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Issue #11 by Viveca Monahan

For Eileen, whose golden heart beats tirelessly behind the scenes.
To hers I calibrate mine.

IN THIS ISSUE: When you start early to reflect on your year, you create the possibility that the best is yet to come.

• IDEA: You can gain new perspective on your own life by learning something new about another.
• TOOL: Create more space in your heart for another person with this Intentional Learning process.
• RESOURCES: Toward greater open-heartedness

IDEA: You can gain new perspective on your own life by learning something new about another

There are a lot of homeless people in our city. I don't know the exact number because I don't want to know. I heard the number is growing, but I'm not sure and I'm not going to look it up. There's this funny part of me that figures if I don't know the numbers, then things can't be so bad for people. If they were, I'd know about it, right?

There is a man who quietly stands outside my local grocer twice a month selling a little newspaper. I don't know how long he's been doing that since I've so often pretended not to see him. At some point I didn't have to pretend anymore because he eventually became part of the landscape like the melons and the shopping carts.

One Sunday the publisher of that little newspaper, Real Change, was the speaker at my church. He was funny, smart, and incredibly open-hearted. He told us a little about the newspaper's history and about some of the writing in it. He said there was a lot of poetry, commentary, and excellent journalism by and about people living on the street. He also told us that the vendors are homeless people who are trying to make a living, and are actually self-employed contractors. (The newspaper gives the vendor 10 free issues to get them started. The vendors then pay 30 cents for each additional issue, which they sell to the public for $1.)

I now regularly buy and read issues of Real Change. My husband told me he does too, and on those wet and chilly days he also buys the seller a hot chocolate. There's no charity here. Just folks connecting while conducting commerce among the melons and the shopping carts.

TOOL: Create more space in your heart for another person with this Intentional Learning process.

1. Think of a person outside your regular life for whom you have some judgement or maybe are avoiding. Write that person's name or description if you don't know the name. When you conjure up the image of this person what happens in your body?

2. What facts do you know about this person?

3. What assumptions are you making?

4. What if your life depended on your discovering something kind and true to say about this person? How would you discover it? Where would you look?

5. What could you do with this new information, were you inclined to do so?

RESOURCES: Toward greater open-heartedness

• The Beethoven Factor: The New Positive Psychology of Hardiness, Happiness, Healing, and Hope, by Dr. Paul Pearsall
• The Heart's Code, by Dr. Paul Pearsall
• www.realchangenews.org

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