family

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Are You Happy? Why Not?


Unless you live in a country that is repressive, you have no reason to not be happy in general. We all go through times of sadness, death in the family, losing a job, sickness, and other unplanned occurrences. But those are things of limited time, things which will pass in time. And in those times, you can still find happiness.

We human beings are wired to be happy. Most of us are born to loving parents and have a good childhood. And even those who have experience less than that, they manage to find happiness, so why don’t you?

Our entire life experience, starting with childhood, is controlled by certain portions of our brain. But our brain needs to be trained. Too many people train their brains to think in a positive way. Instead of saying “why me?” why not simply accept the situation at hand and move on. As parents we are responsible for teaching our children these positive reinforcements for our children. And then we need to train ourselves the same way.

I so often hear someone say, “it’s just not fair.” What are they talking about? They are talking about their home being devastated by a tornado, a child who has leukemia, a parent who dies suddenly, and so many other things. I bring out these things because if you look at them, each is because of the forces of nature and not those of many. I always say, they are entirely fair, miserable as they are, but disease and weather do not pick out individuals and bring pain upon them! It is just a natural course of events. This is the universe, inexorably moving along, a power bigger than any of us, and, unfortunately, bringing pain to our lives. The only things that can possibly be unfair is the action of one or a group of people who cause us pain. It is only a human being who can bring about the condition of being “unfair” to us.

To feel happy you must think happy. As I said in my previous post, there is beauty all around us, we just need to take notice. There are wonderful people everywhere but we must find them. Their are people beyond our family who will support us in hard times, but, including our family, we must stay connected to such people.

Our individual happiness depends first upon our own state of mind and then by the bridges we have built.

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Looking For True Happiness? Take Care of Your Shortcomings


I have found that one of the best and most keep-able New Year’s resolutions, or any other sort of resolution, is to promise myself that I will identify and deal with all my shortcomings. It was a little less than 20 years ago that someone suggested I do just that so that I could be happier and feel freer. But he suggested I use the “seven deadly sins” (wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony, I had to look these up) as the basis for this discovery. I have to admit that once I saw what those sins are, I was skeptical, to say the least.  I thought some were actually desirable or that I was just not willing to relieve myself of them; they were comfortable and seemed necessary. But then it came to me, those “sins” are meant to be a starting point and to consider them only in their excess. That is, if I were lazy, sloth, was I being so lazy that it was detrimental to me in one way or another. Or if I over ate, gluttony, am I doing so in a way that endangers my health. When looked upon that way, it made more sense.

But then I had to do a self-inventory. In this it was suggested that I start at two points, fear and resentment. As I blogged about earlier, resentment is when I drink the poison I wish someone to fall ill from. Most resentments are between two people but a resentment can exist between a person and an organization. The latter is much easier to deal with so I will take it first.

A guy gets fired from his job. He complains that he was unfairly dealt with, that he was treated poorly by his boss, and that he was not appreciated. A good friend asks him a series of questions: How often were you late for work? How often were you out sick when in fact you were just looking for a day off? Did you always complete your assigned work on time, completely, and to your boss’s satisfaction? The guy honestly reflects upon those questions and finds that he was guilty on all counts. And then the friend asks if he had been the boss would he have fired himself. The guy realizes the answer is “yes” and suddenly the resentment vanishes.

Now I will deal with the tougher of the two, the resentment of one person towards another. This is particularly important when it concerns two family members. The worst are resentments children hold towards their parents. There are some exceptions to this, e.g. the father deserts the family and the children are resentful. This is one place where a parent richly deserves the resentment. Resentment in such cases are entirely understandable, however, the resentment still only hurts the person holding the resentment. Resentments are always poisonous for the person holding it. The person holding onto the resentment is not allowing for his other feelings to surface, a healthy reaction. Having experienced the feelings he can move on to resolutions that will allow him to go on with life without the resentment. He can also feel free to consider the reasons the parent deserted the family. I suggest cowardice as a good one. You label the person a coward, you feel sorry for them, and then you move on. You are not excusing the person from their misdeeds but are simply defining them as best you can. Comfort can be found in reason.

