SHARE THIS SHOW:
RECENTLY ON TOL:
TOL Our Town
- A tumblr site dedicated to the people and places that make up Oregon and Southwest Washington.
TAGS:
As the first seven days of the new year wind down, many of us are taking inventory of ourselves and the way we live. We call them "resolutions" — the decisions we make at the start of a new year that are meant to improve our lives. Among the most popular new year's resolutions are drinking less alcohol, losing weight and saving money. But not all resolutions are inspired by the calendar page turning. Some are born from enormous struggle, even tragedy, which manifests as a second chance in life.
Bad habits can be hard to break, and making major changes takes real commitment, often with the help of others. One homeless Ohio man's story of a second chance has gone viral on YouTube. But for most of us, our dramas are quietly played out day to day.
Have you experienced a life-changing second chance? Has there ever been a turning point in your life that forever changed the way you live? What is your New Year's resolution?
GUESTS:
- Tom Hallman, Jr.: Pulitzer prize-winning reporter for The Oregonian
- Jodie Barrum: Had a second chance at stability after poverty
- Zoe Francesca: Had a second chace at being a writer
- Jennifer Branfield: Had a second chance at parenthood
Tagged as: chances · new · resolution · second · years
Photo credit: SashaW / Creative Commons
-
I'm not sure it was a second chance, but a turning point in my life...for certain. It was not something I did so much as Fate. As a young Marine just completing the school that trained us to be security guards in our embassies I had been selected and assigned to the number one legation..our embassy to the UK. My orders had been cut and my passport prepared for entry into that country. My flight from Washington International was delayed and I found myself sitting about the HQ rec room on a Sunday morning with several other Marines waiting for their flight departure times and trips to the airport.
Suddenly the duty clerk walks in to the room and ask if anyone wanted to switch their duty stations and go to Egypt instead of their assigned embassies. Egypt sounded a lot more interesting and exotic than England and I stood up and said "I'll do it"
And I did. I started college at AUC and met the two women I was destined to marry...serially not both at once. The first was an Egyptan Catholic girl I met at AUC and the other an American girl whose father was working for an American airline. Oddly enough Both were happy successful marriages. One slightly more so than the other.
That admin clerk and my impulsive decision to go to Egypt, rather than England, altered the course of my life. Everything I have done since has been somehow connected to that single decision. That includes my subsequent career in foreign aid. And for the whole shooting match I have a duty Sgt at Henderson Hall to thank for it.
-
"Have you experienced a life-changing second chance?"
Yes, and it has taken me some thirty plus years of reading, studying, and thinking to get an understanding of it and what it means.
Joseph Campbell has studied such things and I recommend watching and or reading his "Power of Myth" series if you want to learn.
My understanding is that it is what Buddhists call "reincarnation", you die to your old self and are reborn into a new understanding of yourself and the world. It is not a real death of the body but a mental and emotional death of old beliefs and rebirth into new mental and emotional beliefs. That death of old beliefs and rebirth into new can be a terrific and terrifying struggle.
So the "virgin birth" of Christianity was not an actual birth of a human baby from a virgin but a "birth without sex", the birth in the human heart of Compassion.
-
I hope this is the Reincarnated version of Tom that I am channeling....the old Tom had a central Primary Precept that "All Religion cause of Evil."
Well I hope your Budism or Budism-like beliefs keep you safe and peaceful.
-
Jacob
That is part of the epiphany; religion, which is only the teaching of and belief in a supernatural being, is evil!
I stand with what Jesus taught in the Thomas Gospel, and against the idea that there is some supernatural being. Essentially Jesus taught the same thing that Buddha taught and so I suspect that he learned about Buddhism during his travels.
-
There is nothing except now.
The past or the future, simply do not exist.
Time to the human is physically lineal, while we can change the speed at which we perceive time to pass at this point in our evolution, we can not reverse it in any participatory way. Thus there can never be a true second chance; there is only the first chance, the same one you face now. You can make any choice at will, the human species was designed this way.
