Top ten tips to find meaning and contentment in life

When I reached what felt to be about the middle of my life, it finally hit. No, I really would *not* live forever! There would be no exception made in my case and a time would come when I neared the end of my days and thought back over my life with one question in mind: "How have I lived the one and only life I was given?"

I realized then that "I sure attended a lot of meetings" or "I really helped make a lot of rich folks richer" or "I got the nice house and the nice car I wanted" were not answers that would satisfy. I realized that I wanted a life that was meaningful, purposeful, and connected. I think we all do.  Here are the 10 easy [not really] ways to have the life that will allow you to live and leave your life with satisfaction:

1. Strive to appreciate every bit of beauty, kindness, good fortune, and warmth you can find
   It is far easier to complain about what's wrong but it makes you far happier and nicer to be with if you are a person that is grateful for everything. If you can rejoice in a good cup of tea, you will be happy often.
2. Assume the best of people
   You may be wrong sometimes, but expecting the worst makes you fearful and shrivels your soul. Expecting the best often brings out the best in others around you - it is a gift that blesses them and you.
3. Don't play it safe all the time
   Take some risks with your life. It is better to have tried and failed than to carry deep regrets in your vocation, your avocation, your connections, or your love.
4. Persevere
   Nothing worthwhile comes without effort including growth, change, skills, learning, and especially the strength of relationships. If you give up at everything that does not come easily, you will have nothing worthwhile.
5. Give generously with your heart, your hands, and your wallet
   In serving others, we soften our often hard isolated selves and become part of the larger whole.
6. Remember every day that your life is precious
   Can you really afford to waste this day?
7. Let yourself be vulnerable 
   Love can be both exquisitely wonderful and exquisitely painful. We can't have the former without risking - and often suffering - the latter.
8. Don't take yourself too seriously - laugh!
   Laugh at yourself, your situation, and the whole tragedy of life. Take it all seriously and it will crush you. Take it lightly and you may find burdens floating away like clouds.
9. Have fun - it's not a crime
   If you have only one life to live, must you really spend it being serious all the time? 
10. Forgive easily
    Carrying anger harms both you and the target of your resentment. If it is possible, let it go.

No, they are not easy. Every one of these takes work and takes practice. That's life!

A whole life

If I were to summarize what I understand to be the most faithful way of living, it is to "embrace life whole."  I mean to say that the world is a very messy place - not in any sense the stuff of sit-coms and other fairy tales. 

Our lives are sometimes beautiful and sometimes terrible. Sometimes life treats us with apparent kindness and generosity and other times it seems we can't catch a break. Even so, being complete and living fully means being present to all of this - the joys, the sorrows, the births, the deaths... everything. Holding back from any one aspect of life creates distance - not only from what we wish to avoid - but from everything.

Three weeks ago, my mother died. Hers was not a death that could easily be dismissed with "she suffered so - she is finally at peace."  My mother, though in her late seventies, was vibrant, energetic, mentally sharp, and physically fit - fit except for a heart valve that had leaked for decades and was now becoming worse, leaving her short of breath. It was time to have that repaired so that she could have a shot at another decade or two of the kind of vibrant living to which she was accustomed and committed.  A botched surgical valve replacement led not to a better quality of life, but to her death after three very bad months.

Well, here it is. The storms have come again to my life. The emotions swirl like cows, bicycles, and houses in some enormous Kansas tornado: 

Flying by over there is my sadness - a feeling of loss - an aching in my gut for all the things I will never be able to say, for the phone calls that will never come, for the moments when I think how pleased she will be at some bit of news and realize that I will never be able to share it with her and hear and see her enthusiasm.

And my anger goes whipping past the window now - a surgeon who couldn't be bothered to visit his failing patient in her suffering goes on making his fortune through a rushed series of surgeries that are not always as careful as he advertises. (A subsequent surgeon discovered that the first operation was badly botched in several ways). I want some kind of apology, if not full out vengeance!

Oh no!  There goes my compassion for her husband - my step-father - who is too deep in dementia to be able to cope with this, but sadly, not deep enough to be unaware of the tragedy that has befallen him. He weeps and I comfort him. 

But it is not only the debris of misery swirling around in this great wind. Over here is the love and support I feel from so very many people - people who come and call and write and email and make their care visible. It is a warmth and a sense of connection that has become to feel so much stronger in sorrow than in better times.

And over there is the joy of the deepening of my bonds to my family - the bereaved. I am especially grateful for the way suffering has brought a deeper connection with my beloved sister. Together, we cry and laugh our way through darkness into light.

And there are the memories that float past whenever I take a moment to look... With a sense of any true life after death coming to me only in my most sentimental moments, the life that continues is what we carry in our minds and hearts. My mother brought a tremendous love and energy and connection and beauty to her world. I know that I can carry these wonderful facets of her life with me for the rest of mine.

On and on the harsh and gentle winds of life blow. We spin and swirl. We laugh and cry. We live and die.

Mary Oliver asks "...what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

Live it. Live it fully and wholly. 

Life or death - an everyday choice

To many people, I may seem rather bold. I am not shy to share my opinions, even when I know they will not meet a warm reception. And theres that dramatic mid-life career change from business to ministry and the sudden relocation from one side of the Atlantic to the other... surely it takes some backbone to pull of changes like these?

The honest truth is, that I have always wrestled with fears and timidity - and still do.  There have been times - too numerous to count - when I have chosen to avoid the new experience and to stay snug, safe, and comfortable at home. My mind rebels against the idea of an adventure as I think about what to do next. A proposed adventure: I'm tired, not feeling well, or - the most effective - too much work to do!

Oh, I'm keen to try new things, but only if they can be tried in the comfort of a familiar environment.

I have to force myself to do anything more and when I do I feel a cold kind of fear flowing down my spine. I know that I could very easily end up as one of those old retired guys with slippers and a recliner chair leaving the house only to get the newspaper or for new batteries to the TV remote. Hell! I already have the recliner!

So why not give in to my urge toward comfort - why not abstain from challenges if they are so uncomfortable?

At every point in our lives we have to make a decision of whether to choose life or death. Death is easy. Living is hard. We are more like sharks than we know. Death means to stop moving, stop changing, stop growing. It means to go into the embracing night without a care.

Living means growing and changing. To live is to feel discomfort and pain along with the pleasure and the joy. It is to feel the awkwardness of not speaking the language, not knowing the customs, not being able to differentiate safety from danger. It is to feel the floor drop out beneath you. Living is diving into the wild mess of life not knowing what's coming next except that it will challenge and change you.

Today, I'll choose life. Right now, I'm still ready to be a part of this living connection that means so very much to us all - with all of its trials.

I hope to live as long as I am alive.