Today is Sunday, June 11th. I am your host - The Atheist Mama. We have a lot of great submissions today. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have! Our first submission was written by Zachary Moore……

It requires so much courage, not having the hope of something all-powerful who can fix things for us. Having viewed yourself from a different angle, you have a perspective that not everybody has a chance to see.

Hopefully what you can take with you is a better picture of YOU, an appreciation of all that you are, and the life you want to make for yourself.

Here’s a list - about half way down the page. Bottom-line: for the most enlightened and prosperous countries in the world money ain’t all there is. Thus the higher perception of happiness and quality of life. Makes it a lot easier not to be overwhelmed with personal problems.

It is for people with life threatening illnesses (and in defining life threatening illnesses - the author included life itself, for those living in pain).

It is primarily about strengthening one’s resolve to live - and live with joy, like Gregg100 wrote. Tons of techniques included - something for everyone.

I hope this can be of some help.

Robbins teaches that people ask themselves the wrong kinds of questions. Questions like, “Why me?” The way to pull yourself out of a messy situation, a rut, a depression, any severe problem as your example of your incredible daughter, is to ask questions that will lead you to answers that move you forward.

While I don’t read typical self-help books, Tony Robbins is one of my mentors and heroes.

Rodolpho, stay in touch with us. You can find your way somewhere better.

The first action is to chose to live. If one choses not to live, the action is simple. Do nothing! Don’t eat, don’t drink, just do nothing.

If one choses to live, clearly, the “optimium” actions are the ones that contribute to a continued and “happy” life. I enclosed happy in quotes for a reason. I am going to define “happy” as achieving your goals, no matter what they are. So your first task, now that you’ve decided to live is to set some realistic goals and to start taking pleasure in the fact that you have what it takes to not only set a realistic goal but to follow through and achieve it. Each success is worth rewarding yourself even if it is a mental pat on the back, an M&M, a hot fudge sundae, or whatever you feel you deserve. This process takes some practice and I strongly recommend you take little bites equivalent to an obese person just skipping one major item at one meal and taking credit for it. You will be amazed at how much pleasure you can start to feel. All three steps must be there. Goal, achievement, reward.

Now as a practicing rational thinker, how do you do “optimum thinking”? I want to make it clear, I am not talking about the Tony Robbins “Positive Thinking”. I’m talking about solving an immediate situation. There are many approaches so I will concentrate on optimal thinking processes when someone is, let’s say, “off track.”

You start to ask yourself questions that sound like -
What is the best way to handle this?
What is the best solution?
What is my highest priority now?
What is the best opportunity I can act on now?
What resources will be most beneficial in helping take action now?
What is the most constructive action I can take now?
Who are the right people to share my goals and plans with?

Remember, a goal is a scheduled event, not a dream. There should be a date or time with every goal and you should have a clear idea what constitutes achievement of that goal so you can check it off. One or two goals is enough to get started.

I am aware of an event that happened last month when a husband and wife team of rationalists had a life and death situation. The husband was critically ill and at one point given two hours to live. His wife, was not praying. She was working night and day thinking about the types of questions I listed above and making sure that every base was covered. She made sure he was getting the best medical help available, making sure the doctors got the best information on possible causes, making sure the chances of secondary infections were minimized, etc. etc. That is how a rational person acts. That rational wife is my daughter and I was very proud of her. Her husband recovered and instead of weeks of therapy that were anticipated, he is back at work and doing fine.

Without even knowing you, I have great confidence that when you really focus on making the best of your situation, you will find a way to make beneficial progress toward getting your problem behind you. The human mind is incredibly powerful when given a chance to solve a problem instead of showing a lack of confidence in yourself by turning yourself over to some ethereal “help”. Give yourself a chance. You can do it!

I understand that must partially contribute to lesser wealth, but I also wonder how a company actually fills in for that missing employee, and then plugs the employee back in when they return.

Do employers complain about this as a problem, or do they feel satisfied with the freedom the policy gives and their solutions to the the problem of a missing employee?

Go to your video store and check out the movie, “Touching The Void.” It is my favorite movie ever, and it will blow you away. It is a documentary of two mountain climbers who climbed an impossible peak. The film goes back and forth between interviews of the climbers, and a phenomenal re-enactment of the story. It illustrates how one non-religious climber dealt with his battle against death. It is unreal, empowering, and a demonstration of the human spirit and ability to overcome.

While I’m recommending this movie to Rodolpho, I would mandate that everyone see it if I had the power!

So, one way to have a voice is to work for social reforms. In other countries, where agnosticism is more the rule than the exception, the government’s social contract with its citizen is very different than in the U.S. In a dog-eat-dog, unregulated capitalist society, life is only good for those who look and act like others, who suffer rare and small misfortunes and/or who have the money to make up the difference when things go badly.

By contrast, in most socialist countries (i.e., where society is structured for everyone) people are afforded serious offsets from misfortune: higher employment rate, a substantial minimum wage, healthcare, childcare, psychological services, full education…

In America a major source of distress is work. Whereas American workers are often alienated from their work, Europeans refuse the view that a company is a playing card to traded away in a single-minded quest to enrich directors and shareholders. Rather, they see companies as living things, each one a network of human relationships organized to serve an overriding economic and social purpose.

