Spirituality Prompts

Question #1. What global issues and crises (e.g., global warming, mass migration) can challenge an individual’s values and ethics? What forums can an individual use to help better understand how to think, feel, and act?
Any issue of great importance, and certainly every crisis, forces people to make choices based on an evaluation of their personal values and ethics. One challenge to an individual’s belief system comes when their ethics and what they value does not align with what they feel they need. One example of this is the current global issue of inequitable vaccine distribution. Do the wealthier countries really deserve to get the bulk of the vaccines right now or should they be distributed equally worldwide? Or doled out based on need? Our desperation for our own safety and survival, as well as for a return to normal, will challenge our ethics and beliefs in what is fair.

Question #2. What gives you a sense of meaning and purpose in your life? Share what you can about what keeps you focussed on achieving.
Being a mother gives me the greatest sense of meaning, purpose, and feeling of connection to the human race. It also keeps me focused on achieving because I work to accomplish things not just for myself. Using my past experiences to help others navigate their current difficulties also gives my life meaning and purpose. Helping others to heal, grow, and thrive.

Question #3. What can challenge your sense of connectedness to others or purposes? How do you protect yourself from doubt?
Feeling misunderstood or not accepted can challenge my feelings of connectedness. At times I have fallen into the old “compare and despair” trap that social media makes it so difficult to escape these days. What helps me to reestablish a sense of connectedness is to “zoom in and zoom out”. Like looking through a lens, I “zoom in” on my life and look at the people and things that I do have in my life that fill me with joy and purpose, like my son, my parents, and my impending teaching career. Then I “zoom out” to put my situation in perspective. I picture myself sitting in my room, then in my building, then I zoom out further and picture the city my building sits in, and further to the whole United states. Then to earth sitting in space. Then again until I just picture the galaxy and I know that we are all sitting in it, together, going through our billions of different trials and successes in our own time. Some at the same time. No two lives alike. And this makes me feel connected again; to the human race.