Dr. Romance writes: Disasters, wars and tragedies rivet the world's attention, and inspire many of us to give and to do whatever we can to help.
One of the things I’ve come to see as my life and career progress is that whatever we do to help even one person has far more influence than we can realize. Each person we teach, encourage, or help to heal is then empowered to carry that teaching, encouragement and healing on to others. The inspiring book and movie, both titled “Pay It Forward,” puts this concept in the form of a type of debt: instead of paying people back for what they’ve done for us (which isn’t always possible) the pay it forward concept urges us to pay the debt to others who need it.
This happens automatically when we learn from a great teacher, whether in person, through books, or by the stirring life example of role models such as Buddha or Mohandas Gandhi. I have been fortunate to have had a great mentor who guided me through re-formatting my own personality and beliefs, and then taught me how to be a caring and effective counselor. His teachings and examples are now part of my consciousness, and I use them to help others. All the great thinkers in psychology whose books I have read, like James Hillman and Thomas Szasz , also influence my work and their ideas pass on to my clients.
Then, those I have worked with use what they’ve learned with people I’ll never know. Clients can be teachers, too: I learn from my clients every day, and pay what I learn forward to future clients. Can you imagine the web of wisdom building as we all help one another with what we learn?
You are part of this web, we all are. Everyone who influences you positively was in turn taught by someone before them: the web stretches back to Plato, to Jesus, to Moses, to the great Arabic and Asian thinkers who first devised the numbers we use.
We all recognize that we can be influenced negatively, that we can be brought down by scary newscasts, violent and cynical movies and tv, but this web of positive influence is so much more powerful and important. “People and peoples come and go, live and die,” writes Robert Wright in Non Zero, “But their [ideas], like their genes, persist. When all the trading and plundering and warring is done, bodies may be lying everywhere, and social structure may be in disarray. Yet in the process, culture, the aggregate menu of [ideas] on which society can draw, may well have evolved.”
Whether or not you have children to follow after you, you will leave behind a legacy. It’s your positive influence on others, on life, and on this shrinking planet we live on, and it never dies. The web will remain, nurturing a supporting human life for as long as it exists, and your influence will be a part of it. © Tina B. Tessina, 2024 adapted from It Ends With You: Grow Up and Out of Dysfunction
For low-cost phone counseling, email me at [email protected]
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