The 7 Sustainables

We live in a time that calls for radical honesty about the nature of life and what it means to commit to a sustained relationship with our lived experience. The hope is that the seven sustainables offer a way to live more deeply while preparing the way for future generations.
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More than ever, it appears to be critical to get clear about what it means to create a sustainable relationship with life. We advocate being educated; acquiring wealth, fame and popularity are regularly endorsed as ways to approach life. We may need to move beyond the bankruptcy of an ego orientation toward life where we are allegedly doing life. This new approach to life entails getting honest about the nature of life and what it might take to create a meaningful and sustainable relationship to it. It may be a bit challenging to get honest about life as essentially about change and uncertainty. However, if we can accept that, we can then explore what it takes to have a relationship with such a journey. There appear to be at least seven conditions that help to sustain a relationship to mystery and change: authenticity, compassion, gratitude, integrity, simplicity, courage and generosity.

Authenticity

A commitment to authenticity entails living a self-examining life and speaking the truth about who we are whenever possible, except when it creates undue harm to ourselves or others. Some helpful discerning questions regarding whether or not we should have an authentic voice include: Is there a hidden agenda attached to what I'm going to say? Does my statement reflect my perceptions and feelings? Is what I'm going to say absent of blame and ridicule? Am I able to bring a measure of compassion to the content and tone of my message?

Becoming effective at speaking authentically means being willing to do it imperfectly. We will either fall short with either the amount of truth spoken or the amount of compassion accompanying what is said. Although we are constantly changing, authenticity allows us to have an honest relationship with ourselves. It may simply mean being genuine about what we feel, desire or believe in any given moment. Although relationships are also in constant flux, authenticity offers the opportunity to be trusted, loved and chosen by others.

Compassion

We can say that compassion is at least the ability to hold sympathy for the suffering of others, for suffering we might inflict upon others and for our own suffering. My old friend Henri Nouwen said, "There's no truth without compassion." There are two ways we can see the importance of Nouwen's statement. The first is that we stop seeking the truth about who we are, if we don't hold what we discover with compassion. It is simply too painful to constantly shame and ridicule what our introspection reveals about ourselves. Without compassion we become strangers to ourselves, making our experience of change and uncertainty almost unbearable and setting us up for anxiety and depression, or some way of self-medicating.

The second implication to Nouwen's statement is that others will gradually avoid us if we don't soften our truths with compassion. Softening happens as the tone and content carry an implicit consideration of a differing view. Softening also occurs as our messages lack any criticism of the listener's character. Compassion allows us to get close to ourselves and allows others to get close to us. We do not have to endure the arduous challenge of facing life's changes and mysteries alone.

Gratitude

An old definition of the word "gratitude" is "deserving good will." It is worth asking: What happens to us when we do not notice what deserves good will? Similar to any relationship, when we do not notice what in life deserves good will, we fall prey to indifference, anger and feeling like a victim. From indifference we no longer have an active relationship with life. We go through the motions of daily living, deeply alienated from the pulse of life. From anger, we protest and complain about life. A victim's position has us oppressed and injured by life. There is nothing in these three energies that helps us to mobilize what we need to face change and uncertainty.

When we remain in gratitude for our lived experience, we define ourselves as a beneficiary of life. By definition, gratitude defines us as active recipients of life's offerings. Our relationship to change and uncertainty soften as we expect to receive support, love, beauty and learning from our lived experience. In gratitude, we hold the faith that life will make some offering to us that deserves our good will.

Integrity

Integrity means we are making choices that are congruent with what we love and value. It is inevitable that we will fall out of integrity, as we act in a way that is not compatible with what we love or value. Being capable of being in or out of integrity is a significant measure of maturation. It suggests we have diminished a childhood attachment to pleasing, and we are now acting or not acting in accordance with what we truly believe.

A commitment to live as much as possible in integrity offers us a GPS while traveling a changing and uncertain journey. Rather than attempting to pursue the unattainable, like ultimate truth, or accessing some paramount level of consciousness, we are striving to remain aware of what we love and value, and do our best to have our actions reflect our principles. We will wander from the path we call ourselves. The big deal is not whether or not we wander away from ourselves, what's important is being able to summon enough awareness to know we have separated from ourselves. Also, to be able to identify the resources we need to move back to acting in accord with our values.

We have little or no control of people, places and things. A devotion to integrity keeps us focused where we do have power. We can become effective at knowing what truly matters to us and whether or not we are making choices that reflect our deep concerns. The key of course remains whether those deep concerns are truly ours or borrowed.

Simplicity

Simplicity is critical to sustaining a relationship with change and mystery. An old definition of the word simplicity is singleness of nature. It does not denote naiveté or simple-mindedness, but rather single-attentiveness. Simplicity makes multi-tasking quite dubious. The Industrial Revolution invited us to become intimate with machines and our current technological advances intensify that invitation. The more intimate we become with our machines, the more we decide it is advantageous to be like them. We begin to jeopardize the essence of our humanity. Instincts, emotion, imagination, intuition, living in the present and even wisdom, become extraneous and insignificant. These reflections of the human condition are simply incompatible with our adoration of the mechanistic.

A devotion to simplicity or being singularly attentive offers a great deal as we cope with life's non-permanence. There are several significant benefits to a life of simplicity. It becomes easier to live in the moment where we are singularly attentive. Those we encounter experience our undivided attention, which tends to build trust and rapport. We more easily grow an acceptance for what lies beyond our immediate attention rather than dwelling on what is out of our control. Deepening a capacity for acceptance tends to strengthen our ability to feel gratitude for what is rather than lamenting what is not.

Courage

A relationship with life is like a relationship with a lover. It will take courage to endure the hard times. We can think of courage as the willingness to know and act in honor to what our hearts call us to. There will be the ever-present fear whether we are called to act or let go and surrender. Life simply will not offer us untarnished clarity and permanence. Hence, we are called to have an ongoing relationship with risks.

We are asked to take action, uncertain about the outcome, over and over again. Taking a risk often takes us somewhere we have not been before. We are allowing life to touch us, deepen and broaden us. We can begin to become more risk friendly, as we understand that our real fear is not the risk we are entertaining. Rather, the actual fear is how we might treat ourselves if the outcome of a risk is unfavorable. Events do not go according to plan, and many of us beat up on ourselves with ridicule and self-diminishing thoughts. The more willing we are to learn to forgive ourselves in the light of some adverse outcome to a risk we take, the more risk friendly and life friendly we become.

Generosity

Generosity connects us to the vital life force of giving. We remain in an intimate relationship with life when we choose to see needs around us and make some offering. Our life's purpose depends upon some awareness of what we are supposed to give. A devotion to making an offering unfolds glimpses of our purpose, lifting us out of either a compulsion to consume or an insatiable emptiness.

We typically think of being generous with our money or helping out at the Church Bazaar. We can take generosity to a new dimension by asking: How generous am I with my attention? How generous am I with my empathy? How generous am I with offerings of acknowledgement and encouragement? How generous am I with my compassion? How generous am I when it comes to offering a welcome?

Generosity can be something we settle into consistently amidst change, as we remain devoted to making offerings that serve others. When change challenges the credibility of the human condition, generosity can restore faith in humanity. Much may be uncertain, but generosity continues to clarify what is truly important.

We live in a time that calls for radical honesty about the nature of life and what it means to commit to a sustained relationship with our lived experience. The hope is that the seven sustainables offer a way to live more deeply while preparing the way for future generations.

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