CARE not aggravation

It’s axiomatic that how one feels is determined by how one thinks. When attention is given to something aggravating, then there is a disruptive feeling. Confusion begins when attempts are made to change the aggravating thing/person in order to have a better feeling. The most effective way to get rid of an aggravating situation/person is focus on something better.

I happened upon the May 2001 issue of Smithsonian and found something that shifted my focus from aggravation with current political thinking. In that issue, printed in those innocent times pre-911, was a story by Carolyn Crowley about CARE – those fabulous boxes from Americans in the 1946 food relief program. Crowley cites a German Army Chaplain POW in a French hospital who received the twenty-two pound CARE package.

The German was naturally wary of this “gift” from the recent enemy, the United States. What’s the catch, or the snag, he wondered when considering the bounty of food. Never getting enough to eat was the norm for the Chaplain, and even that consisted of cabbage soup, tea, bread and perhaps some cheese. A stark contrast to the corned beef, bacon, liver load, chocolates, egg powder, coffee, flour and such in the CARE package. For three days the German pondered the gift.

Finally, the German Army Chaplain concluded, “Americans are different. They help people in need, regardless of who and where they are.”

True then, true now. No apologies necessary. That’s what we do.

Ruts and Routines

The other day I was asked the difference between a rut and a routine. The gist was that people who are routine are actually in ruts. I disagreed. A rut is not the same as a routine, although some folks might confuse them.

A rut is a seemingly endless cycle, or repetition, of the same-old same-old, that isolates a person mentally and emotionally. Ruts are created by dwelling on a particular thought/belief/image to the exclusion of other thoughts, etc. A rut is self-reinforcing. Escape from the rut is envisioned through some external rescue or event. One of the longest running ruts is dwelling on a hostile, random, separate, universe with survival as the goal.

Cease dwelling on a thing and it no longer is the focus of attention. Which means you see less of it. Which means you experience less of it. We have the great power to choose to think about something else at any given moment. If the rut is ugly, nasty, or wicked, then thinking can be directed towards something more pleasing. It doesn’t matter what such a thought may be; only that it’s a degree above the rut-thought. And that’s how someone “escapes” a rut – they literally think their way out of it. Or, it dissipates around them as they become more aligned with an improved thought process.

People create routines to accomplish certain tasks - which frees their thinking for more deliberate thought. A routine is created to permit more thinking. What shoe did you put on first this morning? It’s a routine; you didn’t have to deliberately think about putting on your shoes, which freed your mind for other pursuits. Routines can be changed as needed. If ruts could be changed, well, they wouldn’t be ruts.

The photos are of pleasant things. Even in the deepest rut thinking there is always something more pleasant to consider for the moment. That pleasant moment can lead to another pleasant moment, and on and on. Granted, some ruts are deep – I know a person who went through much of her life never seeing trees, despite living in Louisiana. The trees, of course, were all around, but since her thinking was elsewhere, she didn’t know of them. And some folks manage to see right through a sunset.

Happy Birthday!

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…

True then, true now. It’s the thinking and the great ideas that have produced the unprecedented success that is the United States. By no means is it over.