Wonder and Awe

I live life feeling inspired most of the time.  I am very easily awed  and wonder at the world around me.  I may be genetically predisposed to feeling this way. But I also believe that my philosophy of life helps me to experience these feelings on a regular basis.

I feel this way - because - I choose to.

I live my life realistically.  I believe that this is the only life I have.  At some point I will die. This awareness and acceptance of death does not make me pessimistic. Instead, it feels me with a sense of urgency.  I have a limited amount of time to get things done - so I better get them done now. Tomorrow may be too late.

It's why I remember - to look at the sky with wonder and awe. It's why whatever I am doing, I find things to be interested in. I literally cannot remember the last time I was bored. Doing nothing is great - but it's not actually passive. Do nothing time is filled with quality time to observe the things around me. And that brings me joy.

The other thing that being aware of my death does for me is - it helps me not take things too seriously.  If I don't get everything done - that's ok too. I can't do everything and be everything and I don't try to. I do the best I can  - and that will have to be enough - because - realistically - that is literally - all I can do.

Life is amazing. It's amazing that any of us are even alive and aware enough to notice we are alive.  Life is hard and difficult for everyone. So let's work on being compassionate with each other and less self centered.

As the great Humanist Carl Sagan once said,

“For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.” 

Don’t let past wrongs keep you from enjoying your future.

Not everyone is nice. Don’t let the jerks of the world keep you from living life fully.

It would be nice if everyone was nice. If no one every bullied or put you down. If everyone helped you instead of competing with you.  That would be nice and it would make life a lot easier.

But not everyone is nice and not everyone is capable of being nice and some people will compete with you and beat you.

If you want to enjoy your life, you need to figure out how to make sure that the jerks of the world don’t prevent you from reaching your potential. You need to make sure that the wrongs that have been done to you in the past stay in the past so that they don’t affect your present or your future.

In short, coping skills for dealing with adversity are a basic life skill. We all need to learn how to cope with:

• Broken Hearts
• Death, dying and grief
• Bullying
• Not getting your way or what you want
• Jealousy
• Money management skills
• People not being responsible

and more.

We also need to learn how to not compound our problems and make things worse.  That’s a tall order. But it’s not as hard as you might think.

The reason Humanists keep trying to teach the world critical thinking is because critical thinking helps us cope with the difficulties we encounter more effectively.

All of the problems I listed above are problems. Problems that need to be solved. What’s the best way to solve a problem? By thinking about it. Sure, you can run on instinct and hope for the best, but we Humanists actually want to solve our problems. Hoping for the best isn’t enough. Not when we can take constructive action to make things better.

If you want to cope better, you need to learn how to think better about your problems. I can help with that. Check out my “Living Made Simpler” online course and my book – The Humanist Approach to Happiness.

Applied Humanism

After you decide what you believe about life the universe and everything, you now have to figure out how best to live your life given what you believe. That’s where Humanism comes in.

It turns out that deciding whether you believe in a god, gods or no gods or some amorphous deity or, that you just refuse to even think about it and make a decision on what you think (the apathetic agnostic option), is the easy part.

Once you know what you believe, you now have to get on with the business of living life, hopefully, in accordance with your beliefs, or in my case, lack of belief.  How do we make decisions?  How do we live life fully? Heck, what do we mean by living life fully?

These are the hard existential questions that aren’t actually answered when you decide how you feel about the god/not god question. Which is why Humanism is so important. Because Humanism helps us to not only find answers to these questions, but the answers are REALLY satisfying and very practical on a day to day basis.

Yeah – it’s not as sexy as a good old god off – but that’s ok.  Because learning how to life your life in a way you can feel good about and that can do good for others, is a lifelong task.  We never stop learning.

So, how can Humanism help you?  Well, you can decide to be a good person. Just because.  You can decide to try and make your impact on others as positive as possible. Again, just because.  To have a positive impact requires you to make good decisions and that requires you to learn how to think well so that you can make good decisions.

Having trouble with interpersonal issues, Humanism can help you there too.  The other person is human, just like you are and they can’t read minds.  This means, you should be compassionate with them and stop assuming that just because they weren’t acting in a way you think is perfect doesn’t mean that they are a horrible person incapable of compassion.

