CHOICES: USING THE POWER OF DELIBERATE PERCEPTION TO CREATE NEW REALITY.
“Life is an ongoing
process of choosing between safety (out of fear) and risk (for the sake of
progress and growth). Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be
overcome again and again.”
— Abraham H. Maslow
“To love means loving the
unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing
the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.”
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
Based on the
words of the prolific English writer, Chesterton, in this article, I want to
highlight the fact that we have the power to choose the good; even in the most extreme
of circumstances when everything is working against us; when it seems we have no
other choice than to let the external events dictate to us what we must be at a
particular moment in time.
In his
poignant counsel for our progress and overall growth, he has defined — at the
deepest level — the true meaning of love, forgiveness, belief and hope.
On these
values; by making the right choices again and again, we will inevitably develop
sublime habits that can make our lives angelic and sublime.
Now, let’s
examine them in detail one after another.
LOVING THE UNLOVABLE
“I finally understood
what true love meant… love meant that you care for another person’s happiness
more than your own, no matter how painful the choices you face might be.”— Nicholas Sparks
According to
an article by Sharman Stein, a staff writer for the Chigaco Tribune, she
narrated some extreme cases of love and forgiveness which resonates perfectly
with my idea that no matter the circumstances we face, the ultimate reality
depends less on what has happened and more on how we take it; more on what we
deliberately perceive; on what we choose.
Out of those
unusual stories of romance and forgiveness, I choose the narrative of Tony and
Fran Toto of Allentown, Pa, which {obviously, due to its degree of oddity} was made
into a movie titled, “I Love You to Death.”
Fran Toto,
the beloved wife of Tony decided one day to kill her husband; and unmistakably,
she did a lot to make it happen. This may be shocking to someone who didn’t
know this before, but I urge you to brace up before you read on…
Putting her decision into action,
Fran Toto got someone to shoot her husband in the head; after two previous attempts
to murder Tony by her failed.
With the husband life hanging in
the balance due to a bullet in the head; the wife didn’t want to take any
chances so she promised two other cousins some money to finish off her spouse,
and they also did their job; they shot him in the heart.
When Tony didn't die from the
shooting tries, his beloved wife did not relent; it was time for her to do the
deed herself; so she fed him chicken soup laced with poison to attain her vicious
objective.
However, by extreme stroke of
luck, the husband just couldn’t be killed; Tony somehow refused to die.
Long story short, Tony was eventually
saved by the police.
Unsurprisingly, the wife was
sentenced to jail; and she served 4 years in prison to pay for her crime.
According to an interview with
the Philadelphia Inquirer, read what Tony did on her first day from prison; he
took her out for pizza and he said:
"We never
mention the words divorce, separation. I don't understand it, why people break
up over silly things. I think people need to sit down and talk."
Undoubtedly, Tony has that
angelic level of understanding and forgiveness that Chesterton
referred to as loving the unlovable; in truth, this is one of the deepest meanings
of love.
And according the
American psychiatrist and bestselling author of the book, “The Road Less
Traveled” M. Scott Peck, true and enduring love emanates not from emotion but
from choice, that is, no matter what the other person might have done; we can deliberately
perceive the good; we can always choose to love.
Peck said:
“Love
is the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or
another's spiritual growth... Love is as love does. Love is an act of will —
namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not
have to love. We choose to love.”
FORGIVING THE UNFORGIVABLE
“The practice of
forgiveness is our most important contribution to the healing of the world.”—Marianne
Williamson
This is a
story of forgiveness by a woman who nearly lost everything; a traumatic
experience that it is potentially devastating and life altering.
Beata
Mukarubuga, nicknamed Mama Lambert, is a genocide survivor who lost five of her
children, her husband, her parents and many more family members and relatives.
And now she has forgiven the men who killed them all in Rwanda, 19 years ago
during the Tutsi genocide.
Indeed, she
was traumatized as she recounted her experience to professor of legal philosophy
Bert van Roermund about how she nearly committed suicide to relief herself of
recurring pains.
Read her
words on the tormenting letter that was written to her by one of the killers:
“In 1998,
one of the killers wrote a letter to me. He used to be an acquaintance of me.
He wrote a letter from prison admitting that he had killed my children and
others: ‘This day I killed these persons, the next one I killed these ones. The
third day I killed the children of Beata.’ He enlisted all.”
However, she
was able to overcome the trauma and healed with the comfort and help of Solace
Ministry; an organization that comforts widows and orphans and those who are
HIV positive. A place she now volunteers to help others in need.
Though she
also recounted that forgiving was initially difficult for her; and that it was
a gradual process, yet she was finally able to forgive. And as you shall see by
her actions, she proves to us that she did.
