To Touch You More

My New Year’s resolution made over a decade ago was to touch people more. To break that social wall that keeps our hands and bodies a safe distance from one other. To connect more physically.

I’m speaking of the non-sexual variety of contact. We all know when someone is touching us with sexual undertones. That may or may not be welcome. I wanted to offer the kind of touch that wouldn’t be misconstrued.

This was not easy at first. Not because people weren’t receptive; they were. People generally love touch. They bask in it. They appreciate it on a cellular level.

It was a challenge because I wasn’t sure how to do it. My German family is not the touchy-feely sort. Stiff, awkward hugs. Overly firm pats on the back. Touching others freely hadn’t been habituated into me, so it took some training.

But soon, my hands and body reached out to anyone in my world, whether it was via handholding or a quick massage or a touch on the cheek or a full-body hug or a head on a shoulder. Or I’d simply stand closer to people, trying not to invade, but simply enter, their space. I even began kissing some of my closest friends on the lips, which is incredibly sweet and rewarding.

How did people react? Shoulders would drop, breathing would deepen, gentle smiles would appear - people relaxed almost instantly. We so desperately crave human contact, but often aren’t even aware how hungry we are for it. And giving touch is akin to receiving it. I feel touched as well. Cosmic win/win.

Last month, while taking a bus from the Jersey shore to New York City, an older, fragile Indian man sitting across the aisle from me suddenly handed me his cellphone. I accepted it, confused and slightly nervous.

“Um…hello?”

“Hello, my uncle may be having a heart attack. He needs help. He doesn’t speak any English.”

I looked over at the older gentleman and he was grasping his chest and moaning. I went to the bus driver and explained what was happening. As I returned to my seat, the man had fallen to the floor, in the aisle.

The bus pulled over. Emergency help was contacted. Several passengers made suggestions but few had any medical training, myself included. So I resorted to my New Year’s resolution. I placed both of my hands gently on his face and began whispering in his ear, “Calm down. Calm down. Calm down.”

I then unbuttoned his shirt and placed my hands on his chest. He was very agitated and his heartbeat was frighteningly rapid, so it took some time, but finally his breathing resumed to somewhat normal. At one point, he opened his eyes to look at me and they were filled with gratitude. No clumsy words needed.

When the police finally arrived, they instructed everyone off of the bus. (Another was waiting to take us to our destination.) I was afraid if my hands left his body, he would become unwell again. The cop didn’t really want to hear my spiritual take on the situation, so I got up to leave.

Almost immediately, the man’s breathing became erratic and his eyes glazed over and looked filmy. I left the bus feeling a sense of peace regardless. Strangely, I could feel his essence on me for quite some time, like an energetic imprint of some sort.

Fortunately, the man was fine. (His relatives left me a lovely message the next day.) But it was then I realized that touching was something beyond “feel good.” We live for it. I live for it.

So that is my first (and only) working New Year’s resolution - one that would change my life on a level beyond words.

You give but little when you give of your possessions.  It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.  ~Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

What is bought is cheaper than a gift.  ~Portuguese Proverb

A wise lover values not so much the gift of the lover as the love of the giver.  ~Thomas á Kempis

The only gift is a portion of thyself.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

We should give as we would receive, cheerfully, quickly, and without hesitation; for there is no grace in a benefit that sticks to the fingers.  ~Seneca

We do not quite forgive a giver.  The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays

But it is a cold, lifeless business when you go to the shops to buy something, which does not represent your life and talent, but a goldsmith’s.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Gifts,” Essays, Second Series, 1844

If instead of a gem, or even a flower, we should cast the gift of a loving thought into the heart of a friend, that would be giving as the angels give.  ~George MacDonald

The manner of giving is worth more than the gift.  ~Pierre Corneille, Le Menteur

Christmas is the season when you buy this year’s gifts with next year’s money.  ~Author Unknown

A hug is a great gift - one size fits all, and it’s easy to exchange.  ~Author Unknown

If you give what can be taken, you are not really giving.  Take what you are given, not what you want to be given.  Give what cannot be taken.  ~Idries Shah

1. 10,000 Villages Online Store: One of the world’s largest fair trade organizations and a founding member of the World Fair Trade Organization (WFTO), 10,000 Villages offers gifts and accessories representing the diverse cultures of artisans from 38 countries. Your purchases help improve the lives of tens of thousands of artisans worldwide. [Shop 10,000 Villages]

2. Best Friends Animal Society Online Store: There’s no reason to shop at the big box pet stores for the animal lovers in your life this holiday season when you can purchase collars, treats, and toys directly from one of the best animal charities in the United States. [Shop Best Friends Animal Society]

