My father taught me a powerful lesson I’ll never forget.
His own father, my grandfather, was a mining engineer and his family lived in the Philippines prior to World War II. After Japan invaded the Philippines in 1941, foreigners were rounded up and incarcerated. Manila's University of Santo Tomas was made into a prison camp and my father, his mother and his sisters were held there for the duration of the war. His father, an enlisted man, was separated from the family and imprisoned with captured military personnel.
My dad was a teenager at the time. He, like other prisoners, struggled to survive. To keep from starving, he learned to eat his small, daily rations of rice without first removing the carcasses of worms and insects in the bowl (“We needed the protein,” he’d say). But he ate better than most prisoners - he worked as an orderly in the prison hospital and, whenever possible, ate leftover food from plates of hospital patients as he carried trays to the kitchen for cleaning. Though almost six feet tall, when he was finally freed he weighed only 95 pounds, but maintained for the rest of his life that he likely survived those years only because of the scraps of food he snatched from hospital trays.
Life was difficult there by any standards. Numerous prisoners became ill and many died. Anger and bitterness toward their captors abounded. For decades after their eventual release from prison camp, men and women of Santo Tomas (like other prisoners of war) felt a smoldering rancor toward the people who incarcerated them.
My father lost almost everything. His family lost their home. They lost their possessions. And hardest still, they lost their freedom. But he also lost his father. My grandfather did not survive his captivity.
Yet I never heard my dad express any anger or resentment toward his captors or the Japanese people. Just the opposite. He taught me to regard ALL people with respect. He taught me to honor people of all races, nationalities and religions. Maybe he knew that bitterness only kept his wounds open and infected. Maybe he realized that, like a disease, festering resentments can infect others, too. And they can kill.
Nelson Mandela wrote of the day he was released from prison, “As I walked out the door toward my freedom, I knew that if I did not leave all the anger, hatred and bitterness behind, that I would still be in prison.”
My father was freed from two prisons: the bricks and mortar walls that held him during the war, and walls of hatred that could have incarcerated his spirit for years to come. The second prison is as incapacitating as the first. For unless we’re free on the inside, we’re not really free at all.
I’ll not soon forget my father’s powerful lesson.
-- Steve Goodier
Two women who had just met at a health spa were talking about their lifestyles and how they hope to stay healthy. One asked the other to detail her daily routine.
“I eat moderately,” she replied, “I exercise moderately, I drink moderately, and I live moderately.”
“Is there anything else you do?” her new friend asked.
“Yes,” she said, “I lie extensively.”
A Hindu proverb says, “Even nectar is poison if taken in excess.” I believe in moderation. But moderation takes a certain amount of self discipline. It’s about saying no from time to time. But how does it feel to never say no? To be out of control? Success and even happiness are simply not possible without some inner discipline.
One hospital patient aptly described the problem. When visiting with a chaplain, this patient, who was being treated for venereal disease, said, “Reverend, my trouble is I’ve been led around by my ‘gotta haves’ all my life.”
Without learning how to say no to ourselves at the appropriate times, it’s like we’re led around by our “gotta haves” all our lives. Whatever we think we gotta have this moment is what we go after. We gotta have more pleasure or less discomfort or this experience or that new thing or another glass or more of this or a bigger and better something else.... You fill in the blanks.
On the other hand, some of the happiest people I know feel in control of themselves most of the time. If they overdo, their excessiveness does not become a lifestyle. If they deviate from the goals they’ve set, they soon get back on course. They know how to have fun without being led around by their gotta haves.
I like the words of Bernard Baruch. “In the last analysis,” he said, “our only freedom is the freedom to discipline ourselves.” The point is -- control is going to come from somewhere. If not from ourselves, then from somebody else.
Discipline is deciding not to be led around by our gotta haves. It is the task of a lifetime, an indispensable prerequisite to success, and the only way to be truly free.
-- Steve Goodier
I had a remarkable conversation with a woman about physical limitations. Nancy was a sufferer of M.S. She could no longer walk and spent her waking hours in a wheelchair.
"I'm not 'confined' to the wheelchair," she insisted one day. "It doesn't confine me. It sets me free."
I had never thought of it that way. And I have never since referred to someone in a wheelchair since as being "confined."
She asked me, "Do you want to know my reason for living?" It seemed like an abrupt change of subject, but I went with it.
"What is it?"
"To liberate people. To set them free."
She must have studied my face and figured I needed more help. "It's like me...before I got my wheelchair, I had trouble getting around," she explained. "Now I can go places. But other people may be trapped in different ways. So however I can free people, I want to do it."
"People speak of being 'shut in,'" she continued. "People who have difficulty leaving a room or a house or a bed are not 'shut in.' They're 'shut out' -- shut out of activities and shut out of people's lives. So I try to help people find some freedom, however I can."
We all live with limitations, don't we? If not physical, we may be limited in our thinking or limited by our beliefs.
When I feel confined by my thinking, I sometimes wonder how my friend would free herself. I think she would replace her life-sapping thoughts with life-giving thinking. As Darwin P. Kingsley, past president of New York Life Insurance Company, says,
"You have powers you never dreamed of.
You can do things you never thought you could do.
There are no limitations in what you can do except
the limitations of your own mind."
I appreciate Nancy. She showed me what real liberation is all about.
-- Steve Goodier
Image: flickr.com/Wheelchair Basketball Canada