A while ago, ages or seconds, I learned what is going to kill me, sooner then I might choose… In that moment time stopped. In that fleeting brush with infinity I could choose anything. Knowing that I have in this lifetime never been anywhere, except here in this moment it was interesting that when time started again I found it to be a surprisingly different place. Is this the so called a second chance; or is it more accurately change in a second? -
You assume on the basis of no historical evidence that someone called Jesus Christ actually lived? The only people that believe this pernicious, murderous nonsense are the poor deluded fools the God industry are still conning into sending them billions of bucks every yr.
Religion does kill and that includes the mystical twaddle in Buddhism that propagates such rubbish as reincarnation and levitation. Buddhists can and do kill as efficiently as Hindus, Muslims and Christians. They are doing so in Tibet and Nepal, even as we write.
-
I am not sure that I buy the "second chances" thing. I think we just get chances, period. Chances to do it over, do it better, do it more authentically, do it with more information, do it with more heart. In any given life we have many different phases.
In my own life I can almost see different "mini life times". I can see where they start, stop, and flow into the next one. Childhood to teen to teen mom to way fast forward into my mid 30's and a new mini lifetime is starting all over again. I get the chance to make new decisions that will shape how my life is going to go for awhile. I am getting the chance again to decide what I want to do with myself.
I don't see it as a second chance. I see it as the way life is... continously cycling forward and around. As a Buddhist it's important to me that I see the now first and foremost, and that I allow the past and future to assist decisions but not take them over.
-
Concerning New Year's Resolutions: I have for years promised myself and others that I would make a greater attempts at keeping in touch, showing signs of life, and generally letting a slew of good friends know that, even though I can't or don't call or write every day - I don't Facebook - that I would keep in touch on a more personal level.
Over the last several years, I have made and sent New Year's cards to a number of people. This year I upped the ante, and sent out seventy-two home made New Year's cards, and in 90% of them I added printed photographs of friend's children, events together, and other memories out of the thousands of photographs I have in my collection. I even sent a letter to my Great-Uncle in Germany - something I have put off for years.
It was a lot of work, but the effort has paid for itself in that I feel I have kept a promise to myself and others, and I have achieved a goal early in the year that I have put off for far too long.
Happy New Year, indeed!
Bernd Minde
-
I'm one of the few people I know who have made New Year's resolutions! This is, I think, because I'm an optimist -- in spite of or perhaps because of the fact that I've worked over 30 years as a paramedic and know that every day you wake up is a second chance.
-
It was the middle of my first year as a 3rd-4th grade teacher at a private school east of Seattle - the 1973-74 school year. I learned a life-long lesson from the principal that January. A boy who had left our school after a colorful career in third grade was coming back for the second semester of 4th grade and would be assigned to my class. Having heard an undercurrent of chatter about a possible problem boy, I went to the principal to ask him about the returning student. "I'm not going to tell you anyting about him, because everyone deserves a second chance. It will be better for him to enter your classroom with a clean slate." OK, fine. The boy and I had no problems and he went on to do well in school. I still have the mug the boy gave me at the end of the school year. I call it my "second chance cup." The experience has been repeating itself in my mind ever since the Philadelphia Eagles hired the quarter back from prison, giving him a second chance. I applaud the Eagles for hiring Michael Vick. I wish I could meet my former student again.
-
Is this former student someone who went on to become famous or well-known?
-
The only new year’s resolution I have ever made was not to make any, and even that you can’t take seriously. The idea that we wait to till the end of the year is a recipe for disaster, it is a resolution that begins with procrastination---this kind of conception doesn’t have much chance at a successful birth.
‘Second chances,’ seem very different from new year’s resolutions. They tend to indicate some external obstacle has been placed in your path, and the second-chance-part is that you overcome that roadblock and then flourish. And really these sorts of second chances, aren’t second chances at all, they are generally the only chance or option you have---do or die. In some ways these second-chances are a bit easier to achieve then an arbitrary resolution that requires change out of the blue. Because second chances contain a clear enemy, or opposing force, that is outside yourself---and when an enemy is clearly defined it is easier to fight against.
It can be much harder to fight against what you might perceive as the laziness, or lack of will, of your character, then it is to get cancer and decide to fight or die, and then be happy when you win. This seems similar to heroes, when so often their efforts are really the only option they have. It is great Sully Sullenberger landed the plane in the river, but he didn’t exactly want to do it---he really didn’t see another viable option. But if you want to stop smoking, you have another clear option, you can keep on doing it instead.
