Calendar: January 1 and January 3

For my 2008 desk calendar, I bought a page-a-day collection of quotations by the Dalai Lama. I did this for two reasons: As much as I love cats, I needed a change from the pictures of cats on my 2007 calendar; and I was ready for a calendar that could give me a little food for thought.

My plan is that when the sayings push my buttons, I will do my thinking about it here. I haven't exactly made any resolutions, but I am determined to practice my writing and thinking skills, and this is a good place to do so.

Andrews McNeel Publishing is the publisher of the calendar, in case they need their "plug" here.

For January 1, the calendar says: "The whole point of transforming our heart and mind is to find happiness. We all have the natural desire to be happy and the wish to overcome suffering. This is a fact, so we can make it our starting point."

What that points out to me is that every human on this rock wants the same things. We want good lives, we want good health, we want material needs and maybe a few comforts besides, and we hope our children can have more of the same when they are adults.

That being said, I will make my best effort this year to realize, whenever I disagree with somebody or really and truly dislike and disrespect someone, that the other person and I still agree about more things than we disagree about. There is someone I will see tonight, in fact, who is lacking in discipline in a way that affects the way she will run the two rehearsals I'm going to attend. My frustration has gotten to the point that I began praying for her for about a month ago. Clearly, she provides one place where I can apply my new insight.

If we could recognize our commonalities, and learn to tolerate our differences, this would be a different world - in our communities, our nation, and the whole planet. I have no influence over those folks in the Middle East who seem to thrive on intolerance and violence. But I can work on it myself. And I will.

The page for January 3 goes on about happiness. I am not going to try to quote it fully, but it says that the key to happiness is inner peace and the greatest obstacles to that are the negative emotions of anger, fear, and suspicion. Any negative emotion, I presume, would become such an obstacle; the possibilities are not limited to the ones he mentioned. The Dalai Lama goes on to say that love, compassion, and a sense of universal responsibility are the sources of peace and happiness.

I think love and compassion go together; a sense of universal responsibility could very easily be part of the package also. We are losing the idea that we live in a community; it's one for all and one for all now. All for one and one for all is disappearing. We can do whatever we desire, and we have the right to do it just because we can, and that ends the discussion. Whether it causes needless hurt, whether it destroys, whether it harms the larger community - none of that matters any more. To give up something you would like, or honestly believe you deserve, for someone else? Even for the whole community? Funky!

But then, if we all desire the same things for ourselves and our children, can we not give up some things for them? Can we change our driving habits, for instance, to try to help the environmental issues concerned with our gasoline emissions? Or do we think that's what other people need to do, but not us?

So what I conclude after pondering these two quotations from the Dalai Lama, a man whom I deeply respect, is not especially earth-shattering or brilliant, but we can't say it too often.

We are all in this together. It is time for us to understand that and act on it.