By Carl Weber
Does our experience create who we are? Or does who we are create our experience?
Try this experiment. Next time you’re out of town, walk down a busy street with a stern expression. For two hours, go into stores and ask questions and engage people from this stern and withholding part of yourself.
Then for the next two hours, try the opposite. Smile and engage people from a much kinder stance. Act as though you are fortunate just to be alive and let yourself radiate courtesy and kindness. Try this experiment like your life depended on it.
Because maybe it does.
So what do you think? Does the type of person we are in each and every moment create what happens to us? Or does what happens to us lead to the type of person we become?
For more than 20 years, I have attempted to put this question to the test. I’ve attempted to experience many different contexts of life. I’ve spoken with almost every possible group and encountered people of every ilk. I’ve met people incarcerated in actual penitentiaries as well as in prisons of their own making, locked into addictions both legal and illegal attempting to fill the emptiness they feel inside.
As a result, I believe that who we are creates our experience. That a consistent willingness to be kind, courteous and compassionate as a lifestyle creates a very different life experience than a lifetime of withholding ourselves and playing small. The simple truth is that we attract that which we emanate. What we give in our life eventually returns to us. And integrity in every possible moment, though rarely worth it in the short term, always pays off in the long term. Dr. David Hawkins sums it up very well in his seminal work Power vs Force:
The nobility of man is in his constant struggle with his own unasked for existence in
a world which is a house of mirrors — his sole support, his faith in the process of life
itself.
Place your faith well.
Aloha and Peace, Carl
Dr. Carl Weber, B.P.E. (Hon), DC, is a chiropractor at Lake Cowichan Chiropractic, 85 Darnell Rd. Contact them at 250-749-3393 or check the out on the internet at www.lakecowichanchiropractic.com.