Sibling rivalries are so common that for such a thing to not exist is probably an exception to the extreme. One of the most common complaints and basis for resentment is the old “mom always liked you best.” But even in cases where that is true, to what end does it help to hold a resentment towards your sibling? It is common for the eldest to feel displaced by the youngest. I know that for fact being the oldest of three. But there came a time when I had to look at my parents as human beings and detach their parental status. I needed to consider their shortcomings as best I could fathom them. In doing so I quickly gained a better understanding for both my parents and realized that so much of parenting is trial and error. My father died at a young age so I don’t have a lot to draw on from him but my mother lived 89 years. As time passed I think I understood her well, understood those actions of hers I felt resentful towards, and in the end found I was basically an idiot for not having done this at a much younger age. My parents were exceedingly good people doing an exceedingly tough job, trying to raise me. I was a handful to say the least. My parents always did their level best but being human failure on occasion was inevitable. They are not to be faulted for those failing, just understood and where needed, forgiven. The central question to their relationships with me was, did they love me? The answer is a resounding yes and that being true, I need to be satisfied.

All this introspection brought me to a conclusion about all of humanity: fear is the most pervasive feeling all humans have and the most difficult with which to deal. And a large portion of the human race does a poor job in dealing with fear. But fear is the one shortcoming that also owns a necessary place in our existence. But fear holds a special place because of its dual status. Fear is that extremely basic thing within all of humanity that was responsible for our survival from the earliest of days. It kept the human race alive back in its infancy and it keeps us alive today. No soldier who has ever been on the battlefield was devoid of fear. Even those who receive medals and are revered for their bravery will admit that they had a healthy amount of fear going in. Fear puts the body on alert that it is in danger and that a defense may be necessary. Fear heightens all our senses. That is the good fear. That is the type of fear that we not only cannot overcome but which we do not want to overcome.

But even that type of fear, that primal instinct of self-preservation and all others, come from a person’s lack of knowledge when faced with situations that require an action of them. We fear judgement. We fear being wrong. We fear rejection. We fear heights. And when we look at ourselves long and hard, we find that we all have a rather long shopping list of fears. Those fears range from the easy to deal with to the impossible to deal with.

One of the more common fears is that of being judged, particularly when that judgement comes from a person with whom we have a personal relationship. This is a tough one because it is human nature to desire to always been seen in a favorable light. This fear, however, can lead us to another character defect, honesty. People will say they were less than honest to save a person’s feelings. You are not responsible for another person’s feelings! If being honest means hurting a person’s feelings it may be better that way. But if it is one of those rare occasions where hurting the person’s feelings achieves nothing, then be judicious with your words but keep each word fully honest. You might find it wise to respond by saying “I need to think about that” or words to that effect. All of us are confronted with questions everyday but not every questions needs to be answered an instant later. Many question needed to be considered at some length before being answered. Most of the time saying “allow me to think about that for a minute” should suffice. Sometimes you will need to think longer. Regardless, engage your mind before engaging your mouth.

But there is one thing which is absolutely necessary. You must talk about your fears with someone you trust, if not a therapist. Many times a fear that is bouncing around in our heads loses all its power when shared with another person. Just our saying the very words “this scares me” frequently reduces the level of fear if not eliminating it entirely. I can say with absolute certainty that regardless of what scares you that exact same fear is shared by others and may actually be very common. One of the best things which can happen with sharing a fear with another person, is that person validates our fear by admitting they share the very same fear. Another frequent result of admitting a fear is finding a resolution to that fear in the process.

I have already touched upon honesty but it deserves further discussion. I have adopted a principle of absolute honesty even to my own detriment. That simply means that when someone asks a question of me, particularly a question which will require me to reveal a part of me of which I am not proud, I will give a fully honest answer. The only qualification to that is that the person asking the question has a right to the knowledge I hold. My wife has a right to ask absolutely any question she wants and I in return have an obligation to answer her honestly. But my sister, parents, other relatives, and friends do not have a right to access that information. What I cannot do is lie instead of telling them it is none of their business.

I have some young friends who have decided to not drink anymore and they struggle with how to deal with friends who use peer pressure to get them to drink. I tell them when asked why they are not drinking to reply that they simply do not want to. And if that person persists even after having asked twice, I suggest that they ask the person questioning them, “why it is so important to you that I drink?” This is shifting the burden in place of lying or of revealing a part of themselves they consider private. You are questioning their motives.

