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June 2 - June 2, 2020
Sometimes we are apt to regard as limitations qualities that are actually the other person’s strength.
The only way in which we can really help people to develop is to let them do it themselves, trying to show them by demonstration, if we can, the things that are really needed. But to force anything upon an individual is rarely successful in helping him develop his own individuality.
Maturity means, too, an ability to take criticism and evaluate it.
When it is not of value, when it is not constructive, but destructive, one can forget it. But when it is constructive one must accept it and try to profit, even though hurt by it.
Another sign of maturity is gradually to eliminate the faults you see in yourself but that no one else knows exist.
Maturity also means that you have set your values, that you know what you really want out of life.
To be mature you have to realize what you value most.
Readjustment is a kind of private revolution. Each time you learn something new you must readjust the whole framework of your knowledge.
Almost everyone recognizes this necessity for readjustment during the period of adolescence, but we do not seem to be equally aware of it in terms of middle age, of the elderly, of the old.
Every age, someone has said, is an undiscovered country.
How interminable and dull that journey would be if it were on a straight road over a flat plain, if we could see ahead the whole distance, without surprises, without the salt of the unexpected, without challenge.
When you know you have no justification for self-pity and you want to pity yourself it is much worse than if you have a real grievance.
How very true.
Whatever period of life we are in is good only to the extent that we make use of it, that we live it to the hilt, that we continue to develop and understand what it has to offer us and we have to offer it.
One reason for this ability to cope with disaster is that nothing ever happens to us except what happens in our minds.
with advancing age, you accept the blows of life more philosophically.
No relationship in this world ever remains warm and close unless a real effort is made on both sides to keep it so.
HAPPINESS is not a goal, it is a by-product.
It is easy to slip into self-absorption and it is equally fatal.
I have always liked Don Quixote’s comment, “Until death it is all life.”
Usefulness, whatever form it may take, is the price we should pay for the air we breathe and the food we eat and the privilege of being alive.
I think everyone, from the earliest possible age, should be taught not to be sorry for himself; not, whatever the provocation, whatever the temptation, to carry his depression or his disappointments or his black moods to someone else.
Also, and it’s a curious thing, if you don’t make a parade of your unhappiness to someone else, you’ll find it is a lot easier to get over it.
The need to be needed is much stronger in most of us than we are aware.
Usefulness, to my mind, is a kind of blanket word that covers all the many kinds of service to one’s fellow men. It is an expression of human love. Or, instead of love, perhaps the better word would be respect. That, I think, is a noble word, an indication of a certain attitude toward one’s fellow men.
Love can often be misguided and do as much harm as good, but respect can do only good. It assumes that the other person’s stature is as large as one’s own, his rights as reasonable, his needs as important.
A child who feels the basic acceptance that goes with respect, and knows he is trusted because he is accepted, will achieve remarkable ability in acquiring self-control and consideration for others.
But nothing could be done, of course, until someone knew the facts: seeking for them, checking them, investigating to make sure of what was actually happening. All this was necessary before anything could be done to better conditions. Until someone cared to be useful, people continued to live like that.
For this is the worst part of the rather casual desire to be useful. A person sees something that should be done and offers to do it. As time passes, he becomes bored and loses interest; he becomes slack, fails to appear when he had promised to do so, fails to accomplish what he had pledged to do. This kind of amateur “helper” is perhaps more prevalent than one would wish. If you promise to perform something for the good of an individual or an organization or a community, try your best to live up to your word. For you are needed. Desperately.
WE ARE facing a great danger today—the loss of our individuality.
There are two very different kinds of conformity, but they tend, somewhere along the line, to blend, unless we are always aware of the difference. One of them is essential if human beings are to live with one another in a civilized way. That is social conformity, which is basically only a kind of good manners, which, in turn, is formalized kindness. The other, the dangerous one, is conformity to alien standards or ideas or values because that is the easy way, or because we think we can get farther in our job or profession by not fighting for what we believe in, or because we will be more
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The result of this ceaseless battle between individual and mass minds can be frustrating in the extreme. It can also be infuriating. But words, even when they seem to fail to communicate, are better than bombs. So we keep on trying. We must keep on trying. Sometimes we find that though we do not see eye to eye we can at least reach a modus vivendi, which is better than nothing.
Success must include two things: the development of an individual to his utmost potentiality and a contribution of some kind to one’s world.
The child who is taught a kind of lip service to democracy but sees injustice or prejudice condoned by his parents will regard their preachments as empty and dishonest pretensions. If you want your child to develop as an honorable human being you have to practice what you preach.
One effective way of helping children to combat the pressures of conformity is to teach them to think for themselves.
This is what I mean by social conformity; not the surrender of one’s beliefs but an awareness of when one is justified in forcing them and when it is not allowable if you have good manners.
It should be a part of every young person’s development to learn to be aware of other people, to study them, not to antagonize them if it can be avoided.
This awareness of other people’s desires and feelings is an important part of learning to live with other people and in a society.
Just kindness. A graciousness of manner which avoids hurting another person or making him ill at ease. A graciousness of the heart.
When a man has lost—or deliberately abdicated—his own individuality, his contribution is to a great extent diminished. He has less originality to bring to his job, less value in every way. Unless he can maintain his own unique quality, the sharp cutting edge of his personal views, he is simply reflecting other men’s views and is therefore comparatively valueless.
For one thing is sure: If they don’t make up their minds, someone will do it for them.
Mutual respect is the basis of all civilized human relationships.
If such a search is to be successful, however, you will need two qualities which you can develop by practice. One is the ability to be a good listener. The other is the imaginative ability to put yourself in the other person’s place; to try to discover what he is thinking and feeling; to understand
as far as you can the background from which he came, the soil out of which his roots have grown, the customs and beliefs and ideas which have shaped his thinking.
Intellectually, one may have known for years that certain needs exist, but until one sees with one’s own eyes and comes to feel with one’s own heart, one will never understand other people.
because he understood their point of view and tried to put himself in their place. This, perhaps, is the chief secret of getting along with people.
There are always a few people, sometimes unfortunately in important positions, who feel that they can deal with others only by imposing their will, by giving orders, by taking a dictatorial—master to serf—attitude. Sometimes, of course, it works. The orders are obeyed. But they are often obeyed at the price of resentment and the loss of self-respect. Obedience may have its uses, but it is no substitute for willing, uncoerced co-operation.
Sometimes this was a result of self-satisfaction, of the man’s feeling that he had nothing to learn from his colleagues. I don’t know of an attitude that succeeds more quickly in antagonizing people.
I have never known anyone to succeed over a period of time in dealing with people, particularly in committee work, if he assumed an air of complete self-sufficiency and behaved as though he had no need for the support or assistance of his colleagues.
The key problem is to find some binding interest to make them feel a part of the whole, and to stimulate each one to make his own particular contribution.
At this moment, it is quite possible that the future of the world and of life on this planet depends on our ability to master the technique of getting along with the many different peoples who inhabit this globe.