-
I think one of the most moving tales of hitting bottom and bouncing back is from Craig Ferguson, the late nite talk show host. If you are one of the few people who has not already seen this powerful story, it's here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bbaRyDLMvA
I had a chance to re-invent my life when a family trust scholarship appeared at my door. I quit one career (in public radio!) went back to school, and now have a career in my art field.
-
My second chance came not in spite of an illness or tragedy, but because of one. I was a busy graduate student working on my PhD, workimg full-time at my dream job in public service, and doing all the things I thought I wanted to do and be. Then I started to experience debilitating symptoms of a rare congenital brain malformation I didn't know I had. Within a month I was barely walking, and had neurosurgery. A childhood car accident has left me with undiagnosed PTSD, which was retriggered by this event. I struggled to resume my career and life, and soom could barely function due to the pain, anxiety, dissociation and medication needed to control them. This taught me that the path I was trying to return to no longer was I wanted, what I needed and what was healthy. I quit my career, my PhD, and put all my energy into becoming a healthy person physically and mentally. I got off all of the debilitating medications, learned to accept and control my anxiety and learned to love the n
-
I find myself at the dawn of my 2nd chance. I’m 51 and have only recently realized how my life has been dominated by a pervasive set of fears masked underneath a “resentful martyr” style of living.
Learning mindfulness (i.e. to “live in the moment”) and finally forgiving my abusive parents pulled back the curtain and revealed just how I was fearful I’ve been of taking any risks that might “raise my head above the trenches”.
I’m still quite timid, but at least now I can see & confront my fears a hundred times a day; which allows me to slowly climb toward the light.
-
jacob
This is a comment that I posted over at WHYS on a thread about the revision of Twains "Huckleberry Finn" book, which may help you to understand what I have previously written about religion:
In my opinion one the most horrible and egregious examples of revising books was around 230 CE when a fellow named Irenaeus decided that the "big four" gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, were the only ones he wanted to survive and be taught in the Bible, and then he gathered up all of the other gospels in existence and had them destroyed by burning.
Fortunately, the Thomas Gospel was found among the Dead Sea Scrolls during the twentieth century and shows an incredible different view of what the character Jesus taught about "God", who god is, and where god resides.
Essentially Jesus taught, well, we're it, all of us, each of us, God and Heaven is/are within us and there is not some supernatural being at all. Go ahead and read The Thomas Gospel for yourself, and think it over for yourself.
So it looks to me like Irenaeus was one of the greatest liars of all time, lying by the sin of Omission, by revising the Jesus teachings by destroying many of them and leaving them out of the Bible. -
Again I rise to object to the notion that any historical person named Jesus H. Christ existed (The H stnds for haploid..having only a single genetic parent).
According to all biblical scholars, the bible (both) is the words of God, perfect, inspired and infallible. Yet, we now know it is a hodge-podge or errors, contridictions, and magical myths borrowed from earlier cults or taken from the bag of tricks of wandering street magicians. In any case the idea that it describes a god and son that are loving and caring of their "sheep" is to misread the bible. There is nothing loving or caring in the biblical Christ. While God in the Torah is hateful, vendictive, murderous, angry and obviously uncaring of his sheeple.
Why it is that people today still think that the nonsense spliced together by a bunch of fea bitten, goat herders about 3000 yrs ago is Inspired by the creator of the universe? Most of them thought the sun moved across the sky on the back if an invisable tortoise.
Do you know a recent estimate of the number of stars (not including planets) gave a number of 300 sextillian? Or 4 times the number believed just a yr ago. That is a 3 followed by 21 zeros. The notion that the creator of this universe chose planet Earth and a bunch of rag-tag desert dwellers to impart his message is simply impossible for rational people to believe.
Yet, this ridiculous belief is still the greatest cause of poverty, ignorance, death and misery on earth.
-
Gereng — Sat Jan. 8th 10:55p.m.
I completely agree with you. There was no real baby born of a virgin, it was only a metaphor about when a human changes and develops Compassion.