At this point I need to bring up the principle of “owning your own crap.” Everyone screws up, some of us more frequently than we care to admit, and yet it is still true. One of the biggest lies we tell ourselves is “I wasn’t caught.” Yes you were! It does not matter that no one else saw your indiscretion, you saw it, you know about it and you need to own it. The principle here is you cannot get rid of any crap you do not own. That is just logical. Let’s say you put an old refrigerator out behind your house, then an old car next to it, then a box spring, and before long you have what appears to be a junk yard. The city comes by and tells you that you need to get rid of your crap because you are in violation of an ordinance. You tell them it’s not yours. As ridiculous as this scenario seems, this is something people do every day with regards to non-material crap. They deny they have done wrong, they deny they lied or were less than fully truthful, they deny that taking a bunch of paper from work is wrong, etc. But as long as they use denial of the truth as the barrier from taking rightful responsibility, they will suffer its consequences. The consequences is that these things are additive and they weigh upon you. That weight gets heavier and heavier and frequently leads to a loss of friends, relationships, of trustworthiness and even jobs. There are few things more freeing than to admit that you screwed up. Having taken ownership of the screw-up you can then commence a course of relieving yourself of that crap. This should bring into sharp focus the concept of denial as being a major shortcoming. People use denial regularly do not realize they are lying to at least one person, themselves, and probably others. It creates unnecessary barriers. It keeps them from enjoying a lot of happiness and freedom.

Some of my other shortcomings are laziness, procrastination, over eating, and many other things I just cannot think of at the moment. The thing is, I accept that I have each and every one of these shortcoming and that to overcome any one of them, I need to take some sort of affirmative action. I think it unlikely I will ever overcoming my overeating tendencies but I task myself with a certain level of exercise to overcome the shortcoming, or at least lessen its effect. It does not always work but it is a solution among the several available. My shortcomings keep me from being as happy as possible. But by acknowledging them and having a method of counteracting the shortcomings, I am assuring myself of much more happiness than by not doing these things.

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Sharing Your History


Most people look at the making of history in a short of detached mode.  That is, they see historic events, like the 9/11 bombings but do not consider themselves as a part of it.  We all saw the towers collapsing, the people jumping to their deaths, the fire and police responders in the middle of everything.  Those people, of course, we central to that history as it was made.  But they we actually only a small part of a much larger scenario.  That historic event in fact went on for days, months, years.  We were all witness to it in one way or another and we all made observations about it.  It effected our lives, our movements, our perceived safety, and many other parts of our lives.  For me personally, I had to attend my daughter’s wedding 10 days after the attack and had to fly through Newark airport to get to San Antonio.  My flight from Boston to Newark involved our flying very near to where the twin towers once existed.  I saw the smoke rising from that spot and that image is indelibly imprinted on my memory.  For a historian, which I have a masters degree in, primary source material is of the first priority in understand historical events completely.  My recounting of the 9/11 events, not just my seeing ground zero from my airplane window, but how I, as a Federal Government employee at the time, is exactly what a historian covets in properly capturing historical events.

But what else is there?  First of all, history is something that in on-going.  It does not start and stop with particular memorable events, but is a continuous series of small events.  Most people believe their lives are uneventful and of no particular interest to historians.  But nothing could be further from the truth.  The fabric of history is intertwined with the lives of every living people.

For example, back in 1989 I decided to take the train cross-country, Boston to San Francisco via Chicago.  The Boston to Chicago leg on the Lake Shore Limited started in the late afternoon of one day and finished in Chicago in the early afternoon of the following day.  On the morning of that second day, I travel from my compartment to the dining car to have breakfast.  I was seated across from an elderly lady and we of course struck up a conversation.  I asked her where she came from and what she had done when she was working.  I remember her commenting how her life was unremarkable, or so she thought.  She told me that she had taught school in a one room school house in southern Ohio.  I told her that her experience was special and worthy of being remembered on paper.  I told her that the one room school house was a thing of the past and that only those who experienced such things could properly relate to coming generations who would have no concept, no perspective of such a thing.  I was sad that I had no way to capture her memory but told her that her memories were valuable and worthy of being written down.  I have carried that belief with me since.

