Inhabiting the World Rosenda Meer

“Hope is the last to die” says an old Italian adage.
The etymology of the word comes from the Old English hopa "confidence in the future".
From the 13th century, the word took the connotation of expectation of something desired, and of trust and wishful desire.
Emily Dickinson has a very visual definition of it, she says: “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all.” What I like about such imagery is the lack of object towards which hope is directed, it’s not about hoping for something, but about opening oneself to a hopeful disposition of the soul.
Martin Luther King Jr calls it infinite hope one must always keep, while accepting finite disappointment.

In English, hope is a somewhat abstract idea of expectation, but in Hebrew the word “tikvah” not only means expectation, but also cord or rope, from a root that means to bind, to wait for or upon.
Hope, in Christian thought is one of the theological virtues and is directed exclusively toward the future, as fervent desire and confident expectation.
Someone once asked Rumi, the beloved Sufi poet whether or not there is harm in putting one’s hopes in God and expecting a good recompense for having done good.
“Yes - was his answer- one must have hope and fear, for these two are inseparable. When a farmer plants wheat, he of course hopes that it will grow. At the same time, however, he is fearful that some disaster may befall it.”
For once, I must disagree with the great Sufi teacher, as I feel that hope doesn’t need to be a response to fear but must go hand in hand with acceptance. I hope for a certain outcome, but I am ready to accept that things might turn out otherwise, because I trust the mysterious ways in which life operates and I abandon myself to its flowing, hoping to reach safe ashore.
In the mystic branch of Islam hope for the union of the soul with the divine was expressed through images of human yearning and love.
In Psychology hope is classified as a positive anticipatory emotion.

Inhabiting the World with Tenderness

This episode of Inhabiting the World is dedicated to tenderness.
From Latin, Tèn-uem, from which derives tenuous as well, tenderness implies the quality of something that can be rolled out, that’s malleable and soft.
When we show, manifest, express tenderness, we feel a deep and soft affection for someone or something with compassion and love.
Tenderness is a quality which we generally associate with girls and ladies who are supposed to be the milder of the two sexes. The males on the other hand, are embodiments of physical strength and prowess. Females are meek, docile and soft-spoken. They are soft and tender in both touch and feel. What a cliché!

According to William James, father of American psychology, there is an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness, and their companionship in the saintly life need in no way occasion surprise. Kids are also soft and we associate tenderness with them as well.
Anything that is smooth and soft is tender. In the words of Victor Hugo, “The most powerful symptom of love is a tenderness which becomes at times almost insupportable.”
Dostoevsky had a point when he said:
“It’s the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quite tender joy.”

Ada Merini, the great Italian poetess sang:

We are hungry for tenderness,
In a world where everything is abundant,
We are poor of such a sentiment
Like a caress
For our heart
We need tiny gestures
That makes us feel good,
Tenderness
Is a love disinterested and generous
That asks for nothing else,
But to be understood and appreciated.

Forgiveness
September 28th, 2021

“If you want to see the brave, look to those who can return love for hatred. If you want to see the heroic, look to those who can forgive.”
The Bhagavad Gita

After the summer holidays, a time to vacate the spirit and recharge the batteries, here I am with a new episode of “Inhabiting the World”. This time, we are going to reflect and meditate on forgiveness.

Fred Luskin, the director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Projects,
defines forgiveness as a conscious, deliberate decision to release feelings of resentment or vengeance toward a person or group who has harmed you, regardless of whether they deserve your forgiveness.
The essence of forgiveness is being resilient when things don’t go the way you want, being at peace with the vulnerability inherent in human life. But before you can forgive, he says, you must grieve. At the most basic level, forgiveness is on a continuum with grief. When you’re offended or hurt or violated, the natural response is to grieve. All of those problems can be seen as a loss—whether we lose affection or a human being or a dream—and when we lose something, we have a natural reintegration process, which we call grief. Then forgiveness is the resolution of grief.”

Inhabiting the World with Care

In this episode of “Inhabiting the World”, I have chosen to focus on care, such an important element of human existence, when care is intended as the process of protecting someone or something and providing what that person or thing needs, as the Cambridge Dictionary states.

When used as verbs, to care for means to attend to the needs of, especially in the manner of a nurse or personal aide, and to like and appreciate as well, whereas to take care of means to look after, to provide care and to deal with, to handle.
In informal contexts, take care means be careful.
Its etymology, quite thought provoking, stems from the Indo-European root which signifies a paying attention, a looking at tinted with the idea of worry and preoccupation. But paying attention does not bring about the dimension of time. One can pay attention to a flower, but to take care of it one needs to be there, day after day.

The topic of this episode of “Inhabiting the World”, has been suggested by one of our listeners, an alumna of the ANA School of Creativity, who was interested in reflecting and meditating on movement, fearless movement, more precisely.

”All things change, nothing is extinguished - said the Roman poet Ovid who lived under the reign of Emperor Augustus - There is nothing in the whole world which is permanent. Everything flows onward; all things are brought into being with a changing nature; the ages themselves glide by in constant movement. “

Already more than 500 years Before Christ, Heraclitus famously declared that all things are in motion like a stream.

The body is always in movement; even when we feel immersed in the delightful stillness of meditation, blood keeps circulating, air flows in and out and myriads of other imperceptible activities go on.
Movement means change of position, passage from place to place from the Latin movere, to move, to set in motion, which comes from the root mot. Words like promotion, demotion and even motor derive from it, along with a word that carries great weight, emotion which indicates a moving out.

The connection between body’s movement and emotion regulation has been widely demonstrated.
Emotion regulation is a person’s active attempt to manage their emotional state by enhancing or decreasing specific feelings. The neuroscientist Antonio Damasio has discovered that through deliberate control of motor behavior, it is possible to regulate one’s emotions and affect one’s feelings. This concept is used in movement therapies like Sophrology, where movement guided in a certain way evokes, processes, and regulates emotions.
It is well known that even outside of the therapeutic setting, movement is very beneficial, because oxygen is essential for brain function, and enhanced blood flow increases the amount of oxygen transported to the brain. One study showed that people who exercise have far more cortical mass than those who don't, an obvious link between movement and learning.

Like the Arabic proverb aptly states, movement is blessing.

In this episode of “inhabiting the world”, we are going to reflect and meditate on courage.
Courage is one of the cardinal virtues, already identified by ancient Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, as well as Roman thinkers like Cicero and Marcus Aurelius. Virtues are expressions of moral excellence and inner strength that shape and channelize the immaterial energy of the psyche.
Of the four principal virtues, wisdom, justice, courage and temperance, courage is the most indispensable, the one without which the others could not be experienced; one can’t be wise, just and sober without been courageous. Courage is the manifestation of the strength that nourishes life and defeats fear.
In the mountaineering expedition that moral and spiritual life can be compared to, courage is the base camp. The other virtues might climb higher, but they can only reach there thanks to the action of the heart that sustains them.
Courage is indeed a matter of the heart, as the etymology of the word indicates, from the Latin “cor habeo” to have a heart. Courage is connected to the heart because its exercise produces a warmth in the chest that nourishes the élan vital, the impulse to live, fully.
“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage,” said Anaïs Nin, everything depends upon the courage, or the action of the heart, with which we face the task of knowing, polishing and transforming ourselves.

How do I relate with the word courage?

When do I feel courageous?