Live and let live, and mindfulness

I’ve been thinking about the ten tips for a happy life that I wrote about in my last post, and remembering back to a time when it was difficult to try to understand them enough to put them into practice. When I was younger, there were negative people in my life, who found it difficult to let others live their lives without constantly judging and criticizing them. Many of those people were seasoned adults when we were teenagers and young adults; I’m sure they had their reasons for being so critical and judgmental, but they were not the people you went to when you wanted inspiration or advice on how to be happy in life. My guess is that their own lives were unhappy, so they either did not know how to be nor could they show others how to be happy. They could not ‘live and let live’; the unhappiness in their own lives drove them crazy, I think. It rode them. Perhaps a bad marriage, a failed career, lack of money, lack of friends, emotional wounds that did not heal—there could be many reasons for the unhappiness. Some of them were intolerant individuals, particularly intolerant of the minority races they felt were taking over ‘white people’s USA’. These were the type of people who attended Sunday mass and then began to rag on the minority races the minute they came out of church. It did not make sense to me then, and it still doesn’t when people behave like that. I concluded that going to mass on Sunday does not a Christian make. I still feel that way.

It’s difficult to really practice the ten tips for a happy life unless you integrate them into your daily life. You have to understand them in order to put them into practice, and be conscious of your behavior and speech every single day. You have to be aware of what you do and say--think before you speak. Mindfulness is the key word. Wikipedia’s definition of mindfulness is ‘the intentional, accepting and non-judgmental focus of one's attention on the emotions, thoughts and sensations occurring in the present moment, which can be trained by meditational practices’. I wonder if the negative people in my past became mindful individuals who eventually found peace. I wonder if they were able to live with some sense of joy in the world together with others. I hope that for them in any case. I for one cannot imagine a more disquieting fate than being destined to leave this world as a diehard negative and intolerant person. 

Ten tips for a happy life from Pope Francis

I ran across these ten tips for a happy life recently, and they resonated with me. Wise words to live by. Interesting that they come from Pope Francis, who cautions against proselytizing (finally a religious person who sees the light) and who recommends not being negative and not hanging around with negative people. Smart man. Trying to convert others to your way of thinking, religious or not, is doomed to failure. I've hated that type of behavior my whole life. People are only driven away when they are constantly hit over the head and told to think like the person who is doing the pounding. I've always been suspicious of 'missionaries', on a mission to convert others to their way of thinking. And hanging around with negative people leads only to one thing, that you yourself become a negative person. Funny how that happens. Negative people are miserable people, and misery loves company. Negative people have an incredible amount of power over others. The problem is that by the time you understand that you are trapped in a spiral of negativity, you're in too deep. Negativity is like a whirlpool; it drags you under as you struggle to surface and not drown. You need a strong helping hand to pull you out of it--be that a positive person (like Pope Francis with his wise words), an inspiring book or film, or a crisis of some sort that makes you appreciate life again. And the idea of respecting and taking care of nature totally resonates with me--animals, birds, trees, rivers, you name it. It brings to mind St. Francis of Assisi, and for that I am grateful, because he loved animals and nature. I am aware, like many others, of just how important a message this is for our generation. Essentially, what runs through all of these tips, the common thread if you will, is a sense of peace, in oneself and in how one relates to the world.

1.       Live and let live

2.       Be giving of yourself to others

3.       Proceed calmly through life

4.       Have a healthy sense of leisure, making time to enjoy art, literature and to play with your children

5.       Sunday is family day and should be a holiday from work

6.       Find innovative ways to create dignified jobs for young people

7.       Respect and take care of nature

8.       Stop being negative and let go of negative things quickly

9.       Don't proselytize; respect others' beliefs

10.   Work for peace and be aware that peace is proactive and dynamic