My own family has a rich history but most of it is limited to brief snippets which do not do justice to their experiences.  To that end, I decided to interview my Aunt Charlotte.  Aunt Charlotte was my father’s sister.  My father died in 1970 and I was too young prior to that to have asked him much about his prior life.  That meant when he died so did every single memory of his.  I have at least 1000 questions of him which of course can never been answered.  But I decided that I could gain insight by interviewing my aunt who was extremely close to her brother, my father.  I had the good sense to take a mini-recorder with me when I interviewed her so I could capture her every word.  I then found someone who could transcribe the recording.  I have a complete written transcript of that interview which was invaluable for my gaining insight into my paternal family.   During that interview an interesting thing happen.  She used the word “pung” which has slipped from the modern lexicon.  That is because a pung is a sled which was used when she was a child, 1910s and 1920 to transport milk cans from the dairy farms to the creamery.  Although it was a part of her memory it of course was not a part of mine, or anyone else of my generation and succeeding generations because paved roads put an end to their use.

My own personal history includes my having worked in a shoe factory, a true sweat shop, when I was 16.  I was experience in the end of a particular type of manufacturing in Lawrence Massachusetts.  The pictures in my head need to be on paper so when someone wants to learn about the experience of factory workers back then they will have my first person account of it.  That experience is called by historians “primary source.”  A primary source is a first hand account of any event.  But when historians go about reconstructing an event in history rely heavily upon these primary sources.  Unfortunately, too my of history is either lacking or absence of primary source material.

When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on that bus back in 1954 her story was well documented.  But there were other people on that bus.  Their view of history as it happened at that moment is equally important in drawing up a complete picture.  It is unlikely many, if any, of their accounts were documented and that is a loss.

My suggestion to everyone is to document the histories of the elder members of their family first.  Have them tell you their experience of what it was like when they were young, from their earliest memory forward.  If nothing else, you are guaranteed to hear very interesting facts of their early life.  These oral histories, as they are referred to, are invaluable.

An excellent way of preserving your family’s history is through genealogy.  There are many sites on the internet today dedicated to genealogical study and research.  More and more people share their family’s history on-line which could possibly intersect with your own family.

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Parent Child Misunderstandings


Many years ago, on a trip to Canada, my father lost his patience with me.  He exclaimed, to my horror, “you’re just like your mother!”  My father was an incredibly patient man, but more than once I pushed him past all reasonable patience, and into something else.  That was just one such time.  I remember that incident so well because I could not believe what he had said.  And for years afterward, I made it a mission to insure that I was not anything like my mother.  She and I had always had a contentious relationship, and that is putting it mildly.

My father grew up in an upper middle-class house while my mother grew up dirt poor, and adopted by an aunt and uncle who could not have made her feel more unwelcome.  They were married shortly after World War 2.  My father was a WWII vet and met my mother after he got back.  It was a set up but a mutual friend, but a good one.  My view of my parents’ marriage was that it was excellent, a model of what a good marriage should look like.  I have not changed that view at all.  But what I have changed is my view of them as individuals.  Unfortunately, my father died right before my 21st birthday, and I never really got to know him.  That was in large part due to adolescent and teenage selfishness on my part.  I forgive myself that because I believe it is something most, if not all, teens go through.  While teens we think how dumb our parents are, and when we get older, we discover how dumb we were.

My mother lived to age 89.  I firmly believe she could have lived longer if she had desired.  But I think she gave up living.  Along the way she had lost the only man she ever loved, and she adored him.  Of that there is no doubt.  Then she suffered the loss of a child when her son, my brother, died.  That almost killed her, literally.  At some point after that I decided to discover who she really was.  My mother was very tight-lipped, and did not care to talk about her childhood.  It was miserable so why would she?  Her father had deserted the family when she was only 4, and then her mother died when she was 11.  She was shuffled around between relatives, not uncommon in those days, until she settled with an aunt and uncle.  She graduated high school and went to a hospital that sponsored a nursing school and took up her profession.  She was, by all accounts, an excellent nurse, and it served our family well during some lean times we experienced.

I was so angry with my mother for years for doing this and not doing that.  But at no point did I stop to consider the tools available to her for bringing up a handful like me.  She called me a bull in a china shop, an apt description, as I was my own little force of nature when I was young.  I had to have my way which frequently collided with her having her way.  Seldom was it a question of right and wrong, just a question of who would prevail.  That made it difficult for my father, brother and sister to contend with but I don’t think either of us ever considered that very much.

In my 30s I suffered from a particularly severe case of depression.  Although I know the reasons, they are not germane to this.  What is important is that my mother did not take the news well.  I know now that at the time she viewed it as a failure of hers.  It was not, of course, but that was what she grew up believing.  I found out some years later that she had suffered an extremely severe case of depression of her own that required ECT.

