life’s purpose

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.

Opening the Door to Change

/ Tim / Leave a comment

When I was still in the throws of my addictions I only had a faint idea of what I was really doing to myself; the physical, emotional and mental harm I caused, not only to me, but those who cared about me. Part of that is because I spent most of my time seeking out and planning out the next ‘party’ and part of it was because of my ‘buddies’ at the time. I hung around folks who acted like me and thought like me. One of the first ‘suggestions’ I received in recovery was to step away from those people, places and things that were part of my life that I wished to leave behind; close that door and open a new one. Simple enough advice, but why did it take decades to realize it?

In order to change how I was living, I had to change how I was living.

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I replaced my barstool for a chair in a meeting room and changed what I thought about by listening to and reading recovery literature. I started to listen to others in recovery. I started to talk to others about what I was going through. I helped out with cleaning up after the meetings and did some socializing with the new people I was meeting. I got myself an excellent sponsor and I began to study the Twelve Steps of Recovery with him. Over the course of the next six months I changed a great deal. The change was gradual, almost imperceptible to me, but very obvious to those that I hadn’t frightened off in the previous years. I changed my perspective, what I was looking at, and everything changed.

G.I.G.O.: Garbage In: Garbage Out…..or…..GOOD IN: GOOD OUT!

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Every one of us is the direct result of what we put into our bodies, minds and spirit. Western society’s fixation of fast cheap food had pushed obesity to the extreme. You simply can’t have a healthy body if you continue to put unhealthy food into it. Same with the mind. If you want a healthy mind, be aware of what you are putting into it. What are you watching, reading, listening to? Who are your buddies? Where are you spending most of your time? As the saying goes; tell me who your friends are and I will tell you who you are!

It takes mindfulness, conscious action and a determination to build the life you want to have. I used to put the cart ahead of the horse. I thought that if I had x, y, and z then I would be happy. I have discovered that happiness is the result of living according to my values and principles. Happiness is the realization that I am living right. When I am happy, the x, y and z will come to me, or, more likely, I will discover that I while I may ‘want’ those things, I really don’t ‘need’ them.

Yes, I had to leave my old buddies behind when I came into recovery. I found new ones who honoured my recovery and who helped me along the way. I let the old buddies know where I was and what I was doing and left the door open for them to come through but made it clear that I had no intention of walking back through that door and onto my old barstool. And as long as I continue to pursue new ‘Good’ to put into my body, mind and soul, I know that I will continue to move forward in life.

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The ‘Tim’ of the past is gone.

One of the most profound lessons I had to learn in recovery was that I had to let go of the ‘Tim’ that I knew in order for a new person to emerge. This is a lesson that I repeat daily, asking my Higher Power to ‘relieve me of the bondage of self’: to free me from my ego’s enslavement. If I wish to continue to grow today I must shed the old skin of yesterday and I do that by being mindful and aware of the people, places and things I’m spending my time with. Only by this daily renewal do I continue to move forward in this incredible journey of discovery that is life.

FINDING PURPOSE

/ Tim / 1 Comment

I remember saying, when I was in my teens trying to figure out what to do with my life, that I wanted to be ‘there’ and not have to go through all the crap to get ‘there.’ Some of my classmates had their lives already planned out, knew what they were going to do, how they were going to do it and were on track to making that life vision a reality. I, on the other hand, really had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I entered a Catholic seminary because I thought I would ‘fit in’. Later, I went to teacher’s college because I knew I needed a ‘saleable skill’. And, while I know I’m an excellent teacher, it has never been my life’s purpose. I was always a bit jealous of those who ‘knew’ what they wanted and went for it.

Wikipedia.com

I have been looking into passion and purpose for several years now. There are a lot of ideas and theories about how we develop and maintain them. There´s no lack of success literature and YouTube videos on how to achieve it. But despite the quantities of material I’ve consumed online and on paper, I still haven’t found the ‘thing’ for me. My career over the past forty plus years is more like the ‘one piece at a time’ car that Johnny Cash sang about years ago: a cobbled form of many and varied things.

I know that I wouldn’t have fit into neither the corporate, nor the blue collar world. I’m not an artist nor an entrepreneur. And I know I’ve been fortunate, but I’ve often dreamed a regular 9 to 5 job with a regular pay cheque and a retirement package: work, go home, forget about work. And then I give my head a shake because I know that a regular day in, day out routine was never for me. Factory work one summer cured me of that. I know I like variety and challenge. I like trying new things and implementing new ideas. I have developed a lot of skills over the years and I have always had to hustle to keep it all together.

What I have done with my work life has allowed me to try a myriad of things that have kept me off the streets and rather comfortable. I have time to read, think, write, chat and generally enjoy my life. What more do I need? I’ve been thinking about what happens for the next 30 years of my life. What should I do so that I’m not wasting my mind and body sitting in front of the ‘boob tube’ and life passes by?

There’s no ‘right’ answer. There is no ‘thing’, no ‘there’, no ‘arrived’.

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I’ve come to the conclusion that my purpose is to enjoy life. Simple. Welcome each day, each event, every challenge and every triumph as it come along. Stand up after you fall and move forward. Enjoy that too, it’s part of life. Falling short isn’t a loss if I learn from it. I don’t think it really matters what one ‘does’ in life, as long as you enjoy it. One size never fits all. It’s important to make things work for you and not what works for others. Trying different things in life has a cost, but it is one that I would gladly pay again and will continue to pay in order to keep exploring this incredible life and to enjoy what happens to me along the way. Yes, I plan for the future and I know that I need to be flexible enough to modify, change or toss those plans when new information comes along. What matters is enjoying today. Whether you’re the CEO of the company or the producer on the line, life can be enjoyed.

I guess I never, ever got ‘there’ in my life. I know that I never need to get ‘there’. The important thing, I believe, is to enjoy being ‘here’.

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