LIve your life with Heart
Submitted by webadmin on December 15, 2009 - 9:59pm
Live Your Life With Heart
There is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than for bread.
--Mother Teresa
The rope swing hung from the tallest branches of the old oak tree in the back yard. We would beg Aunt Betty to swing us because she was a large, powerful woman and her push would send us so high in the air that we would shriek with pleasure and fear. We would cling as tight as we could to the two rough ropes to avoid falling off that little board notched and trapped between them. This swing would definitely not be considered 'playground safe' in the 21st Century.
Aunt Betty slipped away this week and is probably being interviewed by Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates. I feel sorry for Saint Peter -- he may not be able to get a word in edgewise amongst all the 'hells' and 'damns'.
In spite of her language, I will always remember Aunt Betty as living her life with heart. Life offers you no guarantees but when you live your life with heart--as Aunt Betty did--guarantees are not necessary. If you make your deicisions based on what your heart tells you, then your decisions will be made in love. Love will be your tool to make life a little easier for everyone you meet.
Some believe living from the heart is a wise business move, thinking it furthers their professional ambitions. In reality, living from the heart is the business of getting us through the confusion, commotion, alienation, and lonliness of the information age.
As you live your life with heart, you will send out energy that returns to you in a regenerating spiral that will see you through tumult and turmoil to triumph. As you press through fear and insecurity, you will find your compassion and empathy surpassing "falling in love" with anything or anyone. Your heart will keep opening again and again, letting in goodness that has no end.
Many believe living with heart is easy, but it is not. Living with heart takes a mature unselfishness added to constant and conscious practice just like the practice it takes to improve your golf game. However, to improve your ability to live life with heart you don't have to do anything as strenuous as packing your golf clubs, nor as time consuming as driving to your favorite golf course. Life gives you ample opportunity to practice: everyone you meet is your practice session. Every person you meet has human needs and as Mother Teresa so wisely said, "There is more hunger in this world for love and appreciation than for bread."
As you serve people with heart and extend love and appreciation, you will grow in multifaceted ways. Leo Buscaglia best describes this growth:
You will acquire the subtlety of the very wise, the flexibility of a child, the sensitivity of the artist, the understanding of the philosopher, the acceptance of the saint, the tolerance of the scholar, and the fortitude of the certain.
These indeed are enviable traits.
Aunt Betty in her own special way developed Buscaglia's traits that come from serving people with heart. I plan to take some lessons from Aunt Betty. I hope you do, too.
