There is a beginning or a potentiality of goodness in human nature. Humans are rational beings and have moral sense and knowledge. The need we have long felt and which we are trying to meet here on this Earth is an idea of what it means to be alive, to face the fact of death, to discover our own self-hood and identity, to struggle to live significantly in a World such as ours. The situation is often gloomy. We try not to be, not because we do not see what is going on, but because there is a tremendous challenge in being alive today. Learning without thinking is labor scattered; thinking without learning is dangerous. Both learning and thinking are indispensable. Without learning there are no data for inquiry. Without thinking no principle or concept can be reached. We must penetrate more deeply and understand the sense of hearing and seeing do not always think and can be obscured by external things. When one thing comes into contact with another, as a matter of course, one leads the other away. To the office of the mind belongs the office of thinking. By thinking, it gives the right view of things; by neglecting to think, it fails to do this. Sometimes people are so focused on the external World, they cannot even comprehend their own senses, and they project them on to others. #RandolphHarris 1 of 12

When people possess an ability, but do not take the time to acquire learning by their intuitive sense, they may be out of touch with the reality of others. Sometimes the sense a person is feeling is unique to them, and not share by others. For example, one may feel an attraction to someone and assume that that person is attracted to them, but there may actually be no chemistry on the other side, which is why we have communication, so we can check our assumptions before assuming they are facts. Communication saves people from being hurt, embarrassed, or from leading themselves on. We try to paint the background of existence with a broad brush, using whatever colors we find in nature. The foreground and details are painted with a finer brush, often dipped in the lifeblood of existence. The foreground and details are painted with a finer brush, often dipped in the lifeblood of existence. We deal with hopelessness, not by catering to it, but by confronting it with what we continue to find all about us: hope springing significantly—if not eternally—from countless human hearts. In spite of the welter of confusing cries and curses, there is hope in the fact that the words come from human voices, not television speakers alone, nor alone from computerized feedback units, nor just from the printed page. #RandolphHarris 2 of 12

In all the hatred and violence we pray we find hope, because real human beings are refusing to cop-out a plea of instinctive aggression or economic determinism. They are still willing to wrestle with the facts of learning and feeling and working problems through. The perception of beauty strengthens the representative activity of the soul and makes it more perfect, thus causing a feeling of pleasure. The perception of beauty causes intuitive knowledge; in its highest stage it becomes the aesthetic illusion in which, for example, fable appears as reality. Hope is to be found in people who are willing to struggle to keep meaning and significance alive-and-well in their lives. These are the people who cry out that though they may die with a whimper, they are determined not to live with one. These are the people, the human people, the meaningfully existing selves-in-becoming. These are the people who are doing their human thing in their own way, who come into our lives, classrooms, social scenes, and consulting rooms and who give us the spark by which to see the hope. “For behold, the Lord has blessed them so long with the riches of the World that they had not been stirred up to anger, to wars, not to bloodshed,” reports Helaman 6.17. #RandolphHarris 3 of 12

We want to give people some idea of the importance of life and of living it fully, experimentally, excitingly. You have only this one short life. Turn on to it. Drugs, gurus, flowers, Zen riddles, and fast cars do not make it; living fully, openly, as a full-fledged, full-functioning human being does! Are you asking God to give you life, liberty, and joy? Once we face the strain in life, we will immediately get the strength. It is also important that we acknowledge the thousands of people, friends, and loved ones that have added to our lives and insights. We can grow with each contact we make. And one of the few obligations we have in life is to share that growth with others. Amazing though it may seem, in a World of nearly eight billion people we can still be cold and lonely, unless we know of and acknowledge the love and caring of others. Your aches and pains, poor sleep, or lack of stamina may be the early warning signs of unresolved stress on your body. You are probably pushing yourself too hard, perhaps as a result of some internal pressure to perform. Rarely are symptoms such as these related solely to the aging process. If you leave them unresolved, you are opening the door to physical decline. The body is designed to communicate with us, to help us achieve mind-body balance. #RandolphHarris 4 of 12