3. CARE Packages: CARE has a very unique holiday gift program that allows you to compile care packages to send to women entrepreneurs and girls worldwide. As a group or as an individual, CARE Packages can help send girls in Afghanistan to school for a year, or help expectant mothers in Peru safely deliver. It’s fun and you’ll be bringing hope to girls and women around the world. [Send a CARE Package]

4. Concern Worldwide Gifts: When you buy Concern Gifts, you support Concern’s work in 25 countries worldwide – bringing food, clean water, good health, education and a higher standard of living within reach of more people. Although Concern is based in the U.K., their gift program also accepts U.S.-issued credit cards. [Shop Concern Gifts]

5. Feeding America Tribute Gifts: With poverty and food insecurity at record levels in the Untied States, it’s practically your patriotic duty to donate to Feeding America!  [Give a Feeding America Tribute Gift]

6. Jane Goodall Institute Online Store: You don’t have to be primate activist to shop at the JGI Online Store. Their store also offers jewelry, African art and music, and clothing. That said, there’s also some great gifts for the primate activists in your life.  [Shop the Jane Goodall Institute Online Store]

7. Kiva Cards: Starting a $25, Kiva Cards change lives. You can purchase Kiva Cards which then can be redeemed by your gift recipient to fund a loan of his or her choosing. A microfinance nonprofit working to uplift entrepreneurs out of poverty worldwide, this is great holiday gift for those subscribe to the belief of giving a hand-up, not a handout. [Buy Kiva Cards]

8. Save the Children Gifts of Joy: From ornaments  handmade in India to the sponsorship of a girl’s education in a developing nation to providing health snacks at school to children in the United States, Save the Children has put a together a great online catalog for giving this holiday season. [Give a Save the Children Gift of Joy]

9. Sea Shepherd Conservation Society Online Store: If you have a family member or friend who supports saving the whales and dolphins from slaughter with direct action and activist intervention, then Sea Shepherd is a great choice for a holiday gift. The nonprofit behind Whale Wars, their online store also includes numerous items ideal for skaters, surfers, and other ocean-loving hipsters. [Shop Sea Shepherd]

10. Special Olympics Tribute Gifts: An excellent choice for the athletes in your life, Special Olympics Tribute Gifts enable those with intellectual disabilities to experience the power of sports to create champions. [Give a Special Olympics Tribute Gift]

11. Women for Women International’s Gifts That Give Back: Women for Women’s gifts enable you to empower women to rebuild their lives after the ravages of war. You can purchase everything from looms to farming supplies to books, rulers, and pencils which are then given in the name of your gift recipient to a woman in war-torn country.  [Give a Women for Women's Gift That Gives Back]

Source: NonProfits.org

You don’t have to be singing about love all the time in order to give love to the people. You don’t have to keep flashing those words all the time. - Jimi Hendricks

Singing is a way of escaping. It’s another world. I’m no longer on earth. - Edith Piaf

The Indian knew how to live without wants, to suffer without complaint, and to die singing.
Alexis de Tocqueville

People ask me where I got my singing style. I didn’t copy my style from anybody.
Elvis Presley

I like to sing ballads the way Eddie Fisher does and the way Perry Como does. But the way I’m singing now is what makes the money.
Elvis Presley

Anybody singing the blues is in a deep pit yelling for help.
Mahalia Jackson

Time is important to me because I want to sing long enough to leave a message. I’m used to singing in churches where nobody would dare stop me until the Lord arrives!
Mahalia Jackson

That was the big thing when I was growing up, singing on the radio. The extent of my dream was to sing on the radio station in Memphis. Even when I got out of the Air Force in 1954, I came right back to Memphis and started knocking on doors at the radio station.
Johnny Cash

Singing has always seemed to me the most perfect means of expression. It is so spontaneous. And after singing, I think the violin. Since I cannot sing, I paint.
Georgia O’Keeffe

Singing is the love of my life, but I was ready to give it all up because I couldn’t handle people talking about how fat I was.
Stevie Nicks

A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.
Robert A. Heinlein

A negative judgment gives you more satisfaction than praise, provided it smacks of jealousy.
Jean Baudrillard

Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love.
George Eliot

Back then I didn’t think a woman like that, or a relationship like that, could exist with complete freedom and no jealousy or possessiveness. I thought it sounded too good to be true and I was certainly convinced it wasn’t the life for me!
Sylvia Kristel

Don’t waste time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind.
Mary Schmich

