalitarian and honest ways to do business. The process of change is painful but ultimately valuable.
Perhaps these times will help us all break through limitations, identify our core values and find ourselves more aligned with our true purpose. May we all celebrate the unfolding of 2009 with hope and joy.
About
"If I had the influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over
the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in
the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last
throughout life, an unfailing antidote against the boredom and
disenchantment of later years, sterile preoccupations with things that are
artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength."
- Rachel Carson
Badge
© 2009 Created by Laura Weldon on Ning. Create a Ning Network!