Busy, achievement-oriented people find it difficult to give up control over the body. There is an agony and ecstasy of being fully and wonderfully alive. To be a person is to be unique and at the same time to know of our kindship with every other living thing. To be a person is to be independent and dependent and interdependent. To be a person is to know that we have needs and motives, that we learn value, love, work, play, adapt, maladapt, feel good, feel bad, feel right, feel wrong. To be a person is to know that we must live. Each of us needs to live experimentally. This means taking the customary, the traditional, the usual, and subjecting it to the experimentation of living experience. We are all very much alike in the sense of being living, breathing, loving, bleeding, climbing, slipping, human creatures whose selfhoods are always in the frustrating process of becoming. We are all unique in that we will have to live our lives in our own way, on our own terms. Life goes on and may we all catch a good ride. “In the days when the seventh Angel is about to sound his trumpet, the mystery of God will be accomplished, just as he announced to his servants and prophets,” reports Revelation 6.7. What we do not know is what God’s compelling purpose is, but whatever happens, we must maintain our relationship with him. #RandolphHarris 5 of 12

Sooner or later someone is going to catch the imagination of these people with some new magic. At the bottom of it will be a promise of regaining the feeling of participation, the feeling of being needed on Earth—Hell, dignity! The wish for immortality or prolonged life may be a universal wish, but no scientific evidence has yet to produce a person who has lived forever, and only a few who exceed ordinary lifespans by a couple of decades. Existential anxiety—the fear and dread of death—may be one of the most basic fears in human beings. Indeed we are finding evidence that it underlies many other kinds of anxiety. People have all sorts of ways of cushioning or even avoiding a realistic acceptance of the fact of death. Many people put it out of their thoughts by alluding to their youth: “Death? Oh yeah, when you are older. Me? I am 18 (or 25 or 60), and my life is just beginning. I am going to live a thousand years.” If Anne Rice was God, maybe that would be possible. Some people use religious faith: “Sure, I will die; it’s God’s will. However, there is a God and there is a Heaven, and since I am saved, I have got a nice cushy place waiting for me up there. What is the big deal?” Others block out death: “I am gonna live fast and furious, death is gonna have to have a 747 jet to catch me!” #RandolphHarris 6 of 12

Do a little soul-searching. The urge (and ability) to leave a beneficial mark on the World is nature’s way of elevating us to the plane of self-discovery. The call of God can never be understood absolutely or explained externally; it is a call that can only be perceived and understood internally by our true inner nature. Some people are so frightened by death that they absolutely refuse to let the thought of it enter their consciousness: “Why must you dwell on it? Do not speak about it; it is bad luck. Me, I never think about it.” Some people who notice these disturbing feels of mortality panic, worried that something is severely wrong with them. They feel too old to be searching for answers to the mysteries of life, death, and the meaning of existence, especially if they dealt with these issues in the past. They may numb themselves with liquor or drugs: “Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be. Drink up; trip out! With what we got in us, we can take on death and anybody he brings alone to help him!” Those are rough games and the competition is not very equalized. If we do not struggle to find more satisfying answers to these fundamental questions during our midlife journeys, we risk facing old age with fear and anger as our main companions. #RandolphHarris 7 of 12

Some escape into some form of mental illness and thereby beat death to the punch by assuming a living death type of existence: “That old Grim Reaper will not find me out here on the funny farm.” Trouble is, “he’s” been there quite often. If we can begin to wrestle with our mortality, we open ourselves to a spiritual awakening that makes the second half of life a deeper, richer experience than we imagined possible. Sometimes we are struck over the many different ways we see others being able to breathe new life into their spiritual lives. Some study sciences with the hope of gaining spiritual insight from recent findings about the way the subatomic World works. Others return to the traditions and teachings of the religion they were taught as children, and reexperience those rituals and writings at a deeper spiritual level. Some people who rediscover spirituality do so after they have themselves up to the glories of nature, and those who studied many religions with the idea of creating new belief systems if their own. There is no limit to the methods by which one can tap into peace and meaning. Truth is where you find it. Rest assured that the spiritual journey we are on has many rewards independent of the answers we seek. Existential thinking is that each of us is going to die. The only choice we have in the matter is when. #RandolphHarris 8 of 12

