Abandoned Shopping Carts

“Let’s wait a few more minutes for those who are late!”

Have you heard those words from numerous instructors of training sessions, leaders of seminars, chairmen of meetings, teachers, professors, managers, and so on? I have, lots of times. And, I suspect, so have you.

Don’t you just hate it?

Why should we penalize the earlycomers because of the poor time management of the latecomers? Shouldn’t we reward the good behaviour of those who are there on time by starting on time? Shouldn’t we train the latecomers to arrive on time by making them miss the first few minutes of the event?

I did that during my years as a technical trainer. I would announce to the class at the posted start time something like, “We will start the class on time, as a reward to you who are here, ready to go. To wait for the latecomers would be an insult to you.”

Recently I heard of a training department making an even grosser blunder. A class was cancelled, ten minutes into its designated time, because not enough students had shown up. This event, an information session, took place at an institution where a trainer had been hired to give orientation lectures about some new corporate procedures for part-time staff. Five employees had arrived at the classroom, but the organizers had expected twenty. Each of those part-time staff had made special arrangements to be there. They might have cancelled some other appointment in order to attend. They likely made arrangements on their home front, transported themselves to the building, perhaps paid a parking fee, and otherwise made the effort to attend. And the session was cancelled, due to poor attendance! What an enormous insult, inconvenience, and irresponsible disgrace!

And, guess what was the topic of the information session? “Treating clients with respect”! Can you imagine a worse example to set for such a session than to treat the clients—the students—with such utter disrespect as to cancel the class, blatantly ignoring the effort and expense that each person had expended just to show up?

Of course, this one incident by itself is not worth taking up two pages in a chapter titled “Civic Responsibility”. But the broader considerations do make it worth while. Consider your own civic responsibility to your clients, your family, your neighbours, your acquaintances. Think carefully about the logistics of events, especially from their point of view. Think about the planning that they had to do to participate in your event. Be aware of the impact of any agenda changes that you impose on them by surprise. Be especially considerate when planning for the demands of time that you put on them.

Please don’t make abandoned shopping carts of your clients, friends, and so on. Respect the time arrangements that you had agreed upon, and thereby respect those people. Do the right thing.

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Our biggest responsibility is a spiritual one.

You are not a physical body with a soul dwelling it. You are a soul being dwelling temporarily with a physical body.

Consider what your physical body is. It is a collection of chemical elements, configured as molecules, cells, tissues, fluids, bones, and so on. The scientific community generally agrees that every one of the nearly ten thousand trillion trillion atoms in a typical human body, comprising around one hundred trillion cells, gets replaced over the years—often cited as seven years. But at the very least, we know that skin can be scraped off and it regenerates, hair drops out and more grows back in, and blood may be lost and it gets replaced. Yet, through all of this physical change, we still maintain a sense of self; indeed, we know our identity and we know that it persists over the many changes over many years. We are still ourselves.

So clearly, we are not our physical bodies. Even if a leg or arm is amputated, we still know that we are the same person. Our memories reach in one continuous sweep back to childhood (and sometimes earlier, to previous incarnations) even though our physical bodies have undergone many changes.

So what are we? If we are not physical, then we must be non-physical. Such a state of being or form can be described as spiritual. We are spiritual beings. Our essence is often referred to as the soul, or the spirit, or the spirit body, or the psychic body, or other such terms. As C. S. Lewis wrote: “You don’t have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.”

My own preference is the term “soul personality”, following the Rosicrucian teachings. I am a soul personality. So are you. So is everyone.

We are soul personalities temporarily living with physical bodies. I say “with”, not “in”, because the soul personality not only permeates the body, but also surrounds it. In a sense, the body is in the soul personality.

So, with this in mind, it should be clear that the notion of personal responsibility extends beyond a caring for our mundane physical bodies and environment, to caring for our soul personalities and our spiritual environment. Ordinarily, religious institutions and their associated priesthood have been entrusted with those matters in our society. In the same way that our physical matters should not be entrusted to others, such as governments, teachers, or leaders, our spiritual matters should not be entrusted to a religious hierarchy, such as clergy, scriptures, or institutions. As modern, educated, mature persons, we should entrust only ourselves, our inner selves, our inner spiritual guides, with such important responsibilities.

We need to accept personal responsibility for our spiritual welfare. Don’t abandon it, as if it were a shopping cart. Study for your spiritual development, research it, honour it, and work on it, to the point that you can detect tangible spiritual growth, new understanding of Truth, and sublime inner contentment.