... Lord Siddhārtha Gautama Shakyamuni of
India
aka
the Buddha
"Whosoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or
a god."
... Aristotle (widely attributed erroneously to Francis Bacon)
"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of
comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and
controversy."
... Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr
I am indebted to Paige Rose PhD who contributed material for this
conversation.
For as long as we've been
human,
the sum total of all of our
personal
interactions ie the combined power of all of our
linguistic
acts
like acknowledgment, agreement, appreciation, approval, assertion (all
the "a"s), and
love
etc and more, have been unleashed in our conversations with others,
resulting in new,
transformative
powers, and the ability to heal / repair any experience of fractured
self-esteem we may have brought with us / inherited / already have had.
The acknowledgement, agreement, appreciation, approval, assertion, and
love
etc and more that we share with others, comprises an enormous component
of our experience of well-being and self-worth. But when I have it that
my only
source
of well-being and self-worth is others, my experience of self-esteem is
at risk ie subject to others' whims. What I get from this is the urge
(like a wake-up call) to take total responsibility for my own
well-being and self-worth.
Q: Where are
my sources
(or better, who are
my sources)
of my well-being and self-worth when I am alone ie when I am by ... my
... self ie when there aren't any others
around?
A: While the acknowledgment, agreement,
appreciation, approval, assertion, and
love
etc of others are gifts to me (in a sense, they're
reflections
ie measures of whether I'm
making a diference
in life, or not), it's very clear to me that if I'm dependent on others
for my experience of well-being and self-worth, I incur a loss of power
(or simply have no power at all). The power of well-being and
self-worth lies in their being self-generated.
I've been engaged in an inquiry into the possibility of being my own
(ie of each of us being our own)
source
of acknowledgment, agreement, appreciation, approval, assertion, and
love
for ourselves, and to not cede these functions to others. And I'm
wondering whether there really is a difference qualitatively?
That it's not, could be a subject for another conversation on
another occasion.
<un-aside>
I asked a good friend of mine for her professional take on this -
"professional", because she's in the
health care
business and has some
unerringlyright on views on this sort of thing. It's clear to me
that taking full responsibility for one's own well-being and
self-worth, is not only smart. It's: what other options could
there ever be? If I am not responsible for my well-being and
self-worth, then who is? I asked her how we
source
our own well-being and self-worth, to which she answered "You have to
hold yourself like
a mother
holds a beloved
child;
you have to hold yourself as if you are holding the baby
Buddha.".
I liked that, I liked it a lot. Holding ... the
baby ...
Buddha. It's all
right there (ie the experience of it is all right there).
When you're holding a baby (and moreover, when you're holding the baby
Buddha),
what's called forth is an experience of being nurturing which is beyond
understanding, beyond rationality, beyond intellect. You can
grok what it would be like for you (ie you can grok who
you would have to be being) if you were to be holding the baby
Buddha,
without lots of unnecessary, distracting, and
futile
explanations which only get in your way. And that's how you nurture
your own well-being and self-worth.
Her analogy of "holding the baby Buddha" (in lieu of nurturing our
sense of well-being and self-worth) is an analogy that
speaks
to me - and it's not like an explanation, not like an understanding,
but like a tap in to the
direct experience
of it all - where others don't. It's something
the Buddha
would approve of.