Chapter 13
Psalms of SAL
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| Dr. JJ as a wee lad Mesa, Arizona, Circa 1988 (age 8) Rising to the fullness of my potential has always been my life's greatest desire. |
Poetry has played an important role in this journey.
As a teenager and young man, I derived incredible inspiration and motivation from poems in the self-help and personal leadership genre. For example, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Builders and A Psalm of Life are two of my favorites. Similar works by other poets, like Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Rudyard Kipling, George Washington Doane, and others whose work appear in Roy J. Cook's concise anthology, One Hundred and One Poems, lit a raging fire underneath me that has been fueling my own personal life, professional career, and poetic pen ever since.
Click HERE for a complete listing of SAL-oriented poems that have inspired me over the years.
It was therefore natural that I would eventually start plying my own pen in personal leadership-oriented topics and themes. My Muse has been very generous in providing me with inspiration in this regard. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I usually don't have to work very hard to create my best stuff because my finest work as a poet typically just comes to me, compliments of my Muse. In admitting this, I don't mean to imply that producing my best work doesn't require a measure of creativity and effort on my part—it does—but often that key first line or two—and vital other aspects of a given poem—are simply placed in my mind by an external, metaphysical Source.
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| My Muse is real, and always elevates my work above my own finite capacity. |
All major religions and philosophies promote the importance of self-mastery and leadership. Christ taught to check one's own eye for a beam before judging another for his or her moat. Muhammad explained that, "the most excellent [struggle] is that for the conquest of self." The Buddha expounded, "As an irrigator guides water to his fields, as an archer aims an arrow, as a carpenter carves wood, the wise shape their lives." In the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu wrote of "the power ... [and] strength of character." (1)
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| The Confucian moral ethic forms a sound basis for the character education of our youth. |
"Just about anywhere you go in China, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan, Tailand, etc., you find moral instruction right before your eyes—often in letters (or characters) ten feet tall. ... These countries are constantly preaching values, morality, and good citizenship to their citizens in the form of slogans, posters, billboards, advertisements, and TV commercials." (2)
Reid further explained the pervasive presence of this Confucian-moral ethic in his daughter's public elementary school.
"The strongest lesson our kids took away from [their] Japanese school was something we hadn't counted on. They were taught to be little Confucians. That public school, like all Asian public schools, devoted endless time, energy, and ingenuity to the teaching of moral lessons: community virtues, proper social conduct, appropriate behavior as a member of a group. Confucius and his followers, after all, had insisted that virtue can be taught—indeed, must be taught if the society as a whole is to be a virtuous and civil community. Moral education was too important to be left to parents, churches, or Boy Scout troops [alone]. It was a job for the whole society to engage in. And this is what schools do, to this day, in East Asian societies. They teach reading, writing, arithmetic, science, and so forth, but at the same time they are busily turning out Confucian citizens, ... [learning] Confucian lessons considered just as essential: working hard, following rules, respecting authority, taking responsibility, and getting along with the group. ... There is no conception in East Asia that music and math belong in schools but moral values do not. Learning to do right is considered just as important as learning to add right." (3)
Dr. James G.S. Clawson, an Emeritus Professor at the University of Virginia's prestigious Darden School of Business has "come to believe that one of the biggest leadership issues is the inability of people—even and especially managers and executives—to lead themselves." (4) Whether we are discussing executives and managers, front-line employees, new-hires, college students, teenagers, or children, the universal importance and need—nay, the necessity—of character education and moral instruction is self-evident and never diminishes. Ironically, this self-evident reality is largely ignored by public and other schools throughout the United States and Western World. That is where Freedom Focused comes into play. It has been our single-minded focus for the past 20 years to model, teach, and promote character education and moral instruction in the West. So far, the West is not very interested in what we are offering. But, I am an eternal optimist; moreover, all things must come to pass in their time.
"I know of no more encouraging fact than man's unquestionable ability to elevate his life by conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts."
One of the many exciting things about SAL is that "what we achieve inwardly, changes our outer reality." (5) In other words, we have the power to improve our external circumstances by virtue of our inward achievements of character, effort, and focus—regardless of the challenges we may face externally. This fact does not negate or diminish the presence, reality, and challenge of forces beyond our control; but it does spawn enormous hope for positive and productive personal change, both internally and externally over time.
Speaking of HOPE, I hope you might find some inspiration and motivation from the following SAL poems I have written over the years. After all, Hope Springs Eternal!
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Dr. JJ, before he was a doctor, leads the pack 600 meters into an 800 meter race at Weber State University in the spring of 2003. Running and racing has been an important part of my life and identity. |
but to do what lies clearly at hand.
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| In the best shape of my life while running track in college. Spring 2003. |
From all that has been stopping me,
And I exult in all that will
Break forth into my life yet still.
There is still so much more to learn,
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| My first book on SAL, published in 2005, carried this phrase I am so passionate about. |
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| Thresa Brooks Middle School English Teacher Mableton, Georgia, USA |
I Am Special
Author's Note: This is the 339th Blog Post Published by Freedom Focused LLC since November 2013 and the 159th consecutive weekly blog published since August 31, 2020.
Click HERE for a compete listing of the other 338 FF Blog Articles
Click HERE for a complete listing of Freedom Focused SAL QUOTES
Click HERE for a complete listing of Freedom Focused SAL POEMS
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Tune in NEXT Wednesday for another article on a Self-Action Leadership related topic.
