Be True to Yourself
Years ago, I began a discussion among some friends on a global scale with a presence on the face of each continent. The topic of the discussion was mental health and GLOBAL mental health to be more precise.
“How can any one nation address mental health needs when a culture among communities is so diverse?”
Being American, I threw into the conversation the existence of places like “Little China” or “Korea-town” that existed in large cities. Let’s not forget the Latino communities, or African-American cultures and the struggles that exist there. We agreed that at some point, humanity needed to reach a point of having a Global Mental Health Alliance that didn’t belong to any single nation, organization, or person where it would be trademarked for the dollar gain when others try to promote it. The basic foundation should address that a family, in and of itself, has the highest degree of accountability to a person’s mental health. We need to learn to accept each other allowing room for our individual beliefs, and this begins on a family level. It is the way parents or caregivers learn to accept and permit independent beliefs in the children being raised. The core concept of a global mental health alliance should address the shaping of individuals and address the need to accept one another on a higher level. We don’t have to believe the same things, but we shouldn’t force our beliefs on others.
To do that we need to understand how we shape ourselves through our beliefs. Eliminate words like good and bad, right and wrong. Begin to teach children about being healthy and unhealthy and get that message into families and communities to help them understand. There is nothing wrong with discovering you feel more at home in a group different than where you began. Science has finally begun to show us that beliefs shape our reality. Christian scripture states that “…as a man thinketh, so is he.”
In other words, we act on who we believe ourselves to be. These beliefs begin in the womb and continue to morph as we change our beliefs. Some of our earliest beliefs are those that contribute to communication and the ability to understand our environment in order to accomplish our desires. You only have to see a toddler, age 2, crying and screeching at her mother’s feet to get a glass of juice instead of attempting to use words. The toddler has rightfully determined that the screeching and gesture are all that is needed to get the desired beverage. It works until it doesn’t but the style of communication remains more often than not.
From the family, we begin to interact socially. I may not remember her name, but I recall reading more than one article about a teacher practicing segregation in her classroom to help her students understand what it feels like to be persecuted. One week it may be blue eyes, then brown, or green. It may be brown hair, long hair, short hair. As she changes the rule for segregation, the students aren’t allowed to be at the front of a line, or able to sit with friends in the other group. Some people are outraged at how she does this but I am in awe. She is shaping the world by teaching her students to understand. Establishing an ability to understand and believe is vital in the formative years of our children.
To determine how we are shaping our children we need to recognize the degree of accountability in our belief systems. Parents urge children to uphold family practices. But at some point, children spend more and more time out in the world. Kate Morgan writes about the process in the following statement from one of her articles.
Other beliefs are passed along to us from our families and communities, who transmit many of the foundational ideas that shape how we see the world. — Kate Morgan
Those many years ago, science was already reaching the point of addressing that it wasn’t “just” nature versus nurture because the environment plays a large part in the development of the brain and how the fingerprint of brain development would be lasting.
I learned that others faced the challenge of what we referred to as “cultural invasion” when war and politics resulted in forced immigration. While some people simply wanted a life of peace, it brought with it their desire to continue with their beliefs. Surrounding areas, however, felt the challenge of trying to retain their own rules and regulations. It gets more than a bit muddy when religious persecution comes into play. That’s a discussion for another article.
How, then, are we as a species supposed to find or establish some sort of alliance amongst ourselves that encourages a pleasing way to live when we exist among others that have different belief systems? Do we not all have a right to be happy? Is there a right or wrong way to be happy?
Jeremy Harris simplifies ways to evaluate such discussions of such philosophical questions by recognizing how we process information as we continue to develop. His article, The brain as a neural network: this is why we can’t get along, provides some rather interesting illustrations making it easier to understand (and some other fascinating concepts). In his article, Jeremy states the following to suggest when and how we may want to question what we believe.
So at the end of the day, your best bet might just be to pay close attention to your thought process, to try to catch yourself when you enter your excuse-making mode. Since that’s the telltale sign of overfitting, it’s your first indication that your model of the world might need just a little more tuning.
Changing your beliefs will challenge you to the core.
I found myself a single parent as a result of religious persecution. My ex-husband is Catholic. I don’t dislike Catholicism, but it isn’t my path. I have studied and read about philosophy, religions, deism, and so much more trying to find my own peace. It’s not been unlike trying to push two positive forces against each other (think magnets). One of my daughters, at one point during a drive into town, told me she believe herself to be an atheist. This revelation came from a young girl who was going to church every week, seemed to have friends of similar beliefs, and was overall active in faith — or so it seemed.