Then I became a parent and had children of my own, three daughters.  I adore them but I know for fact that my good intentions do not always come across that way to them.  I am certain they have thought of me as intrusive, and not being sensitive to their desires.  It is this realization that let me know that I was indeed, in many ways, very much like my mother.  We parents have this tendency to take our children’s problems personally, and our distaste for something they are doing is really our fear that they will be hurt.  We do not always express ourselves well, and I know that was the case with my mother.  My mother had the extra problem of having virtually not support system when she was a young parent.

The human being has yet to be born who does not have one serious problem during their life.  Usually it’s many.  As parents we want only the best for our children.  We want them to have better lives than we experienced.  We want them to be happier.  We sometimes, foolishly, want to shield them from failure, sickness, and bad people.  That is simply impossible.

If your parents are still alive, get to know them all over again.  Ask them lots of questions about what they experienced when they were children and when they were your age.  I had to learn about my father through his sister because, as I said before, he died at such a young age.  And parents, just be sure to tell your children that you love them, and be big enough to admit that you are still capable of making mistakes.

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A Few Words of Advice to Gen Y From a Baby Boomer


One thing having lived a lot of years does for you, it gives you a ton of perspective.  Here are a few things I have learned along the way, only too often the hard way.

1.  Marry your best friend — That’s right!  The guy or woman you want is your best friend.  Marriages generally end over three things, money, trust, and communication.  Consider, that person you consider your best friend is a person you would hate to lie to, would trust with your life, and will tell pretty much everything.  And that is exactly the type of person, if not the person you want to marry.

(January 4, 2013 amendment)  A response I received to this section of this post, though maybe given a bit tongue-in-cheek, did none-the-less give me pause to think I had been less than clear, and that there is more to say.

From experience I known people say “we are just friends” and by extension say “why would I want to ruin a good friendship.”  The backdrop to such statements is the consideration of dating such a person, and that dating a friend might ruin a good friendship that you value.  I am asserting that such a belief is absolutely wrong.

If you are a woman and have some really good friends who are male, one of them may well be your best match as a partner in life, as a spouse.  The same is true for guys who might consider one of their best female friends.  My wife is also my best friend, and because of that I believe that it is the best combination possible.  Dating a friend cannot ruin a good friendship because real friends stay with you regardless of events.  If you truly are friends, dating such a person and then finding out the romantic feelings you need just are there should in no way hinder you from going back to being really good friends.  If anything, such an experience should only strengthen such a friendship.

2.  Make a career out of what thrills you — Our society sadly places a lot of emphasis on how much a person earns.  The thing is, what most of us want the most is happiness.  And that leads to the question of how happy can you be when you are making a ton of money in a job you hate?  At some point you burn out and start asking yourself why it was you got into that profession in the first place.  You ask yourself if it was really worth it.  When the time comes you can consider retirement, you should find it almost unthinkable as continuing in your chosen profession still thrills you.

3. Resolve all family issues — I have this saying, “all families are crazy, it’s just a matter of degree.”  I really believe that.  We only get one set of parents and they are gone too often too early.  My father died right before my 21st birthday, and I had so much left to say to him and talk to him about.  When my mother died, she was 89, I felt there was nothing I had left unsaid, and that felt really good.  You can pick your friends but you cannot pick your relatives.  That is not to say you have to be on good terms with all your relatives, but it is good to remember that the ones you would rather not see probably have no knowledge of your feeling that way. With such people politeness and kindness goes a long way, and requires nearly nothing from you.  And for those in your immediate family that you feel have done you some sort of egregious wrong, come to terms with the issue by either resolving it with the person involved, or, accepting that this person’s failure in your eyes needs to have minimal effect upon you as you go forth.  Do whatever it takes to make that statement true.  But at the end of the day, know in your heart that you have done your level best with your parents and siblings, and that nothing that needs saying, particularly “I love you,” is left unsaid.

