Want Your Needs

We have external basic needs like food, water and shelter. We also have internal basic needs ... like Love.

If it is necessary for us to enjoy basic external needs, it would follow that we also have to fulfil our internal Needs.

Until we do that, we have not attained our purpose. Therefore what we need to do is to experience how we master our own selves. We need is to fix ourselves from the inside. Once we fixed the inside, then that is the only time we can fix the outside. But a lot of us do just the opposite never realizing the better approach.

So many wise people throughout history talk about the Heart. From their collective wisdom, we will try to ponder what that word really means.

The hearts of many today are stuffed with a bunch of seemingly boring things that we tend to keep for almost eternity. Once we believe we already have these so called values, we tuck them away forgetting all about them because of apparently more important things. We continually pack our Hearts with what we think is more significant.

We still do not realize that these seemingly ignored intangible things can lead us to a life of meaning, purpose and other higher pursuits.

Yes we can make our current lives even more interesting than they are now. Ordinary people do have a real chance of becoming competent enough to help solve the hardest global problems we can ever encounter. I can give you an example of how any ordinary people can empower themselves to help solve very big perennial problems like hunger.

This could all start with a list. A list such as the one I show below. This is actually my own list. Hopefully I could fully develop at least one if not all of them during a lifetime:

Love

Compassion

Justice

Fortitude

Order

Hope

Prudence

Let us take, as an example, the living Value of Order. If one consciously tries his best to develop it within himself, he could one day move oceans and mountains. Order can readily be recognized in people who make a big difference in the world just by their innumerable skills in creating or orchestrating charitable projects on an ever expanding scale. Some may not even have money but could still be effective and successful. Surely nobody can steal these treasures that a person keeps in his Heart rather than in his pocket. In this context, Order not only means having a clean and tidy desk or room. Order is now seen on the level of organizational skills, strategic planning and delegation skills, risk and asset management skills and the like. Yes all together, these enumerated skills do make up a person with the Human Value of Order developed in tremendous proportions. Would you be willing to develop your preferred Values? Because I am sure that you can if you only put your Heart on it.

These living Values although relatively difficult to cultivate is still very possible to acquire.

If I just say I can love and just believe in my mind that I do without having Fortitude and Order, I know I cannot express full Compassion and Love. The reason is that without Order, I may not be organized enough to express Love to the needy folks beyond my very small reach outside my home or my diploma. Each of us has the capacity to actually Be more and Do more than that.  It is just that we only think and believe that we cannot and so we nearly lost the ability to do so.  Just verbally or mentally proclaiming that we love is us merely a first step. It is very similar to "wishing". A wish is nothing but a mere ambition for a man without the many skills that make up the Value of Order.

I would have to attempt to tackle these skills associated with our Human Values so we can work on ourselves as we go through the challenges of Life.

Love begets other related Values as I described above. These supporting Values in turn beget related supporting knowledge and skills. Therefore without achieving skill/competency, we may be just wishing or watching rather than owning and living the Human Value.

Ambition is quite good for a child who could still only wish without necessarily having the skill or competence to be someone he wants to become in the future. To a grown man, however, ambition may indicate some sort of a developmental lag. More is expected from adults. We must even do more than our current leaders. Many of whom have apparently been exhibiting dismal performance. Leadership is also a skill. So we lag so much in many aspects of our development.

But don't get me wrong. It is not a bad thing to lag. What is not so good is to stagnate for so long. But understand that we are all on our own unique paths to perfection moving at different paces.

So the next time you think that your neighbor is slow. Examine and fix yourself first. Then if your neighbor is willing, help empower that person.

In the next article I shall attempt to illustrate how ordinary people with "non extraordinary values" have been trying their best to help solve one of the biggest global problems...hunger.