From heresy, frenzy and jealousy, good Lord deliver me.
Ludovico Ariosto

I do not say anything from jealousy.
Anna Held

It is not love that is blind, but jealousy.
Lawrence Durrell

It’s amazing the clarity that comes with psychotic jealousy.
Rupert Everett

Jealousy - that jumble of secret worship and ostensible aversion.
Emile M. Cioran

Jealousy contains more of self-love than of love.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Jealousy is a dog’s bark which attracts thieves.
Karl Kraus

Jealousy is all the fun you think they had.
Erica Jong

Jealousy is both reasonable and belongs to reasonable men, while envy is base and belongs to the base, for the one makes himself get good things by jealousy, while the other does not allow his neighbour to have them through envy.
Aristotle

Jealousy is bred in doubts. When those doubts change into certainties, then the passion either ceases or turns absolute madness.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire.
Solomon Ibn Gabirol

Jealousy would be far less torturous if we understood that love is a passion entirely unrelated to our merits.
Paul Eldridge

Jealousy, that dragon which slays love under the pretense of keeping it alive.
Henry Ellis

Jealousy… is a mental cancer.
B. C. Forbes

Life is one big road with lots of signs. So when you riding through the ruts, don’t complicate your mind. Flee from hate, mischief and jealousy. Don’t bury your thoughts, put your vision to reality. Wake Up and Live!
Bob Marley

A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.
Robert Frost

A poet is someone who stands outside in the rain hoping to be struck by lightning.
James Dickey

A rose must remain with the sun and the rain or its lovely promise won’t come true.
Ray Evans

A wind has blown the rain away and blown the sky away and all the leaves away, and the trees stand. I think, I too, have known autumn too long.
e. e. cummings

And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.
Rabindranath Tagore

We resist the art of self-care, perhaps because we get it confused with being selfish.  As children, many of us were taught that selfishness is a bad thing and we ought to put others first.  There’s great value in that, of course.  Concern for others is something that our mothers need to teach us, to help us grow out of the self-centeredness of childhood into the give-and-take of mature adulthood.  We have to be taught to share, to be generous, to make sacrifices for the needs of others.

But sometimes we take this too far and don’t place a high enough value on taking care of our own needs.  We hope that if we take care of the needs of others that the “others” will feel so grateful or so guilty that they will turn around and take care of our needs.  When they don’t, we get to feeling mighty resentful and mighty empty.

So, it turns out that we also need to be taught how to take care of ourselves.  We need to invest in nourishing our whole selves, and do so regularly.  We need to make time and space for relaxing the mind.  For stretching the body.  For opening the soul.

I find that this kind of self-care is harder to learn than it might seem at first.   But I think that if we can make a distinction between selfishness and self-care, we are well on our way to learning this life-giving lesson.My favorite analogy is offered at 35,000 feet high by your friendly, helpful flight attendant.   He or she gives some really helpful guidance.  If there is a sudden drop in cabin pressure, oxygen masks will drop from overhead compartments.  If you are caring for a child or someone else who needs your assistance, put your oxygen mask on first.  Then, since you will be alive and alert, you will have the capacity to help someone else.

It is not selfish to tend and care for your own life.  If you do take good care of yourself, everyone wins.  And if you don’t, who will?

by Jennifer L. Kunst, Ph.D.

Source: Psychology Today

Have you had your bath today?

He is now rising from affluence to poverty.
Mark Twain

Poverty is the worst form of violence.
Mohandas Gandhi

Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.
Mother Teresa
Our life of poverty is as necessary as the work itself. Only in heaven will we see how much we owe to the poor for helping us to love God better because of them.
Mother Teresa

Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.
Mother Teresa

The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life.
John F. Kennedy

Wars of nations are fought to change maps. But wars of poverty are fought to map change.
Muhammad Ali

Coming generations will learn equality from poverty, and love from woes.
Khalil Gibran

Poverty is a veil that obscures the face of greatness. An appeal is a mask covering the face of tribulation.
Khalil Gibran

In poverty and other misfortunes of life, true friends are a sure refuge. The young they keep out of mischief; to the old they are a comfort and aid in their weakness, and those in the prime of life they incite to noble deeds.
Aristotle

Some people think luxury is the opposite of poverty. It is not. It is the opposite of vulgarity.
Coco Chanel

Love conquers all things except poverty and toothache.
Mae West

In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.
Confucius

Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.
Barack Obama

As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.
Henry David Thoreau

I worked my way up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty.
Groucho Marx

You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humor in anything, even poverty, you can survive it.
Bill Cosby

Poverty is the mother of crime.
Marcus Aurelius

Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.
Woody Allen