Humility

The Service Road

/ Tim / 1 Comment

I am not sure when I first saw a photograph of Queen Elizabeth II walking out on the moors of Scotland wearing a dowdy looking oil-skin coat and a headscarf. I was taken aback. I thought, until then, that the Queen would always be regally crowned, wearing her robes with her scepter close at hand. My thoughts about royalty, peerage and social class has changed over the years, but one thing that has not is my admiration for her commitment to her role as Queen. I can think of no finer example of a person who has lived a life of service to others. Hers was a less traveled, less popular road but she was always guided by her commitment to service. Her life is a challenge to all of us to work toward a life of service.

Why should I, or anyone, live a life dedicated to service? What’s in it for me? What will I get out of it?

These questions strike at the very reason why service is so important. Service gets ‘me’ out of the way. When I came into recovery I was told very early on; ‘service will keep you sober.’ Whether it was putting out books, washing coffee mugs or even sharing at meetings, I was being of service. I was getting out of my ‘self’ and into a collective understanding of things. My addiction was a result of an overactive Ego. I wasn’t much, as the saying goes, but I was all I ever thought about. When I was helping others I stopped, even just for a moment, thinking about me, my situation, my problems. I was thinking about the people around me.

No man is an island.

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No one, absolutely no one, can live alone. We by our very nature need a mother and father and we need care for the first years of our lives. Even the hermit who lives is a cave relies on others. How long would one survive alone? Robinson Crusoe had Friday and Tom Hanks in Cast Away had Wilson. We all need someone because despite how much one might detest others, we are social creatures. I want to do more than simply survive in this life; I want to thrive. I can’t do so without others and other’s need me as well. It’s a two-way street. Together we can go further, arrive at better decisions and become much more than we ever could alone.

Service to others, to individuals or to the community helps me to learn my strengths and my weaknesses. I can learn and teach when I am of service. It is more than helping or doing for others. It is being there when they need a hand yes, but it is also allowing others to help me too. I have said before that while the saying is, “It takes a village to raise a child,” it also takes a village to maintain an adult and help them to thrive.

Service serves humility

Humility is often confused with humiliation. I was taught early on that humility was stating what is; the truth without exaggeration nor denigration. Humility keeps my ego tamed. Every time I find myself angry, resentful or fearful, I can always trace it back to my Ego and the desire to have things my way and not the way they are. I believe that service helps to keep me humble and reminds me that life it not all about what I want. I meet my own needs by helping to meet the needs of the community as a whole.

I also believe that service helps me to develop self-appreciation, a facet of humility. In helping someone with a project, teaching others or allowing them to teach me a new skill, in offering an honest opinion, or receiving criticism, I can learn to love, honour and value myself. In this way, service to others is also service to me: the community of which I am a part, will continue to learn, grow and develop.

Queen Elizabeth is but one model of service that we can find in our world today. We don’t have to go far in own communities to name others who are as committed and duty bound to serving others: a teacher who puts in extra hours tutoring or coaching, the nurse who also volunteers at a local hospice, the members of Big Brothers and Big Sisters. Each may have their own reasons for doing their work, but the result is the same: a community that is a little bit better off than it would be without their service. It’s a road that we all should walk down. As the Beatles have been reminding us for almost 60 years now, “I get by with a little help from my friends.” Together we can trudge that road of happy destiny.

. . .

I just finished Michael Singer’s latest book, Living Untethered. This is his long awaited follow-up to his other books, The Untethered Soul and The Surrender Experiment. I was struck by one of his conclusions about the purpose of life. It is not to find happiness, to live in peace or to have all your needs met. Nor is our life’s purpose to gain fame, fortune and recognition. It is to be of Service. I encourage you to seek out his books.

The Lion, the Tiger and the Donkey

/ Tim / 1 Comment

The donkey told the tiger, “The grass is blue.”

The tiger replied, “No, the grass is green .”

The discussion became heated, and the two decided to submit the issue to arbitration, so they approached the lion. As they approached the lion on his throne, the donkey started screaming: ′′Your Highness, isn’t it true that the grass is blue?”