If we choose to live until we die, naturally, then we tacitly acknowledge that we have only so much time and that we do not even know just how much. Since life is not open-ended and since we do not know how long it will last, had not we better do some living? Find ways of making the most of the time we do have? Discover the meaning in every single event in our lives, so we can do some choosing and attempt to develop the most significant aspects of our existence? Should we waste a precious moment? Can we not squeeze a whole lot more pleasure and significance out of this life that is, as the Existentialists say, all we have? People interested in human behavior need to consider the importance for a person’s life and one’s attitude toward death. People who have stressed their fears and anxieties about living, wondering whether any life that would end in nothingness could be worth living. Existential psychology has many followers. Humanistic psychologists work not only with those who are emotionally disturbed, but also with people who have more ordinary problems in living. Our present concern is living fully and fully living. It takes as its premise that our lives are finite, and that it will end someday. Human beings can actualize (bring into actuality) their hidden potentials for self-hood. #RandolphHarris 9 of 12

We can grow by experimentally, by continually challenging ourselves and our environment, by taking risks, by experiencing the unknowns, and by showing the courage to be. If we choose to live, we choose not only joy and love, peace and fulfillment; we must also accept the other ingredients in the package: pain, anxiety, conflict, hurt, anger, fear, frustration, and eventually passing into Heaven. “If you keep the commandments of God, and do with these things which are sacred according to that which the Lord does command you, (for you must appeal unto the Lord for all things whatsoever you must do with them) behold, no power on Earth or Hell can take them from you, for God is powerful to the fulfilling of all his words,” reports Alma 37.16. Human beings are not only capable of observing and reporting on human behavior objectively, but of introspectively reporting on one’s own subjective experiences. Humans are also capable of experiencing themselves as a self, as a person, using all the techniques and methods of gathering together what is True, or factual, and making it Real, or personally meaningful. Many people are pragmatic. They have been raised on a diet of goals, purposes, functions, and success versus failure. They look for the point or purpose or use in every action, word, book, film, play, and experience. #RandolphHarris 10 of 12

Our culture has conditioned us—and very well, too!—to seek the practical reason why in virtually every important sphere of our lives. God places his saints where they will bring the most glory to him, and we are totally incapable of judging where they may be. “Let those who suffer according to the will of God commit their souls to him in doing good,” reports 1 Peter 4.19. Most of us design our work so that we can always demonstrate that there is a purpose to be found, a task (always noble) to be done, an end result to show for our efforts. Similarly, our schools get caught up in the need to educate students to answers previously written questions on an exam so that grades can be given and diplomas or degrees awarded and transcripts forwarded: all to show that the educational process works and has purpose and is thereby justified as significant. The lives of religious people are filled with similar concerns: sermons must have key points and a final summary (a justification for the sermons?); our rituals must demonstrate their effectiveness; offerings must go somewhere; churches are still judged successful if their programs work well enough to bring in larger numbers of members. Ask yourself what is special about your own holy moments. What truth was communicated to you? What did your soul receive from the experience? #RandolphHarris 11 of 12

As human beings, we are capable of reflecting on the mysteries of life and of celebrating the magnificence we find. When we are able to actively replay our holy moments at will, we find that our connection to the deeper, more meaningful side of life becomes part of our daily existence rather than a once-in-a-blue-moon stroke of luck. When we discover the power of our holy moments, we discover a well that will renew our spirit and keep us fully alive. In economic, governmental, and other social institutions, there has to be a working structure with specific functions demonstrably serving general functions. Accounts must be kept, and results or reports must be made periodically to let someone know that everything is working well. Purposive Pragmatism, the eternal seeking for the Reason-why or the goal-in-justifiable-terms, while not totally bad or unhealthy, is what ties so many people up. It keeps them from experiencing life and its fascinations, from undertaking any project—be it a course in Anthropology or creative writing, a hobby or sport, a civic service, or recreation—unless they can find a socially valid answer to the question “What for?” The person who expresses a desire to take up golf invariably finds it necessary to add, “The exercise would be good for my health,” not “Because I have always wanted to.” Holiness is not simply what God gives me, but what God has given me that is being exhibited in my life. #RandolphHarris 12 of 12