Despite claims to the contrary. America is richer than Europe, not because it works smart, but because it works long. Americans work, on average, 300 hours more a year than people in Britain, France and Germany. How I envied a co-worker in Netherlands who was taking a month of his six weeks of vacation to renew his spirit and go kayaking in Alaska. A sixth more American women work than European women, more American old people are at work and fewer young Americans get to study.

This economic strength pays for a social contract that offers most individual Europeans opportunity, mobility and security that is beyond the compass of most ordinary Americans. In Old Europe status, opportunity and life chances were determined by accident of birth. Twenty-five years of conservative economic and social policies are burying that American dream.

The impact of America’s approach on individual lives shows up in international surveys of happiness and sense of well-being, where Americans score so badly. An obsessive individualism in a society in which so many are harmed eats away at the capacity to empathize, and the very stuff of human association is undermined. A Hobbesian society, a war of all against all, is not an environment in which human beings can flower.

‘Nuff said. Get involved! Agitate! Vote!
In the meantime, participating with others in political groups can fill in the gap as we await the day when we get America back.

I was thinking of how well your entry reflects the absolute nessesity of Mardi Gras this year! There was something like 1/3rd the number of people who normally attend - and many outright opposed it.
I think Mardi Gras in New Orleans 2006 is the most life affirming image I can come up with!

Life is NOW!

I don’t have deep insights, nor a great writing style, but just wanted to pass along that my not-quite-18 year old son, raised sans-church/religious indoctrination, just the other day came to the conclusion above… he was asking what I thought the meaning of life was (”Why are we here?”) and we settled on using our innate skills and abilities to benefit ourselves and others in meaningful ways.

And music also touches our lives; my kids have very eclectic musical tastes, which I enjoy having them share.

I echo what Gregg100 says about finding life even more precious because we don’t have faith in an “afterlife.” I, for one, have imagined some pretty sad, depressing, and non-life-affirming afterlives based on some of the ideas of the “religious.” Personally, I like the idea of reincarnation.

But listening to recorded music by one’s self doesn’t touch the experience of listening to a skilled musician live along with others, with strangers. My wife and I went to a concert just last Sunday evening. My son’s former voice teacher, Stephen Stolen, sang songs of Benjamin Britten along with some traditional American folk songs. I have to admit I am not a particular fan of Britten’s music. For me, it’s a hard sell. Yet, in the context of the live performance in the setting of a very English styled half timbered Episcopal Church with all the dark woods, toll painting and stained glass, made for an enjoyable evening.

My son works for the Ravinia Music Festival in Chicago, the largest music festival in the country (perhaps the world, I’m not sure.) They run virtually every nite from around the 1st week in June to near the end of September. It is sponsored by the Chicago Symphony and most of the concerts are classically oriented including symphonic works, chamber music and even operas. But they also mix it up with the likes of Aretha Franklin, Cheap Trick (yeah, really,) Tony Bennett and others. The last concert we saw there was the Chicago Symphony, along with a large, local gospel choir, Kathleen Battle (an operatic soprano) and Bobby McFerrin. McFerrin is amazing. Ravinia is a park north of Chicago, and the concerts are outdoors, the performers doing their thing from an open shell. That, too, was a great evening.

We saw James Taylor a couple of years ago. He is, without peer my favorite singer/songwriter. He is perhaps the least pretentious and most artistically honest contemporary (at least MY contempory) performer I know of.

Unfortunately, the cost of most concerts, plays, etc. render them beyond our reach, at least on any regular basis. But live music is, for me, the closest thing to a HOLY experience. A good live performance has the effect of being infectious with the audience. It serves as an affirmation that we DO share a common love and hope with others.

I rather like a local singer/songwriter who has a connection with your part of the country. Carrie Newcomer is a folk singer who is a close compatriot of the novelist, Barbara Kingsolver, who I believe still lives in Arizona. Ms. Kingsolver has a Hoosier connection in that she attended Depauw University in Indiana after growing up in Kentucky. Newcomer has several CDs and you might enjoy checking her out on Amazon or her website which I think is simply Carrienewcomer.com. She has a daughter, by now I assume a teenager, and a good deal of her music concerns itself with being a mother and her relationships with her daughter, parents and, of course, the various directions of her love life and her career. My wife’s cousin used to play bass for her. I believe that she and Kingsolver make mutual mention of each other’s work on their respective websites.

I am always recommending performers to others, and I understand that such tastes are VERY personal, and often what I like doesn’t relate to others. But rather than curb my enthusiasm, I would rather make the mention than not. Every once in a while somebody will get back to me and say Wow! Thanks for the intro. Of course, most times I never hear back, and I just assume that whoever I may have shilled for was not their particular cup of tea. That’s okay. I recently recommended singer Morgana King to a fellow. I later asked what he thought of her. He simply stated: Hated her! Just hated her. Oh well, you can’t win them all. I’ve received a number of recommendations over the years that I failed to find interesting as well. And so it goes.

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