Category Archives: Learning

Learning

The Joy of Pain

By Shae Hadden | Bio

It might be said that existence isn’t possible without both pleasant and unpleasant experiences—without pain and pleasure. They are like a guidance system, helping us navigate through life and orienting us away from illness and danger and death.

We have pleasant, positive
emotional states like love, joy, sympathy, affection, self-confidence,
happiness. And we have unpleasant emotions like boredom, loneliness,
jealousy, fear and sadness.

I’ve been relating to the physical
pain I’m experiencing since my car accident as a source of learning.
I’m actually living ‘in joy’ with it —you might say ‘enjoying’ the fact
of being alive and being in pain. Many people I share this with seem
surprised,

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Learning

The Path of the Martyr

By Shae Hadden | Bio

This New Year’s Eve was a refreshing break from the past for me: a friend and I went to a local hall to listen to a concert of Buddhist chants and instrumental music while we walked the indoor labyrinth. The hall was crowded, filled with adults seriously intent on purposeful walking. Two little girls were dancing and skipping the labyrinth together—one following the other. Whenever they encountered an obstacle (that is, an adult moving slowly), they would weave around whoever was in their path. While all the adults were focused on meditating or intensely concentrating on their ‘experience’, these two girls were laughing and smiling, joyously taking whatever life placed in front of them at their pace, slip-sliding in their socks all the way to the centre and back out again.

What struck me was not only that all the adults looked as if they carried the weight of the world on their shoulders, but that they took three times as long to do one circuit. And not one of them was smiling. It made me wonder whether we assume martyrdom is part of ‘being an adult’ in our society. Do we really need to lose our sense of joy in living, our sense of play, by carrying our work, our relationships, and the circumstances we find ourselves in as obligations or

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Learning

Depression and Self-Discovery

By Stu Whitley | Bio

So
what is to be done about depression? Much the same, I think, as
rediscovering the rational self in a time when emotions hold sway. Not
an easy task, but it’s done all the time. One disciplines oneself to
think. The brain is exercised through reading, or better yet, writing.
Journaling is a powerful tool to self-discovery, and one doesn’t need
to be a Joseph Conrad to diarize one’s thoughts. What better way to
explore the inner

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Learning

The Facts of Life

By Shae Hadden | Bio

One of my New Year traditions is to clean up some of the papers that have accumulated around me over the past year. Yesterday, I came across these “Facts of Life” that someone had given me and thought they were worth sharing. Unlike the ‘facts of life’ we normally think about (like ‘the birds and the bees’, death and taxes), these seem fitting for the beginning of a new year, especially since they actually challenge us to look at ourselves and others in a whole new way.

  • We are human beings.
  • We make assessments of ourselves and others.
  • These assessments are usually more or less grounded, but they are never ‘true’.
  • We live

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Learning

Happy New Year

It’s the last day of the year. It is the time for resolutions to stop smoking, lose weight, be a better person and generally confront all the things we didn’t do last year. I was going through some papers this week and stumbled upon a few of my old ‘lists’ of New Year’s intentions from about 20 years ago. I am a bit embarrassed to say that my list today looks very similar to my list then—more exercise, better diet, more time for reflection and creativity, write my book, and relax.

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Learning

Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo Jump

By Shae Hadden | Bio

There’s a place near Fort McLeod in Alberta that goes by this odd name…the Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo Jump world heritage site …where the indigenous peoples used to lead the buffalo to jump off a cliff. A place where there’s a very finite line between life and death…and where life comes from death. You see, for thousands of years, the native people would use this natural geographical formation to ‘harvest’ these wild animals and feed their tribes each winter.

I’m
remembering this place today because I’ve been reminded—not so subtly
by being in a car accident—that life is the dash between birth and
death. The instant I knew my car was spinning out of control yesterday
morning, the only thought going through my head was “I surrender to
you, God, for I am not in control”. In that moment, I felt like the
buffalo must have felt—as if this was the last spurt in that great
dash. As

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Learning

Depression and Justice

By Stu Whitley | Bio

I
had my own struggle with depression, brought about by a confluence of
events that seemed overwhelming. In spite of my rational training and
experience as a lawyer, I was completely disabled by my loss of
perspective. I could not see beyond the shadows of perceived (and real)
threats. A feeling of being trapped is the best way to describe the
sense of hopelessness and abandonment I was experiencing.

Fear
inspires the ‘fight or flight’ response, as we all know. But

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Learning

Depression

By Stu Whitley | Bio

No voice divine the storm allay’d,
No light propitious shone;
When snatch’d from all effectual aid,
We perish’d, each alone:
But I beneath a rougher sea,
And whelm’d in deeper gulphs than he
-William Cowper, The Castaway

There
are probably more things at work in the human mind than we will ever
know. Too often the turmoil we confront in our daily lives gets the
better of
us, and we succumb to a depressed state for a day, a month, or

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Learning

Live Life to the Fullest

Randy Pausch, a 46-year-old Carnegie Mellon computer science professor, diagnosed with terminal cancer, gives his last lecture. He urges us to play the cards we are dealt, have specific dreams, enable the dreams of others and ourselves, and to understand that obstacles are opportunities for us to show how badly we want things and to demonstrate our commitment. View the 18-minute ABC video or the full Live Life to the Fullest lecture. 

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Learning

Discernment: Harold’s Story III

By Stu Whitley
Bio

This is the third in a three-part series.

I
read somewhere that good decision-making—indeed, good relations—
depends upon a virtuous cycle of respect, trust and candour (which
takes some time to establish, but which can easily be interrupted). 
Attitude, after all, is everything. Perhaps that last statement needs a
bit of refinement: the ethical
attitude is everything. By that I mean the determination

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