Struggling with fears of death?  Yup, Humanism can help with that too.  You are going to die. Stop wasting what little time you have alive worrying about the inevitable and get on with living life to the fullest while you still can. And if you still can’t stop worrying, go seek professional help!  There is a reason why early Humanists were active in psychology.  We realize that living isn’t easy and almost everyone needs help to maximize their potential and to be reasonably happy and satisfied in life. So don’t be afraid to seek out help when you need it. It’s the Humanist way.

Living a Life of Passion and Laughter

What my parents taught me about living life successfully.

My parents were and continue to be huge influences on my life. They are both amazing loving people whose are wonderful role models on how to live life successfully and fully. 

When I think about the main lessons I learned from them, it is this.  My dad taught me how to laugh at myself.  My mom taught me how to live life with passion.

I was talking on the phone to a friend last night and of course, had to deal with my kid who needed my attention and who was NOT doing what I had asked him to do.  I approached the problem as I always did, by laughing and passionately making clear – he needed to do what I needed him to do or – who knows what crazy mamma will do.  I remarked to my friend, yeah – now you know – I threaten my kid. I’m a horrid parent. She said – you laugh too much to be a horrid parent.

Her comment got me thinking – she’s right. I don’t take myself of the situations I find myself in seriously. They are all transient and really, being too serious makes things unpleasant. I find that injecting a dose of humor helps my son want to comply more with my requests.   He still has to do what I need him to do, but yelling at him and getting angry doesn’t make getting him to do it fun.  Using humor helps me to not lose my cool and help him find reasons to comply that make him want to comply while laughing all the while. And that’s actually a really incredible way to approach these sorts of every day disagreements that happen in every family. This doesn’t mean I don’t lose my cool, I just try to make the humor a habit so that the family works well and isn’t unnecessarily stressed.

This doesn’t mean that I’m not passionate. I am. There is no reason why passion can’t be fun. It should be and it must be if we are to be successful. I am passionate about many things. Things that matter, like the people I love, being alive to share life with them. I am also passionate about my work, and about doing what I can to make the world a better place. I am an engaged active citizen of the world. I really don’t suffer from ennui (one of my favorite words) because, well, how could I. Life is life. I always have something I think is worth working on. Even if it is a chore, like making cookies for tomorrow night’s Monty Python film fest with some friends.

I figure I have a choice. I can be cranky about all the little things that have to be done to sustain me and my family’s life, or I can approach it with joy and passion. There are no little projects.. Doing dishes can be fun, if you decide to take pride in it. Writing my blog is fun, it’s not work, because I’m helping other people live life more successfully. I’m actively engaged with my life and with my community and with the world. What more can I ask for.

It’s an attitude really. What my mom taught me about passion is that caring matters. Its an essential ingredient to living a happy life. Caring is not a burden. It’s the essential motivation of life. Embrace it and life opens up to you.

But like everything, passion has to be balanced. I balance my passion with laughter so that when I am tempted to think things matter too much, I am able to step back and find the balance I need to keep my passions from overpowering me.

Thanks Mom and Dad – I love you both oodles!

The Problem of Existence

How a Humanist copes with an existential depression.

When I was 17 years old I had an existential depression. It lasted about 2 weeks. I apparently got off lucky. I learned about existential depressions the following year in a philosophy class and some people suffer from these for years.

An existential depression is when your brain decides it’s going to figure out the meaning of life and existence and doesn’t allow you to think of anything else until if finds satisfactory answers. At least, that’s how it was for me. The problem is that since there aren’t any satisfactory answers to the existential questions of life, people can struggle with this for a while.

According to experts (Yalom – the existential psychiatrist according to Wikipedia) says that there are 4 basic ultimate concerns of existence. These are: death, freedom, isolation and meaninglessness.

Humanism, I think, provides excellent solutions to these problems, which is probably why my existential angst period was so short. It probably helped that I was raised as a freethinker so these conclusions weren't a huge stretch for me.

On death – it is. Accept it. There is no getting around it. Might as well make the most of it when you are here. No point worrying about it because after you die, you cease to exist and so it won’t bother you anymore.

On Freedom – you can do anything you want, but that doesn’t mean those things you do will make you happy. You still have to live with the consequences of your actions. We are inter-dependent and our actions affect other people and their actions affect us. Might as well make the best of it and do what you can to be a benefit to yourself and others.