To forgive,
the unforgivable, this amazing woman went all the way to prison to talk to the
killers about her forgiveness. She said:
“I
visited him a few times in the national prison, together with others. We talked
to him and to other perpetrators.”
For anyone reading
this who may find going that far unimaginable, one thing should still be clear;
rather than being a sign of weakness, what Beate did is a sign of inner
strength and generous heart.
By visiting bloody
killers in prison, more than once, to tell them she has forgiven them; she
repealed evil with good. She went the extra-mile to forgive the incorrigibles.
She chose to do the right thing.
Even if we
cannot do exactly the same in our wildest imaginations, at least, we can derive
initiative from her case to take the first step to repair any quarrel that may
occur between us and our neighbours, relatives and friends — primarily for the
sake of our mental health and emotional growth.
BELIEVING THE UNBELIEVABLE
“They are ill discoverers
that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.”—Francis Bacon
To prove the point on believing, I
will narrate to you the story of Napoleon Hill and his son. Calmly read on with
delight, this incredible story of mind power which began as stated below:
Hill had a new baby boy but he
was born…without ears!
However, instead of accepting and
believing what he could see based on medically confirmed facts, as a healthy
explorer of his own universe, Napoleon Hill deliberately perceived the land
when he could physically see nothing but sea.
Hill chose to believe, when it
would have been easier not to.
Let me illustrate to you
interesting conversations between Hill and the boy’s doctor:
“Before you go in,”
the doctor began, “I must prepare you for a shock. It’s a boy and he was born
without ears, and of course he will be deaf all his life.”
“He may have been
born without ears,” Napoleon Hill exclaimed, “but he will not go through life
deaf!”
Hill was definitely aware of a
higher form of knowledge and power, the like of which I picked from Robert Schuller’s
bestselling book, “Tough Times Never Last but Tough People Do.” My own version
goes like this: to win in a life and death situation, only think life, only
talk life, only believe life, keep praying life and only imagine life.
Pause for a minute and see the
day and night difference between Hill and the doctor’s view.
Obviously, the doctor had little
incentive to project faith onto this worrying reality; one, because the baby
was not his son; and two, maybe he had many of such negative experiences in the
practice of medicine to make him bother not to.
But Hill on the other hand, being
the father of the boy, right on the spot, chose to deliberately perceive a
beautiful reality out of a very negative condition with his amazing statement,
“he will not go through life deaf.”
That’s a classic expression of
faith-woven, deliberate self-perception.
With that perception, he created
a worthy purpose for himself and his son to do all it would take to have the child’s
hearing restored; and because he was determined, it didn’t matter whether it would
take ten years; twenty years; thirty years or even fifty years to realize his
objective.
Hill had developed a state of
mind called faith, which as he said in his bestselling book, “Think and Grow
Rich” to be the basis of all miracles and mysteries which cannot be analyzed by
the rules of science; the only means of making the unbelievable become reality;
the only antidote to failure.
Read on to learn how to develop
this state of mind from Hill’s next statement to the doctor:
“I have discovered
a powerful remedy sufficient for human needs in practically every circumstance.
The first step one must take in applying this remedy is to refuse to accept as
inevitable any circumstance one does not desire, and I am notifying you, here
and now, that I shall never accept my son’s affliction as something which
cannot be corrected.”
Hill’s authoritative pronouncement
was not just an idle statement that required no effort at all. In actuality, it
was an outburst of inner commitment to finding a way no matter what.
For years, he worked at getting
the result he wanted for his son, seeking all medical means available, all the
while, firmly believing that the unbelievable will happen for his son, one day.
And it did.
Read below the words of another
doctor after 25 years of waiting:
“Miraculous,” he
exclaimed. “I have X-rayed this young man’s head from every possible angle and
I see no evidence that he possesses any form of hearing equipment. Yet my tests
show that he has sixty-five percent of his normal hearing capacity.”
Though, his
son had been born without ears; but through the sheer power of faith, up to 65
percent of his hearing faculty was unbelievably restored. A medical condition — a permanent
condition according to the doctor — was overturned simply because Hill chose to
believe the unbelievable.
In other words, a miracle happened,
as a result of deliberate perception of healing coupled with dedication to try
everything humanly possible to realize the desired outcome. Napoleon Hill
himself narrated the details of this incredible story in his book, “You Can
Work Your Own Miracles.”
Obviously, the key to ultimate
realities of life for us lies not in the circumstances that confront us but in
what we choose to see in them, just as Albert Einstein said, “There are only two ways to live. One is as though
nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
BEING HOPEFUL WHEN EVERYTHING
SEEMS HOPELESS
“Optimism is the faith that
leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.” — Helen
Keller
The Winter War occurred between November, 1939 and March, 1940
when Russia invaded Finland, a story of aggression by a powerful country against a weak
opponent in one of the coldest of winters on record; a four-month
Soviet-Finnish war; a gut-wrenching
account of desperate Finns facing almost
insuperable odds.