All religions have been corrupted by political types to their own benefit. Even the jewish religion was started by a man who wanted to be a king with all of the control and power that a god-proxy can acquire. And that "Abraham" religion is the root of a lot of the problems in the world through history.
The thing is, all religions wrap themselves with secular humanistic lessons about humans and how to treat each other and metaphorical explanations about how humans change while growing through the many stages of being human. I think of the Psychologist Maslows 7 levels of human development. I think that the humanistic lesons are often mostly good.
The reason I wrote about a Jesus "character" is that I think that there was some teacher wandering around teaching things that were a potential threat to the conservative religious leaders of the time, especially the Thomas Gospel idea that there is no supernatural god-being who speaks through preachers and rabbis, only humans who can fell "heavenly" by treating themselves and others with love, empathy, and "Compassion". And that lines up with what the Buddha "character" figured out, that it is all inside the human, the feelings of heaven and hell and every "feeling" in between.
If you strip away everything that is common to Humanists and capital "R" "Religions", the only difference that is left is a belief in a supernatural being, everything else, the songs, nice clothes, buildings, rituals, lessons about humans, etc, are secular humanism. And that is why I label the teaching of a belief in a supernatural being as the "evil" and the teaching of reality as the good.
-
I loved the conclusion of todays show where the idea that choice happens all the time was highlighted.
It is hard to peel away all the layers of the problem of self-esteem, but I think this is one of several that needs to be highlighted.
The adage 'make yourself proud', addresses the reality that self-esteem is a 'choice by choice' affair. It happens multiple times every day in multiple areas of our life. "What you do today you'll have to sleep with tonight."
Having said that it is important to remember also that, while hyper-critical parents can make people never feel adequate, uncritical parenting does not guarantee high self-esteem. It only remove one barrier to it. The kid still has to learn how to try hard enough to feel like they have done justice to the diverse opportunities of each day.
I was also struck with the mother that had her kids taken away.
One facet of addiction can be understood as having an unproductive relationship of particular pains and pleasures. The Mom that had the painful image of her children being taken away 'branded' into her brain, had a rearrangement of which pains and pleasures she focused on. Before that event, I would venture enough of the pain she felt in life, even if there was significant guilt from 'using', could be momentarily relieved with more use. After the event, not so much. A person can endure a lot of pain of withdrawal with an image like that stuck in your head. After the worst of the withdrawal, she still had that 'big stick' for motivation, but she could also start learning to pleasure herself with the 'good' parenting of her children. And with that kind of motivation, I'll bet she puts most parents to shame with her effort. -
I ran across a nice interview of Art Linkletter on YouTube. He said: "Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out." - Art Linkletter, age 96, April 2009 interview, "Overcoming Challenging Times" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lafued5Ow7c
-
It seems that in a lot of these cases, social support (community, friends, and/or family) had a significant role to play. Reminds me of the reality that very few people are an island. But while those around you can help facilitate "chances", they can also be a double-edged sword if you allow them to wholly define you, or get you too bound up in the ultimately trivial.
-
I have come to think that many, perhaps most of the need for 2nd chances is caused by people getting misdirected in their 1st chances, and mostly by religion.
And I'll point specifically to the King Solomon instruction "spare the rod and spoil the child". State sponsored child abuse. And that still infects western civilization to this day.
I have been reading "The Scientist in the Crib" by Alison Gopnik and others and I have their "The Philosophical Baby" on deck next and I am hopeful that we humans can take what is being learned by scientists about babies and redirect our civilizations to more effective parenting strategies and develop better humans. I hope that we will reverse the human tragedy long caused by Religions and get on to developing our human potential.
In other words, let's use science to develop and give people far better 1st chances, thus preventing the need for so many 2nd chances.
Prevention is far better than waiting and trying to cure problems, in my opinion.
-
We reared four children. Never any problems. No drugs, booze, smoking...no brushes with the law. Zipped through college with nary an issue. The three that are married have solid marriages, now all about 19 to 25 yrs with same spouses.
Of course, they were brought up mainly outside the states, but what the hell is the problem here?? So many people writing on the board seem to have extraordinary difficulties rearing their broods. As the cliche has it: 'it ain't rocket science!' Mostly it is common sense and paying close attention to the activities and friends of their kids. One thing I do notice is that many American kids seem to spend most of their time with their peers rather than with the parents and siblings. Other kids do not make good substitutes for real parents. They simply encourage or reinforce each other's bad habits.