5.  Make self-care a priority — This is the sort of selfishness that is in keeping with a healthy mind, body, and spirit.  It is natural for most people to think of other people first and themselves 2nd or 3rd or even lower.  That is always the wrong approach.  A healthy body is paramount to how a person feels about himself.  Eat properly, exercise moderately, and see a doctor and a dentist on a regular, scheduled, basis.  Being in your 20s is not a free pass for good health.  Women can develop breast cancer and cervical cancer in their 20s.  Men can get heart disease and diabetes in their 20s.  Worse, since during our 20s we feel the best about our general state of health, these diseases can go undiagnosed until they present a far greater health risk than would have happened with a regular checkup.  Also, pretty much everyone gets gum disease and cavities regardless of age.  People with the healthiest minds are those who realise the need to talk out their problems, regardless of the nature of the problem, with either an expert or someone they trust, a best friend.  Getting feedback on our problems requires us to consider what we are doing and that we might find a better way of doing things.  Or it might reassure us that we are doing the right thing or are okay.  And lastly, but maybe most importantly, we need to find a healthy outlet for our anxieties.  We need a healthy distraction that takes our attention away from weighty things and towards something that makes us feel good in a healthy way.  This needs to be practiced daily if possible, but be something we know we can turn to as needed.  Having taken care of ourselves in this manner, we find ourselves more appealing, more available, and more attentive to others, particularly those we love and care about.  It is difficult for anyone who is not healthy in any of these three respects, physically, mentally, and spiritually, to be at our best for those who need us.

6.  Never loan anyone money — This might seem a bit rash but it is not.  I remember years ago a guy who asked to borrow $5 from me with the promise he would pay me back.  He never has paid me back and I have never forgotten that.  He is also dead now.  What I knew, even before that incident, was that I should give the person the money requested with the understanding that they would not pay me back.  The only requirement I put on them is that the time will come that someone needs to borrow some money from them and when they give that person the money, I will have been paid back.  I also tell them I do not want to hear about how that happens for them.  Remember, it is impossible to cop a resentment over money you give away while it is far to easy to get resentful over money loaned and not repaid.

7.  Don’t worry over what people think about you — Everyone wants to be thought well of but that, of course, is an impossibility.  Regardless of where we are, there will be people who do not care for us.  Maybe they would even say they hate us.  The amount of weight that has is entirely dependent upon how we view it.  I know there are people who I do not want to be around and people who do not want to be around me.  I accept that.  Getting caught up in the reasons one person hates me, or whatever, is a fool’s task.  Short of asking them, I can never be certain.  I do need to ask myself why it is important for me to know and what I intend to do with the information if I were to get it.  I am most likely wasting time that could be better used in another direction entirely.  Being grateful for the friends I do have and being grateful for them is usually all I have to remember to make the fact that someone does not like me unimportant.

8.  Always have a Plan B — I actually learned this from my years on active duty in the army.  We used to like to say, “anything that can go wrong probably will, and at the worst possible moment.”  Keeping that in mind has told me that my initial plan, “Plan A,” may fail and that I will be well served to have a “Plan B” in the ready.  It doesn’t hurt to have a “Plan C” and a “Plan D” as well, depending upon how important success is.  Life loves to throw us curve balls which means we are going to be needing a “Plan B” a lot!

9.  Life is messy — This is the natural follow-on to the previous mention, having a Plan B.  Said Robert Burns in his famous poem “To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough,” said,

“But little Mouse, you are not alone,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often awry,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!”

We make the perfect plan and still things go wrong, people do not react as we would hope, the weather does not cooperate, and our family drives us nuts.  But think how boring life would be were it predictable.  That challenge comes from meeting life’s messiness with the belief that we can persevere if only we do not allow things to get to us.

10.  Don’t take your self so damn seriously! — A couple of things that can quickly get us into trouble is our thinking how important our belief is or, worse, how important it is for us to be right, or worst of all, how important we are.  Throughout the history of man, all of the most important people who have ever lived have all died, sooner or later, and yet the world has not only gone on without them, but has done quite well.  Most of us have certain very strong beliefs that we are willing to fight for.  The thing with beliefs is, they are each and every one quite personal and unique to one person, ourself.  That is, it is difficult to find anyone who agrees 100% with any one of our beliefs 100% of the time.  While it is good to have strong beliefs, convictions, it is also good to remember that belief which differ from our own are equally important to their owner and deserving of respect.  A person who laughs at himself easily, is one other people will listen to respectfully.  And a person with strong convictions who respects another person of equally strong convictions, though they may be in direct opposition to his own, is a person whose convictions will gain consideration by those of other beliefs.