Shedding What No Longer Serves...

Sex, Religion, Politics: What My Elders Taught Me

The divisiveness among us in general, and this election cycle in particular, have inspired me to reconsider what my elders taught me: It's best to avoid three topics for polite and civil public conversations: sex, religion, and politics. I believe their wisdom was based on generations of actually experiencing the harm that such conversations, when had in public, can have on us and our relationships with each other. 

Public conversations on these topics rarely, if ever, change the behaviors, beliefs, or opinions of those who engage in them. If anything, they promote the hardening of positions and harming of relationships. They tend to dehumanize and divide rather than unite us.

I believe your opinions and beliefs concerning sex, religion, and politics are none of my business. Why would I care about them? If I did care, I would speak with you in private about them, not in a public setting. 

My opinions and beliefs concerning sex, religion, and politics are none of your business. Why would you care about them? If you do, speak with me in private about them.

Your opinions of my opinions and beliefs are also none of my business. Again, I do not care. Why should I? 

I do care about you and our relationship. I do care if you threaten or harm me or those I love and care about. Otherwise, I'm not here to live according to your expectations or hopes for me. Neither are you here to live according to mine. 

I also care very much about our freedom to live our lives, with no harm to others, as we so choose. And I care about our freedom to express our beliefs and opinions, whatever they are. Just don't expect me to give a damn about your expressed beliefs and opinions. I might or might not give a damn. 

When it comes to elections, I don't care about what you have to say about who you're for and against, unless I ask you in private. I care about what the politicians have to say to all of us. And I care about their record. 

You have no sway on how I vote, except when your public behavior and words tell me something about the kind of folks your candidate attracts. 

I wonder why candidates do not care more about what their own constituents say and do in public. 

So, I've decided to take to heart the wisdom of my elders. I'm going private with my opinions about sex, religion, and politics. From now on, I consider your opinions on these topics private too. They're none of my business. If you expose them, I'll pretend I didn't see them and move on...

Because I care more about you and our relationship than I do about your opinions and beliefs regarding sex, religion, and politics. 

Taking Your Health for Granted?

Many of us take our health for granted. As long as we have it, we ignore it.

We only attend to it when it's broken. 

Broken? Wait. Machines break. 

We're not machines.

Right?

We're spirited. We're alive. Taking our health for granted is taking our life for granted.

That's not something to take for granted.

That's not something to attend to only when it's threatened.

That's something to cherish above all else, protect, sustain, and strengthen.

Our life, our spirit, is too valuable to take for granted. 

Affirm life...Start with your own.

Nurturing Euthumia, Well-Spiritedness

Euthumia is characterized by general healthiness, freedom, the ability to provide for ourselves, being productive, and living a relatively harmonious life with others. 

My current opinion is that most of us are naturally euthumic. 

However, just as maintaining our physical health is an ongoing process, so is maintaining the health and well-being of our spirit. 

Euthumia is not a constant state we strive to attain and then enjoy. Throughout our lives we face constant challenges to our basic, natural euthumic condition. Even so, we can develop the following practices that nurture the wellness of our spirit:

Mindfulness of spirit: being intentional about paying attention to our spirit and its condition.

Assessing the condition of our spirit: evaluating our spirit in terms of the three general categories of euthumia, athumia, and dysthumia and the more specific conditions in these general categories.

Choosing whether or not we want to change the condition of our spirit.

Knowing what to do to regulate our spirit: knowing what lifts, calms, strengthens, softens, collects, opens, expands, or otherwise regulates our spirit.

Regulating our spirit: actually putting our know-how into action.

Future posts will go into more detail about these practices that help us regulate our spirt.

Source of the Death Wish

Since I am a spirited body, I am naturally driven to take good care of myself as a living body. To do so is instinctual. What is living desires to keep living. 

Since I am a spirited mind, I am naturally driven to take good care of myself as a living mind. Again, the desire to keep living is instinctual. 

I am spirited and naturally driven to take good care of my spiritedness. What is spirited desires to remain spirited. The desire of the spirited to remain spirited is inherent to being spirited. 

Only when something is seriously wrong do I lose my natural desire to keep living. Only when my body is too weak, ill or injured; my mind too irrational or full of life-denying beliefs about myself and the world; or my spirit too ill, wounded, or broken do I desire to escape from life or wish to die rather than live. Then I might wax poetic and speak of death as a door to the "beyond" and "something better."

When I am healthy in body, mind, and spirit I enjoy living and desire to live fully.