I also wonder if those with the difficulties reared their kids in a household where the children saw their parents boozing, using drugs or engaging in inappropriate activities? If that is the case, then it is silly to expect the kids to turn out any better than their parental role models. As they say, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
-
Gereng
I suspect that most people want to blame drugs, booze, or smoking and nearly always overlook what the effects of religion have on children. But I see a wide range of religious effects on children, from that woman in Oklahoma a few years ago who drowned her children in the bathtub to save them from the devil, to people who have a relatively minor loss of faith and question their own mental state.
And I suspect that the underlying cause of many, perhaps most, problems with drugs, booze, or smoking stem from religion.
I suspect that most of the problems that arrive in psychologists and psychiatrists offices stem from religion.
I would like to see religion and it's psychological and behavioral effects studied scientifically instead of studiously avoided and tiptoed around, because it is the elephant in the room about mental and behavioral problems, in my opinion.
-
Tom.
In my work abroad I saw and dealt with the concrete and devastating effects of religious superstition almost everywhere. It is no accident that where religious belief is strongest one always finds the most ignorance, poverty, and fear.
I'm not sure about the relationship between religion and behavior problems we find here. They are as likely to be associative as causal. Among educated people who still profess belief, I think attendance at a church is for purposes other than any true belief in the supernatural. They go because they appreciate the social and fellowship aspects and it might be good for business. But belief in godman?? I doubt it.
The less educated or less intelligent are a different matter. Watching the TV show a couple of yrs ago about 'Jesus Camps' for children, it was pretty evident the only smart people there were the ones collecting the fees.
Westerners think Hindus have some kind of higher instincts where religion is concerned; that their's is a religion of peace and deep understanding. That is sheer baloney. When I was working in India (1970-72) my job entailed a great deal of travel around India. The muderous relations between caste Hindus and the untouchables were more horrific that any organized slaughter I ever saw anywhere else, Africa excluded.
The big city newspapers in English never carried these stories so very few foreigners knew about these mass killings. A favorite form was for caste Hindus to poison the drinking wells of the Harajan. Or if they had the courage to build themselves a one room school house in their villiage, the caste Hindus would attack at night with swords, spears, pitchforks and some muzzle loarders and herd the Harajans that hadn't been killed outright into the school and set fire to it and burn up scores of people.
But Westerners who truly believe in godmen are usually the same rather stupid folks who can't keep out of trouble in any aspect of their lives. I think lower than average IQ may lie at the roots of both real religious belief and lawless behavior that includes falling into psychological disorders, many of which are caused by drugs and general instability.
On the other hand, there are truly Loony toons out there, too, like the chap that killed all those people in AZ. Some nuts are not the usual suspects.
-
Gereng
That caste system is essentially the same as inherited wealth in the "West", only the Hindus cleverly wrote it into their religion as the idea of "Karma". Children born into a wealthy family deserve it because they were good in a previous life and children born untouchable deserve it because they were somehow bad in a previous life. And the upshot or downshot in this case is that the poor can never win, even if they are born with great IQ or talents. Pure unholy BS in my view.
As to IQ, I have met some very high IQ people who are believers anyway, some good and decent persons and some bad. I suspect that, as a priest said, "give me a child before the age of seven and I will give you a Catholic", is a general rule for fooling children before they are old enough to think and make decisions for themselves. I think that rational people, people who deal in reality ought to, need to, get to the children before the "priests" do and give the children a running chance at a good life without the abuses of religionists.
And religion has always been a money hustle, like you said with "Jesus camps", people are constantly starting religions so they can acquire money, power, and often sex by pretending to speak for whatever "God " they invent. And considering how many people fall for it, it has to be considered one of the most powerful propaganda marketing industries there are. Wouldn't normal business folks like to be selling god-cars, or god-colas, or God-meals, or bottled god-water, or god-fashions and god-cosmetics, even god homes with god-kitchens and god-bathrooms. How about god-stocks and god-bonds, god-pork bellies, god-futures contracts, God-electric utilities.
