The problem with the heart!

Dec 04, 2022

Welcome to The Wisdomous - a friendly email sent to you every week to nourish your mental wealth and give you a better perspective on life. You will find micro-lessons from macro thinkers, a great story, fabulous reads, and fun suggestions.

Learning

The difficulty inherent in writing from the heart.

The trouble with writing from the heart is that when the outside world saps the life out of you, the only thing your soul can do is pump blood for your survival; it can't do anything else. When this happens, writing from the heart can be very difficult.

This lovely letter of ours, which I used to send weekly, has fallen into disrepair as a result of what has transpired. I didn't want it to be the most disappointing thing you read all week long. I made an effort to speak from the heart, but when I realised that my emotions weren't in the right place to write a thoughtful note every week, I resorted to writing shorter ones on Instagram.

On a more positive side, I am back on the weekly notes, and this time I have gifts for you since I feel like I owe it to you.

What did I learn?

Even if you don't notice the small changes along the way, you're getting better every day. When you remember that you're always getting better, you'll feel better about yourself.

You'll get better in all parts of your life as you learn and grow. You'll be a better friend, family member, employee, leader, and so much more. Don't forget that the things you do every day help you become the person you're meant to be.

Reflecting

I was told the story of a pregnant Rwandan mother of six whose village was destroyed by a massacre. She was shot first, buried under the bodies of each of her six slain children, and left for dead. She dug herself out, buried her children, bore her new child and, soon thereafter, chose to adopt five children whose parents had been killed in the same massacre. She expressed her belief that her life had been spared so that she might care for these orphaned children after losing her own.

This young African mother teaches me what it means to have a vocation to be fully human. I believe we become more fully human with any gesture of generosity, any time we reach out to another rather than withdraw into our individual suffering. To become fully human, we need to keep opening our hearts, no matter what. At this time, when suffering and anxiety continue to increase, when there is always reason to weep for some unbearable tragedy inflicted by one human on another, I try to remember to keep my heart open.

In my own experience, I notice that I like myself better when I am generous and open-hearted. I don’t like who I become when I am afraid of others, or angry at them. There are many people whose actions anger me and make me afraid… but I don’t like how I feel when I respond to them from fear. At those times, I don’t feel more human, but less. I become more fully human only when I extend myself. This is how I define for myself what it means to have a vocation to be fully human.

by Margaret Wheatley

This portion is from her book titled " TURNING TO ONE ANOTHER: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future

Wisdomous Nuggets

From my diary, here are a few noteworthy nuggets:

Most of the shadows in this life are caused by standing in one’s own sunshine.
Nobody has time to write a book, they make the time.
You can’t get people to do things; you can only encourage them to want to do things… this encouragement is not through fear but through meaning, love and hope.