The lion replied: “If you believe it is true, the grass is blue.”

The donkey rushed forward and continued: ′′The tiger disagrees with me, contradicts me and annoys me. Please punish him.”

The king then declared: ′′The tiger will be punished with 3 days of silence.”

The donkey jumped with joy and went on his way, content and repeating: ′′The grass is blue, the grass is blue…”

The tiger asked the lion, “Your Majesty, why have you punished me, after all, the grass is green?”

The lion replied, ′′You’ve known and seen the grass is green.”

The tiger asked, ′′So why do you punish me?”

The lion replied, “That has nothing to do with the question of whether the grass is blue or green. The punishment is because it is degrading for a brave, intelligent creature like you to waste time arguing with an ass, and on top of that, you came and bothered me with that question just to validate something you already knew was true!” The biggest waste of time is arguing with the fool and fanatic who doesn’t care about truth or reality, but only the victory of his beliefs and illusions. Never waste time on discussions that make no sense. There are people who, for all the evidence presented to them, do not have the ability to understand. Others who are blinded by ego, hatred and resentment, and the only thing that they want is to be right even if they aren’t.

When IGNORANCE SCREAMS, intelligence moves on.

Authorship Unknown

Daily, perhaps because of the glut of information available, we come across something that is, at least for us, blatantly false. The source of the information is often decidedly adamant that his or her version is true. I often wonder how the ‘Flat Earthers’ gained momentum, or the ‘New World Order,’ or any of the other conspiracy theories that have taken flight. I also wonder why people would place themselves in a position where they are diametrically opposed to what has been already been proven. But, as the lion responded, we can say that what you believe is true for you, is true.

H. Spencer (Nice chops!)

It is useless to argue with someone who has set their mind upon some issue or idea and refuses to look at the evidence that does not support their belief. The quote often attributed to Herbert Spencer says:

There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which can not fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance-that principle is contempt prior to investigation.

In other words, if I am of the belief that I already know what the answer is, not only do I not bother to investigate it further, I will rebuke and rebuff any attempts to contradict my belief. I will never know the truth because I am not interested in truth. I am interested in my belief and will defend it even when facing insurmountable evidence to the contrary.

If an argument is not going to be enriching for both parties, then it is time to move on.

So as the lion says, just let that go; there is no sense in trying to argue with someone who is not willing to see another point of view. What one believes is true is true for them, is true for them. Some people haven’t yet discovered that the answers to questions are less important that the questions themselves. Moreover, one must realize that arguing with such a person is a waste of time.

We have all run into folks who love to argue but when their only aim is to bring others over to their side and not to listen to any information that does not support that view it is not a debate, but rather, an espousal of one’s views. For many, opinions on religion, politics or other hot-button issues aren’t open to any other interpretation but the one that their holders carry. To those we can say: “I’m glad that you believe what you believe,” and leave it there. However, it does us no service to completely dismiss their point of view because that makes us guilty of the same arrogant offence. Perhaps their belief may lead us to ask a new question.

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I need open-mindedness to receive new information. I also need humility to accept that the information and the beliefs that I hold may not be correct. I do my best to seek the truth, to find answers to new questions that come to me. Some things that were true for me in my youth are no longer true today. New ideas in the realms of science, mathematics, and spirituality come to the fore often. I relish the chance to explore them for myself and find an answer that will work for today but not hold onto that answer so tightly that I refuse to see future evidence to the contrary. That will, as Spencer said, keep me in permanent ignorance.

Some Awe!

/ Tim / 3 Comments

I was struck this week by the comparison of the size of an atom. If the proton at the centre of an atom were the size of an apple, the electron that is floating around it would be the size of sugar cube and be spinning in an orbit two kilometres away from the apple. The rest of the ‘sphere’ that makes up an atom is, as far as we know, empty space. The presenter I watched went onto emphasize that an atom is 99.99999999999999999% empty. A whole lot of nothing!

