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PERSONAL REFLECTIONS & SELECTED ESSAYS |
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Enduring Life Themes
Don Tubesing 12/11/10
It is said that at about age 60 one can finally look back on life’s various disconnected events and see the fine silver threads that connect all the seemingly disparate commitments and random ventures of one’s life history. My life has certainly included an unexpected variety of efforts and interests. Here are a few of the threads that meld this unlikely hodge-podge of experiences together into a somewhat understandable and comfortable whole.
Living Out Core Beliefs and Values. My faith leads me to understand that, at its core, life is guided by a series of personal beliefs and priorities. Why are you here? (Purpose) What are you hoping for? (Goals) What do you believe is true? (Faith) What is most important? (Values and Priorities) Every element in life contains a serious religious/ethical side. Budgets and Calendars are moral documents that indicate how we spend our time and resources. Our life decisions must emerge from, and accurately reflect, our deepest help spiritual beliefs. It can never be otherwise. |
- The Whole Person Approach to Healing. My entire professional career as an educator has been characterized by the continued attempt to bridge the gaps between the helping professions of education, ministry, medical care and counseling. In every professional context, I have found myself encouraging an interdisciplinary approach to care-giving, seeking language and strategies that could allow helping professionals to touch the whole person, not just the portion for which each is specifically trained. I have been an interpreter, synthesizing and integrating theory and research from many fields and assisting care-givers to understand and appreciate the best insights from professions other than their own.
- The Entrepreneurial Author/Publisher. Throughout my multidisciplinary career, I have sought to translate substantive and complex subjects into understandable, practical and easy to apply concepts, in each case seeking to communicate to broad audiences in written form. This effort gave rise to my love of writing and publishing which developed into a career, begun in 1969 and continuing to the present. In addition to co-founding three successful publishing companies, I have consistently prodded potential authors to develop their ideas into finished form and have provided mid-wife assistance in giving those ideas birth in book form. It is still not unusual for me to say, “Hey, that’s a great idea for a book!” or “Why don’t you start a publishing company?” Sometimes people do take me up on that challenge!
- Community Service. My interest in making a positive difference, combined with a personal energetic ability to envision, organize and implement community service and outreach projects has given me great joy, led me into unexpected venues, provided stimulating new insight, and offered deep and abiding friendships with people both in my own communities and across the world. I consistently seek to enrich my own life experience by serving others and find that I am always deeply blessed in unexpected ways by the effort.
- Family and Friends. Connection in community is the arena that provides the space for the practicing of love. Consistently loving family and friends over time—both the commitment to reach out, and the willingness to receive—is an active choice and a life-long learning process essential to well-being, and central to a value-based life. I have been greatly blessed by the people in my life who have loved me and permitted me to love them, and I am deeply thankful.
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