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What Really Matters At The End of Life? BJ Miller
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apbSsILLh28List of such vids:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=what+really+matters+at+the+end+of+life+tedxHe and friends climbed on the top of a commuter train . . . got zapped . . .
That night began my formal relationship with death. . . .
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Worth the time, imho.
Well worth pondering.
And . . .
One of the things I'd most like to encourage folks to do daily and certainly this Thanksgiving/CHRISTmas season would be to
!!!!FORGIVE!!!!
!EVERYONE!
It is physiologically and spiritually extremely healthy to crucial to do.
And forgiveness is not about letting the other person off the hook. It is resigning as their policeman, judge, jury and executioner and leaving that to God. The evidence is that He's much more diligent about such things when we take our hands OFF the other person by laying aside our resentments, bitterness, unforgiveness, etc.
It is realizing that "
But for the grace of God, there, go I."
It is choosing humility and letting God deal with the details.
It is recognizing that Pride produces nothing healthy and lots unhealthy and eternally destructive stuff.
It is
doing unto others as we'd like done unto us . . . realizing that we've been stupid, clueless, harsh, silly, absurd, mean, thoughtless, selfish, arrogant, insecure, fearful, wild, crazy . . . at more than one or two times in our lives, too.
It is realizing that a healed relationship is worth far more than any amount of selfishness, pride, covetousness etc.
And, we cannot change the other person. But we can change how we relate to them and how we show our love to them--regardless.
There's a TED TALK about drug addiction and Portugal's experience with decriminalizing all such drugs and putting the money into building relationships and providing productive options.
They recognized that CONNECTEDNESS--the opposite of ATTACHMENT DISORDER--is the crucial issue in drug abuse. Even rat experiments demonstrated that. And the years since Portugal changed their stance and practices have certainly demonstrated that.Loving others regardless does not mean condoning their self-destructive behaviors. And it does not mean one becomes a door mat to their evil crap.
It does mean we recognize they are created in God's image and have value in His eyes and ought to have value in ours. It recognizes that communicating caring about their unique identity and personality, person-hood--may be a lot more powerful than all the sermons you ever imagined ramming down their throats.
As Henry Wright asserts--all addictions are a desperate search for daddy's love that wasn't adequately there the first years of life.
http://www.beinhealth.com Sooooooooooooo . . . what do you have to lose--that's worth holding onto--by forgiving, laying aside the relational refuse, garbage, crap . . . and just loving those around you as well as you know how to and can at all genuinely manage with the least bit of earnest heart and effort?
Doing so could be the best present you ever gave yourself and those you love.