A couple of weeks ago I sent an e-mail to my children to encourage them to always strive to be pleasant in their interactions with others by being considerate, respectable, cordial, peaceful and forgiving.
I'm like any parent who wants to pass on good things to their children. I know our children learn by our example more than anything, but there are still times when parental instruction and lecture can solidify what our children understand about what is right, acceptable and appropriate.
Here is some of what I wrote to them:
I have been reading a very uplifting book by Dale Carnegie called "How to Stop Worrying and Start Living." I'm usually not prone to worry, but the book is a good read nonetheless. (He also wrote "How to Win Friends and Influence People"). Both books have interesting stories and insights. It is not what you would call a Christian book, but he does make several references to the Bible.
There are many quotations in it that I could share but I'll only select one for now. Carnegie was writing about how we should be loving and forgiving and that life is too short to waste time being bitter or resentful or hateful concerning anyone or anything.
He made a reference to a German philosopher named Arthur Schopenhauer and quoted him. First, let me say that Carnegie made it clear that Schopenhauer wasn't a positive person. In fact, he wrote something called "Studies in Pessimism." Schopenhauer had a very dim view of life and it seems he may have had trouble making sense of it. According to Carnegie, Schopenhauer wrote with a great deal of doom and gloom and viewed life as troubling and painful.
I looked him up on the internet and found that Schopenhauer wrote many things that are well outside of mainstream thinking in the Western World. His writings do not appear to be exactly congruent with what has traditionally been believed in our Judeo-Christian culture.
But yet, in spite of him being so cynical, evidently a lot of people have read his stuff or read about him.
Okay, so we have a real negative German philosopher here with a down-in-the dumps feeling about life. But Carnegie pointed out that even Schopenhauer understood that a person has to be forgiving of others.
Schopenhauer said, "If possible, no animosity should be felt for anyone."
That's basically what I shared in the e-mail to my children.
So, the reminder for all of us, I think, is that we don't want to have bad feelings toward anyone anywhere. Not towards colleagues, not towards friends, not towards acquaintances, not towards strangers, not towards anyone in our past and not towards anyone in our future.
We should all take a very serious look at how we are going to approach life. We can rail against injustices in our own experience or against injustices throughout the world.
We can be critical and unkind of those who don't see the world as we do and we can take a big confrontation and make it bigger. (To be sure, there will always be times when a person must stand on his or her principles and convictions, but even when there is disagreement, it doesn't have to turn ugly; nor does it have to conjure up toxic feelings against other people).
We can also choose to remember every detail of past wrongs we have suffered at the hands of others and continue to simmer about it each day.
We can do all of these things but it simply isn't healthy. It is far better to approach each day with good cheer, with respect and concern for others in our life, and with a deliberate effort to follow a pathway of peace.
If a negative-thinking person like Schopenhauer could see the need to let go of harmful feelings such as animosity, surely we can do the same.
David Wilson, EdD, is the associate principal at Jefferson City High School. You may e-mail him at [email protected].