To comprehend
the severity of the odds, consider these data: The Soviet’s armies were about a
million and in command of more than 6,000 armored tanks; close to 4000 aircraft;
and marching toward Finland ferociously with will to obliterate.
On the other
hand, with the Finns composed of only 300,000 soldiers, in control of less than
40 tanks and 114 aircraft, the odds were fearsome.
How many of
them would be left standing? Or would there be any at all? These are possible
questions for any concerned student of history.
If you consider
this not as a tale but a real life situation and you were in Finland when this
happened, you may have a faint idea of the sort of perception that could easily
engulf the Finns without deliberate choice to be sturdy and hopeful against all
odds; and it would be far from empowering.
Without
courageous hope, this kind of artillery and man-power ratio was enough to
compel a mentally weak opponent to surrender liberty — and still perished — with
the reasoning that the odds were all stacked against them.
In this
surprising report of Finland fierce resistance to Soviet’s invasion, each of us
can learn to see the light in the midst of stark darkness; we can learn to hold
on until the day breaks; we can learn to hang in there and remain hopeful, even
when everything seems hopeless to us at the moment.
The
exhilarating core of the story is the resolution and resourcefulness of the
Finns. For over 100 days, the ill-equipped Finnish soldiers ― in dire need of
ammunition, troops and supplies ― fought the Red Army to a standstill.
Yes! You
read that right; despite the odds, they fought the all-superior foe to a standstill.
Don't you find that amazing?
While the
Helsinki lost more than 26,000 soldiers and about 40,000 casualties during the
Soviet offensive, their losses pale in comparison to the Soviet’s, which had
more than 126,000 fatalities and a number in excess of 264,000 casualties.
After the
standstill, peace and reconciliation talks followed as two sovereign nations
looking for constructive ways to end the blood sheds on both sides; and as a
result, by March 15 1940, the Finns eventually agreed to make some concessions
to sign The Moscow Peace Treaty.
Overall, Finland
retained her national pride as a sovereign nation among all nations because her
people had the courage to fight the good fight by retaining hope when the
situation was utterly hopeless.
This is why
Anne Frank, wrote in her dairy that:
“Where there is
hope, there is life. It fills us with fresh courage and makes us strong again.”
Because the
Finns had hope, when they were low, they were able to overturn a terrible
situation and become better by it.
I made some
effort to pore the metrics of economic performance, standard of living and
quality of life in Finland today; and the reality is far from lowly, the
country now has enough reasons to stand tall and celebrate.
A once weak
nation is far ahead in wellbeing and good life than many countries in the world
today. Still a small country in terms of her population compared to the rest of
the world but by some quality metrics, Finland is now among the top countries
in the globe.
Just to name
a few, these are some of the bags of honour that should make Finland proud of her history:
Thus, they have
rightly demonstrated the truth of the American religious leader, Henry Emerson
Fosdick’s insight, which says:
“He who knows no
hardships will know no hardihood. He who faces no calamity will need no
courage. Mysterious though it is, the characteristics in human nature which we
love best grow in a soil with a strong mixture of troubles.”
Since how we
perceive the world, defines us; it defines our fears and our sense of safety;
it defines the limits of our expectations in life; it defines our
actions—whether we will step forward for growth or draw back into temporary
safety.
As the
saying goes, perception is greater than reality; which explains that whatever
the outside realities may be, our perception can make them far better or far
worse.
Perception can indeed create its own reality.
This little
effort is meant to instruct us to see and accept new possibilities; to use the
power of deliberate perception to make empowering choices, no matter the
magnitude of our negative conditions.
When we
understand Abraham Maslow fully, then we will make good use of our power of choice
to perceive what enables us, not what hinders us; and thus, we will choose
growth over fear, we will choose love over hate, we will choose faith over
doubt, we will choose action over passivity, we will choose forgiveness over
animosity.
With the
above real life examples, it should be clear that we all have the capacity to
overcome any situation, if we unleash our inner power for unlimited growth and
goodness.
Ryan Holiday
in his encouraging book, “The Obstacle is The Way,” sums it up perfectly with
his words of empowerment that we can thrive in spite of any and everything that
may hinder our paths.
Choose to
fortify your perception with them habitually and become almost invincible.
He says:
“As Marcus wrote, our
actions can be impeded but there can be no impeding our intentions and
dispositions because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts
to its own purposes the obstacles to our acting; and then he concluded with the
powerful words destined for maxim: the impediment to action advances action;
what stands in the way becomes the way.”