I was thrown for a moment and gave her other vocabulary words to check out (pantheism, deism, agnosticism, and a host of other -isms). I left the door open for her to discuss it with me further. At the time, I was more afraid for her and what may result if her dad found out. In the years since our divorce, he is much calmer and simply accepts whatever our children reveal to him with his stated commitment to continue to pray for them. I continue to believe that we each have a right to discover our path through this life that ‘rings true’ with our spirit and we have to be true to ourselves. I did my best to impart this to my children.
In doing so, two phrases stood out in our home.
BE TRUE TO YOURSELF
In being true to yourself, you may find you lose friends along the way but that is invaluable to our learning and development. At any given point in your life, a person may come or go. Still, at the end of every day, there is only one person with you that you must find a way to live with. Yourself. We may meet someone who introduces us to a new concept. I assure you, at the age of six I had no idea there was more to spiritualism other than specific religions. In my later years and marriage to their father, my personal aversion to following his religion simply felt like I was lying to myself, as it felt with a number of other religions I had tried.
I lost a “friend” abroad when we were chatting about Christmas years ago. He was an older gent and had reached out to me when he was deep into his drink and wanted someone to talk to about his low-feeling thoughts. Being near the holidays, he asked me about my thoughts on the meaning of Christmas. I blame the late hour for my quick response about Christmas being celebrated in the wrong season anyway. He was rather astounded that I would suggest “such a thing” and how blasphemous I was being. I didn’t take offense and asked him to restate his question differently and I would try and answer. He was mainly lonely and wanted to hear about family togetherness, not my overall thoughts on Christmas. Phone calls in the early morning hours, folks, should preface with a disclaimer.
This, however, leads directly to the second family motto.
THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RIGHTEOUS AND SELF-RIGHTEOUS (IMO)
A righteous decision bears goodwill and energy. A self-righteous decision leaves room to justify persecution.
Think of discrimination based on any value: color, race, religion, sexual preferences, and so on.
Having been raised Christian, I am constantly amazed at discussions with “good Christian folks” who attend church, contribute to the donation plate regularly, volunteer within their religious organization, and take time to look after one another as sheep in the fold.
Yet, you rarely see them in the shadows of the city helping with soup lines, trying to care for the homeless, contributing to charitable organizations that echo their own belief systems.
In one sermon I attended, the speaker announced from the pulpit, “If we aren’t smelling alcohol and cigarettes in our congregation, we are doing something wrong.”
Okay, so that’s based on religion and belonging there means no drinking or alcohol. But it isn’t just religion.
One of the most uncomfortable conversations being held lately is based on sexual preferences.
Here’s my life example.
I worried about current trends in permitting sexual openness with children. Outside of the home, parents have learned that children can be the cruelest with their unfiltered tongues. As adults, we choose to believe we have filters. (Folks, let me add here that we can’t read minds so there is no way we can know for certain when we say something that will offend others.) To think that words could become actions as my kids neared graduation, what will this mean for them? Sexual openness in locker rooms may just as well suggest co-ed lockers in the gym. The only division before was to prevent blending the sexes. We don’t want our young men ogling our young women or vice versa. With the acceptance of homosexuality, it’s going to happen and in the confines of gender-specific locker rooms, they will find themselves being seen by others of the same sex. Yep, sexually on occasion. This alone will probably spur readers into an emotional frenzy on their points of view.
To me, it isn’t about sexual preferences, but teaching our children how to become adults with healthy well-being mindsets. We need to hold them accountable, teach them with guidance, and help them discover themselves without doing this through fear and punishment. Trust them to become the adults we need in this world.
THE FINALITY OF HUMANITY
Until we reach a point where humanity can find peace (and a degree of acceptance with accountability) with one another that surpasses imaginary lines on a map or what is held in their national reserve to help our pocketbooks, we should be mindful of the clock as we get closer to our end of days. It isn’t about China vs. the world or the United States as a global policing body. It’s about discovering ways to support the human race. Instead of allowing governments to rule in their quest for power, property, or money, we should be working together to discover ways to improve our world, promote well-being, do away with the violence that forces others to believe to allow some to exist without overcoming bias and judgment.
“We all know the ‘big and great’ discoveries and scientists, but science is part of us all and should be shared by us all. Perhaps then the greatest ‘discovery’ really is our ability for teamwork — this is what really created all those world-changing findings” — Stuart Maudsley
In the end, it all comes back to what you believe. Kate Morgan does an excellent job illuminating the intricacies of belief and how it shapes who we become. I am left hoping (and that is an issue unto itself) that most of you who read this can find your ability to believe in yourself, righteously. May our posterity attain that which we are failing to do on such a global level — find a way to live peacefully. To do that, we have to teach them about that belief and to be true to that belief within themselves.
