Soulshine

As we journey into the new year, there are many gifts we can give ourselves and others. The greatest gift we can give is and always will be love. Love is the only gift that guarantees lasting happiness. I learned a valuable lesson about the gift of love/happiness in a recent visit with some friends who just had a baby. Shortly after I arrived at their house, Dad and his Mother-in-Law got into a tiff with each other. Apparently something had been brewing between the two of them and they allowed it to spill over—onto all of us. Why? Because they were neither one coming from a loving place. And they were willing to sacrifice their happiness by holding on to their rightness. They chose to be justified in their perceived rightness rather than to be justified authentically by swallowing their pride and allowing love to carry them to a higher place. What they didn’t understand was that in choosing to stick to their rightness, they both sacrificed their happiness. We were about t...

“Man with no relatives has few problems.” Sidney Toler (as Charlie Chan), Charlie Chan in Panama I don’t know if this quote from the 1940s Charlie Chan series of movies is actually ancient Chinese wisdom or simply Hollywood pop-psychology. But it certainly rings of an eternal truth. No one causes us more headaches than family members do. In fact, most of our problems in this life began with the dysfunctional parenting abilities of our mothers and fathers. Their dysfunction quickly spread to every member of our nuclear families, and was often reinforced by the dysfunctional “wisdom” of our grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. Yet the one family member who has probably done us the most damage is ourselves. Think about it. When we feel powerless around other members of our families, it’s because we have chosen to continually give our power away to them. We may blame them for victimizing us, but we are the ones who have actually victimized ourselves by not setting proper b...