I read recently that our body is made up of about 100 trillion cells and each cell is made up of about 100 trillion atoms. That multiplies up to: 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms (28 zeros there) or to make it easier, 10 Octillion atoms (thank-you Siri), in the average human body. But if this is true, then my body is also 99.99999999999999999% empty space. So why do most of us believe that the body and everything around it is solid? Perhaps there something filling the space that I think must be empty? Perhaps it is filled with energy, vibrations, dark matter? Perhaps solidity is an illusion, as is all of reality. Einstein said so, but he qualified it by saying that it was a persistent illusion. Thinking like this causes me to pause and think deeply and wonder.

Hubble Photo of the Cosmos

For me, this is a moment of Awe. I am struck by the wonder of it all. Where there is virtually nothing, I can sense a whole world. When quantum physicists got together with cosmologists, they discovered that the images they saw when looking into an electron microscope and looking through a powerful telescope were pretty much the same: a lot of empty space dotted by the tiniest of lights. This is incredible! This leaves me in a state of disbelief and yet at the same time, full of wonder at this truth. The British expression, ‘Gobsmacked’ fits here. It’s somewhere in between Homer Simpson’s ‘Doh!’ and Archimedes’ cry ‘Eureka!’ Yes, gobsmacked: the wonderment and astonishment of it all.

I watched a video last week on YouTube presented by Andrew Kirby. He’s a young chap from the UK I discovered last year when I was looking for information on Stoicism. In this video he said he believes being filled with a sense of awe can affect our lives even more powerfully than gratitude. When we are in a state of awe, we acknowledge that we are in the presence of something far, far greater than ourselves. We feel extremely small and insignificant relative to it. Perhaps you’re at the top of a cliff looking down at the waves crashing down below, sitting quietly inside a magnificent cathedral or gazing into the eyes of the Mona Lisa. And even though we sense how great this thing is and how infinitesimal we are, we still feel a deep connection to it.

Raphael’s School of Athens, Vatican City

When I was on the tour of the Vatican Museum years ago, we were escorted through room upon room of many of the great works of art: oils, sketches, frescoes, sculptures. There is so much art that great artworks lose their significance; it’s just one more Titian or another Michelangelo. I was following the crowds going at a fairly quick pace through gallery upon gallery when I turned. There before me was Raphael’s masterpiece, The School of Athens. Having studied art history as well as having studied the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, I knew the fresco. I had seen photos of it, heard about it’s significance to art, to the politics and to competing philosophies at the time. And there it was! I wasn’t expecting to see it. I didn’t know it was in the Vatican Palace. And suddenly, there it was in all of its eight by five metres renaissance splendor! I was filled with awe: a feeling of reverential respect mixed with wonder or fear (thank you Oxford Dictionary). And I was connected to the subject, to the artist, to the ideas expressed and to the moment, a moment that, obviously, has stayed with me ever since. I couldn’t say anything; I was gobsmacked!

Yes, we hear the word ‘awesome’ so often that most of its true meaning has been sucked out of it. It is still a good word to use in situations like this. When I am at the cliff edge staring down, I have a feeling that goes beyond being grateful to experience this moment. It’s a ‘be still and know’ kind of moment. It’s a ‘OMG’ kind of moment. It a ‘being completely in the now’ moment. It is a very humbling moment and a deeply spiritual moment.

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We need more of these awe-some moments in our lives. We can seek those moments out. Find a place to live that inspires you. Visit the Grand Canyon, climb to the top of the Eiffel Tower, witness the miracle of birth, watch a flower unfold. Discover places and moments that fill you with awe in the truest sense of the word.

And what will this do for us? How does being full of awe help us? We connect. We step back. We relate. We are grateful. We are happy to have been a part of this experience that no video or still, no description nor writing and no telling could ever completely encompass; a moment that will impress feelings and emotions so deeply into our psyche that it can never be erased. We will have a sense that in some respects, although we are insignificant, and realizing that there may be more stars in the heavens than there are atoms in our bodies, we have communed with the divine.

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Find your awe!