On Isolation – true, we are stuck inside our own heads. However, we are biologically related to all life on earth and chemically connected to the universe itself.  I’m never really alone or isolated. I’m part of an amazing ecosystem. When I feel like I’m struggling with something no one understands, I have to laugh, because someone else has not only been through this before, they’ve gotten through it. And if they can? I can! I haven’t felt isolated or alone since having this thought.

Finally – meaninglessness.  this is the biggie. Even bigger than accepting my mortality. Camus said, life is absurd. There is no meaning. And, as with death, it turns out that just accepting that reality opens up life tremendously.  There is no grand plan. I am alive and at some point I will die. I have complete freedom. How will I use that freedom? Selfishly?  Or, will I accept that in the grand scheme of things what I do doesn’t matter, but that in the smaller scheme of things it matters a lot. It matters to me. It matters to the people who love me here and now. I can either honor those relationships here and now and gather my meaning from that, or give myself over to the false nihilism of thinking that nothing matters.  Things do matter. Right now. And that is enough for me.

As  look through this list – it seems to me that the solution to all these existential problems, from a Humanist perspective, is acceptance. Accept the reality of these things and don’t let the immensity of the universe scare you. You are both made of star stuff and tiny at the same time.

As Pascal once said, “a man does not show his greatness by being at one extremity, but rather by touching both at once.”

10 Happiness Tips

10 things scientists have learned about the science of happiness.

It isn’t so much that I doubt that there is an afterlife (though I’m pretty sure this life is all I get), it is more that even if there is an afterlife, if I don’t live this life fully, what business do I have wishing for another one. The way I see it, even if there is an afterlife, I should still do this life justice by living it fully and happily. 

This is a recurring theme for pretty much every Humanist I have ever met. We are pretty convinced this life is all we get so we aren’t going to waste it. We are going to embrace it and experience it fully.

The real question is, how to make the best of it. Life is hard and difficult. How do we keep from falling into despair? More importantly, how do we appreciate and find happiness with our life, such as it is. 

It turns out that scientists have turned their attention to the topic of happiness and what contributes to happiness. Humanists are inclined to favor a scientific viewpoint as at least having some research and evidence for it. Yes! published a list of 10 things scientists say will help make you happy: http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/sustainable-happiness/10-things-science-says-will-make-you  I love this list as it reflect quite a bit of what I teach. It’s always nice when science backs you up.

For those of you who don’t like to click through the links – here is what the list is

1. Savor the moment. Not all the time, but make sure to take the time now and again to pause and appreciate what is happening or reflect on the little things that bring you joy.  Happiness is something that occurs during reflection so this is important.
2. Avoid comparing yourself to others. I write about this in my book The Humanist Approach to Happiness. Don’t keep up with the Joneses. You will go broke trying and you can’t buy happiness anyway.
3. Value something other than money. Money is important but if you judge your self-worth through what you own, your self-worth is very shallow. Have more depth to who you are and how you define yourself.
4. Goals: Having something to work towards is essential. Doesn’t matter what it is, just have something you are working towards. It will give you a reason to get up in the morning.
5. Initiative – Taking responsibility to get things done feels good. Take the initiative, don’t wait for others to take the lead.
6. Relationships – we are social animals and we need other people to feel secure. Nurture close relationships and treat them well. A bunch of shallow friends don’t give you the same benefits that close friends and family do.
7. Smile: Even when you are feeling down, if you take the time to think of something positive you can refocus your energy into doing something productive to fix your problem, which is way better than wallowing endlessly.
8. Gratitude: Feelings of happiness occur most often during reflection. By reflecting on those things that you are grateful for, you a) remind yourself of what is positive in your life and you give yourself an opportunity to feel happy at the same time.
9. Exercise – health benefits, feel good endorphins, a sense of accomplishment that you actually got your fat ass off the couch – yeah – use your body for good. Get out an exercise.
10. Altruism – Volunteer, donate, make it a habit and a practice. Getting what is known as a helper’s high is well worth it.

What do you to do experience more happiness in your life? Do you have any rituals? Any simple task that you find joy in? Do you agree with this list?