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Showing posts from April, 2015

Entitlement Part II

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“Knowing too much of your future is never a good thing.” -Rick Riordan Last month I wrote about one aspect and dynamic of feeling entitled. This month I am writing about another dynamic of feeling entitled. This dynamic involves how it can manifest and where it comes from. Even the best of us with our limitations, are not able to provide fully for anyone. We can want to and intend to, but their needs may be such that in combination with our limitations or weaknesses, we aren’t able to give them something basic to what they feel they need. As a young child, ideally, we are given enough so that we can flourish and feel loved and lovable and valuable. Life isn’t fair, so many of us feel like we didn’t get enough, and we feel wounded. That then becomes our work; to heal, to plumb the depths to get to the root of our wounds and to make them our friends and our strengths so we can know how wonderful we truly are. We have to earn our inheritance, so to speak. What can happen and doe

Entitlement

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“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.”                                                                                                           -Winston Churchill How many of us know folks in our lives who act entitled to things? We talk about it, and so, in some ways we probably all have some feelings of being entitled to something or someone. Yet, some folks carry that feeling with them a lot of the time. There is an aspect of entitlement which is helpful for us to have; feeling entitled to loving parents, to being and feeling loved. Parenting is one of the most difficult jobs there is. Not only is it so very important, it also brings up much of our unfinished or unresolved issues with and within us and our caretakers. In addition, we carry within us unresolved issues across generations that get passed to us in the womb and live in us as if those tra

End of Pain and Suffering

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“Find a place where there is joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.”                                                                              Joseph Campbell I went to an event for a Jewish holiday called Roshashanah. This holiday is part of what we call, the High Holidays. These holidays consist of Roshashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot. RoshHashanah is a time of letting go of all the negative thoughts and actions we have accumulated from the past year and it is a time of celebration. I celebrated this Jewish New Year with thousands of other people of all religions from all over the world. Have you ever celebrated something, not including a sports event or concert with thousands of people? If you have you know it is quite an experience. Not only was I part of this event, but this event itself brings people together for the purpose of ending our pain and suffering individually and throughout the world.  Can you imagine yourself living absent the pain and suffering you us

Are We Kind?

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“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.”                                                                                              - Kahil Gibran The other week a friend had suggested I be kind to myself. That word stood out to me; kind. I think and talk about nurturing ourselves. We read and talk about loving ourselves. I don’t often hear about being kind to ourselves. It sounds good. When I think it or say it, it feels good too. What is being kind? Kind is like being gentle, but different. Being kind involves an action and doesn’t just mean going easy on our self judgments. When we actively love ourselves we are being kind to ourselves. To be loving to ourselves carries with it the weight of how we were loved in our lives and so can be hard. Being kind feels so light. It involves how we take care of ourselves through baths and spas and pedicures and taking rest….but it is also so much more. It doesn’t carry comfort with it, like with