Frankly, I think that all of the good and decent things that people wrap around their belief in the supernatural, can be taught without the "god" part. And the bad things can be more effectively countered if they are not taught as part of a belief in a some "god".
-
Tom,
I was educated mainly at a Jesuit university. It always puzzled me that men as bright as most Jesuits stll managed to believe in their godman. After awhile I decided that Jesuits were secret atheists. Their actual purpose (equally unsuccessful) was to maintain order on the planet and try to keep humanity from sliding backward into a moral swamp.
I simply can not believe that intelligent people sitting in pews every Sunday are there because they think that prayer is anything more than talking to oneself.
Your remarks are correct about India. Their word for caste originally referred to skin color. The invading Indo Aryans brought the cow and an early form of crude animal worship to India's small, dark skinned Dravidians who already had a higher culture. But, being the winners in the conflict, the light skinned Ayrans saught ways of maintaining their racial differences by erecting a color bar, as it were.
Interesting point. Most Indian Catholics are drawn from the untouchable class. Caste Hindus almost never convert. The Anglo Indian community are Church of England. They all have in common an English ancestor and are a very successful class. I found India a fascinating country with its many distinct communities, customs and religions. But in spite of its economic gains the people remain for the most part highly superstitious.
-
"prayer is anything more than talking to oneself."
I see the way that prayer possibly works, is as positive affirmations to oneself. In a way, like an athlete visualizing himself doing what he wants to do, mentally rehearsing over and over making the basket, or whatever other goal he has.
I didn't know that history of India.
I was thinking of the caste system as essentially the same as the Divine Right of Kings, and the inherited titles, political power, and property of kings, princes, tsars, nobles, dukes, barons, etc. Those systems were created by and benefit only the wealthy and they embedded those systems into the religion, as in the Queen of England being the Head of The Anglican Church.
I heard an interview a few months ago on NPR, maybe Fresh Air, with the author of two recent books on what the scientists who study babies have learned about babies. "The Scientist in the Crib" and "The Philosophical Baby", by Alison Gopnik PhD. and others. I am only 39 pages into the first one, "The Scientist...", and I am really excited about how different babies are from the traditional views of them that have been passed down through religions and politics. And in writing back and forth with you I suspect that you would like those two books as I see them as potentially optimistic about babies and what humans can develop into in the future, based on what babies are born with. And I think that they are both in paper back by now for around $10, if you are interested.
If I recall correctly, aren't the Jesuits pretty much known as the educated and educators of the Catholic Church? The bright guys in the room as it were?
One of the high IQ guys I know and respect is around 167 or so and I respect his embrace of the Catholic ideas of Community and Service. He introduced me to Father Andrew Greelys' (I think that's the right name) essay "Why I am a Catholic". I have tremendous respect for those Catholic ideas of Community, just no respect for the idea of a supernatural "god-being".
I wish that TOL had an ongoing "Community" type blog that those of us who tend to keep a discussion going could easily access, because this topic will soon disappear into the archives and have to be searched for.
-
Comments are now closed.
Most of us have enough common sense to know right from wrong. And enough knowledge to make a correct decision. But we fail in courage and discipline to make the necessary commitments and execute the tasks.
For instance:
How does one lose weight? The answer is not rocket science or brain surgery. Even a kindergardener would know the solution is TO EAT LESS and EXERCISE MORE.
How do you increase knowledge? Watch less TV. Read more books. Write Essays. Do Math and Physics Problems. Get a University Degree.
How do you quit smoking, drinking or illicit drugs? Begin by abstinence. Everything else is kind of secondary.
But between the IDEA and the EXECUTION lies the Shadow. Resolutions mean nothing unless there is courage and commitment to do what needs to be done. Unfortunately this is becoming a rare thing in America.
Our society should have default settings where people are automatically Opted IN to healthy and wise habits like Automatic Savings, Automatic Retirement Accounts, Automatic Health Insurance Enrollment, Automatic Organ Donation, Obligatory Exercise Programs such as Walking home from work.
When people have to actively think and act to be Good, the default setting will be predictably lazy and Bad.
A Great and Just Society makes it EASY for a Citizen to do the Right thing. There are Good Habits, but many easy BAD HABITS. We have to cultivate and encourage the Good Habits.