Robert Muller: [GMW #2099] Global Day Of Visions And Dreams In The Memory Of Gandhi And Martin Luther King

Thursday, December 2, 2010

[GMW #2099] Global Day Of Visions And Dreams In The Memory Of Gandhi And Martin Luther King

Idea Dream - Robert Muller's Ideas 1 to 500

~ Idea 1299 Part 2 ~ 30 January 1998

Two years ago, John Denver visited me at the University for Peace, on his way to sing for hope to young people around the world. In my little wooden farmlet he went to the bathroom and I was waiting for him outside.

After a while he came out, with tears in his eyes and said to me: "Robert, you have rendered me a great service."

I looked at him astonished, and he answered: "I read your text hanging on a wall, 'Decide to Forgive' and it gave me the answer to a nightmare I am going through: my Australian wife has abandoned me, taking with her our daughter. I was desperate and did not know what to do. You gave me the answer: I forgive her."

Also, after a speech somewhere in the world, a lady approached me and said: "Mr. Muller, I was in Hawaii where I found your poem 'Decide to Forgive'. It changed my life because I decided to forgive the people who killed my husband. Ever since I have tried to do good work for the world and I found peace and happiness."

I expressed the hope that the Season of Non-violence will be repeated every year. I made the announcement that the Peace Monument of the University will henceforth be a monument to all known and unknown peacemakers in the world and a memorial to all peacemakers and peacekeeping personnel of the United Nations who lost their lives in the service of peace.

I also proposed that the United Nations should proclaim 30 January as an International Day of Visions and Dreams in memory of Gandhi and Martin Luther King who had both fundamental visions and dreams for the world.

Robert's The Miracle, Joy and Art of Living,
Volume II Chapter 4 - Of Positive Living
A positive human is one who has eliminated from his body the notion of sickness.
A positive human is one who has uprooted from his heart the notion of unhappiness.
A positive human is one who has suppressed from his mind the notion of age.
A positive human is one who has eradicated from his soul the notion of death.

UN News Sources - UN Chronicle, United Nations News Service , UN Wire News Archive
References: Earth Charter, Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Rights of: Children, Women, Indigenous People
To Be Written: Rights of Nature, Birds, Animals, Fish, etc.

I am so honored to send this to you..love, Barbara Muller
Link

TCV’s Caregiver of the Month of December
Barbara Gaughen-Muller

CONGRATULATIONS, Barbara Gaughen-Muller for capping off 2010 as
The Caregiver’s Voice Caregiver of the Month of December!

Barbara submitted her self-nomination after checking to see if The Caregiver’s Voice would consider a caregiver who recently lost her loved one. (Yes, we will, providing your loss is within a few months.) Barbara’s beloved husband, Robert, passed away in September and hers is an inspirational love story of how to make one’s last years happy ones despite the enormity of caregiving. (Ed.)
Barbara Gaughen-Muller reflects upon her late husband
(Barbara Gaughen-Muller, TCV's Caregiver of the Month)

The Caregiver's Voice Caregiver of the Month - Barbara Gaughen Muller

My dear husband passed exactly two months ago. I’m sitting in my favorite chair gazing at the garden he loved so much, in warm reflection of the many years we had together. I married the former United Nations Assistant Secretary General, Robert Muller, who spent an illustrious forty years working and writing for Peace and a Better World.

I remember the first time we met at a conference where his speech allowed me to see the optimism he held for a world he said was still in its infancy. His words thrilled everyone in the audience and inspired me too to the global challenge.
Seventeen magical and romantic years
We married shortly after and shared seventeen magical romantic years together. We traveled the world for speeches, shared workshops, book signings, and wrote 7,000 Ideas and Dreams for a Better World. I was always with this great spirited force on the planet; speaking and writing, and living in Costa Rica and Santa Barbara. We were true partners of hope for our beloved planet. We shared our passion and our love with our combined families that included six children and eleven grandchildren.

The sacred gift of caregiving is not easy and yet
the blessings are there to take with us to the end of our lives.

Our workshops went from a global view into the theme of his previous books on happiness and we were genuinely happy to be together.
He would forget he had just called me.
It broke my heart to see how this brilliant man, dedicated to saving our planet, became ill and began to forget things. I think it was our happiness seminars and speeches that sustained me for three difficult years. There wasn’t a moment when he was not calling my name. He would forget he had just called me, even when I answered over and over again, often loudly as his hearing was also failing. Every time he said my name, I found a strength that helped me smile and answer.

Two TCV Caregiver of the Month selection committee members, who are currently family caregivers, wrote:
This kind of love is a once-in-a-lifetime love.
Her story really touched my whole being with her devoted love for her husband. She triumphed in the complete meaning of the sacred gift of caregiving for someone with brain impairment. She placed herself in her husband’s world. Her last paragraph says it all. She is very inspiring.

Learned a whole new way to relate to him to make sure he was happy

(Barbara Gaughen-Muller and her beloved late husband, Robert Muller)

I had to learn a whole new way of relating to my husband and I was going to make sure he was happy. I had to be tremendously creative every day, taking him on drives, out to restaurants, to the beach, even if he forgot the next day. Each and every morning, I greeted him with a smile and put one of his DVD interviews on the television to remind him of who he was and made scrapbooks of his family and put familiar items in his room.
I was on call twenty-four hours a day as his primary caregiver. My decision to be happy helped me care for him and the sound of “Ode to Joy” from his harmonica which he played to his last day.
Every year we continued to celebrate his birthday at our favorite pizza parlor with friends and relatives. When friends came to visit, we watched old DVDs together.
He would often ask if we were married. He was delighted when I said, “You bet.”
I felt honored to help this great man in his last years, to love him in a different way, and when his time came, we were both at peace.

My decision to be happy helped me care for him.

Caregiving …a gift of love
He touched me, expanded me as a person, and I became stronger; developing a compassionate and caring nature for others, especially friends, who also are dedicated caretakers. The very thing that seemed so hard and challenging ended as a gift of love given and received, a strength that will stay with me forever. I am grateful for the memories and the way he touched my life. The sacred gift of caregiving is not easy and yet the blessings are there to take with us to the end of our lives.
Self-Nomination by Barbara Gaughen-Muller
Former Caregiver

Books recommended by Robert are here.
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