A Heart On Fire

Sometimes people just aren't very nice. Seems like the term "polite society" and the concept of being mannerly has gone out of vogue and that's a tough one for me to accept a lot of times. We seem to have lost our way when it comes to being kind and even mannerly. It's a common complaint I hear among teachers. "Where have the words 'please' and 'thank you' gone?" Where have they gone, indeed? It's more than just being polite in requests and being grateful when they are fulfilled; it's a general lack of pleasantness that I see when I look around. It's tough to be nice to other people when you fixate on yourself. And that's what I see in everyday living. People are fixated on what makes them happy, what brings pleasure to themselves. Don't get me wrong: I am not utterly selfless. I've got a road to travel. Don't we all? But I wanted to share some thoughts along my journey to help you out with your own.

Sometimes, when I get a little bit lost in this feeling that I'm swirling in a sea of self-indulgent, impolite people, I feel compelled to look back to sage voices when the reality of this gets to be too much. Some of the most memorable voices of the past are people with the hearts of servants.

I am a Christian and I marvel at the philosophy of Jesus on a regular basis as his words stack up against modern society. He humbly suggests, "if you want to be first in heaven, you've got to be OK with being last here in life." He also hands us the keys to a successful life by saying, "Do unto others as you would have done to you." The Golden Rule. Remember that little bugger? It sets us up to succeed because it calls on ethical reciprocity. On the face of things, there's no immediate payback to it, so maybe that's why people don't behave that way regularly anymore. In fact, this seems to run completely counterintuitively to modern society, which often tell us, "if you want to be first, push your way to the front and it doesn't matter who you step on along the way." So how do we reconcile these two radically different things?

Most currently, I've been reading the book No Greater Love by Mother Teresa. A humble servant of Jesus herself, she is someone with whom I want to identify. She tried to live like Jesus. And this is so evident in her words. How about this one?

"A joyful heart is the normal result of a heart burning with love. She gives most who gives with joy."

I read that and put down the book, trying to absorb what it truly means. Let's unpack it.

So if joy is what we're all after (and who isn't?), then love is the most direct connection to it. There's more to this. Giving is at the heart of the matter but it's all about giving with joy. And that's the key. Give yourself away to other people without a thought of what you might get in return. Give yourself away with radical abandon, and it will bring radical joy. Treat people with the sort of care and compassion that you would want to receive from them and you just can't lose.

I would have to say that adopting this mindset means being very conscious of it. This type of thinking does not come by way of autopilot, does it? And it's not the part about giving that I'm talking about...it's the part about giving with no expectation of something in return. That's where the work lies. I'm working on this!

I have carried the words of Jesus with me this week. I've toted along the wisdom of Mother Teresa, too. I want to have a heart of fire, filled with love for other people, even when it's difficult. I want to continue to discipline myself to give with no expectation. The only focus on self, here, is to treat others the way I want to be treated. The Golden Rule in action takes a lot of hard work.

Let's get this! Hope and joy are so closely tied together that it'd be tough to feel joy without your sense of hope rising to unimaginable heights. Let's do our best to pump joy out there into the world. We can reverse a negative trend, my friends. Yep. I want to get after this.