January 21, 2010, page 33
CALLING DR. LOVE
SANDY HINDEN
JUST MIGHT HAVE
THE SEVEN KEYS
TO HEALING THE WORLD
JUST MIGHT HAVE
THE SEVEN KEYS
TO HEALING THE WORLD
BY DAVE GIL DE RUBIO
We live in a day and age where partisan sniping and power grabs dictate political policy. YouTube postings of people in compromising positions go viral to millions in a matter of hours and the purity of sports continues to be tainted by drugs and ego. So you might say Sanford Hinden and his idea that love can change the harsh direction in which the world and our society is headed might be a bit naïve and overarching. But then again, Hinden’s belief in love's ability to change modern life for the better is something he’s been working on for upwards of the past three decades. You need look no further than his recently released 7 Keys to Love: Opening Love’s Door (Whole Earth Arts), a project that started out as an attempt to understand the most basic of human emotions.
We live in a day and age where partisan sniping and power grabs dictate political policy. YouTube postings of people in compromising positions go viral to millions in a matter of hours and the purity of sports continues to be tainted by drugs and ego. So you might say Sanford Hinden and his idea that love can change the harsh direction in which the world and our society is headed might be a bit naïve and overarching. But then again, Hinden’s belief in love's ability to change modern life for the better is something he’s been working on for upwards of the past three decades. You need look no further than his recently released 7 Keys to Love: Opening Love’s Door (Whole Earth Arts), a project that started out as an attempt to understand the most basic of human emotions.
"I started writing about love because I was confused about love. What was love? It’s such a confusing thing," Hinden admits as he picks at a muffin in a Port Washington café. I was just married a couple of years. So I started collecting quotes about love, and I accumulated 800 pages that were each color coded for different sections with pictures that I had cut out. And so it became this amazing document of different types of love.” Hinden found time to rewrite this book not once but twice, finally settling on seven themes or keys of love being the backbone of his outlook: Self, Emotional, Physical, Family, Platonic/Altruistic, Creative and Spiritual-Universal Love. "As I started sorting all these quotes, they seemed to fit into those realms and cluster like constellations of similarity which I now call keys," he explains.
It’s no surprise that the first chapter starts with love of self and ends up rippling outward like concentric circles in the spirit of unity and brotherhood, something Hinden saw when he first started taking trips to the United Nations as a teenager growing up in the Bronx. It was here that the 63-year-old author found his inspiration in men like the late Secretary-Generals U Thant and Dag Hammarskjöld, along with his current mentor, Robert Muller. The 85-year-old Muller was an Assistant Secretary-General at the U.N. and is the current Chancellor Emeritus for the U.N. University for Peace in Costa Rica, which he co-founded. It’s his influence the inspired Hinden to use his free time away from his day job as Executive Director of the Dix Hills Performing Arts Center at Five Towns College, to not only complete his book, but get involved in a number of other organizations with socially driven motives. "I founded the Long Island Men’s Center in 2005, and what we’re doing is helping men and women help their families and communities," Hinden says. "I’m also on the board of the Lakota Youth Arts Center in South Dakota, and I’m on the advisory council of Families Advocating for Compassionate Treatment (Families ACT), which was founded in Santa Barbara, California, as a means of helping teenagers diagnosed with mental health and drug problems."
Hinden confesses to being a practical idealist whose experience as a community organizer has given him the tools to transform our society and our planet. And while he admits it is a tall order, he remains unbowed. "My methodology is to help heal individuals first, who’ll then work on strengthening their families, which in turn will help heal their communities," he explains. "The idea is this will eventually help the world, but it all has to start from within."
It’s no surprise that the first chapter starts with love of self and ends up rippling outward like concentric circles in the spirit of unity and brotherhood, something Hinden saw when he first started taking trips to the United Nations as a teenager growing up in the Bronx. It was here that the 63-year-old author found his inspiration in men like the late Secretary-Generals U Thant and Dag Hammarskjöld, along with his current mentor, Robert Muller. The 85-year-old Muller was an Assistant Secretary-General at the U.N. and is the current Chancellor Emeritus for the U.N. University for Peace in Costa Rica, which he co-founded. It’s his influence the inspired Hinden to use his free time away from his day job as Executive Director of the Dix Hills Performing Arts Center at Five Towns College, to not only complete his book, but get involved in a number of other organizations with socially driven motives. "I founded the Long Island Men’s Center in 2005, and what we’re doing is helping men and women help their families and communities," Hinden says. "I’m also on the board of the Lakota Youth Arts Center in South Dakota, and I’m on the advisory council of Families Advocating for Compassionate Treatment (Families ACT), which was founded in Santa Barbara, California, as a means of helping teenagers diagnosed with mental health and drug problems."
Hinden confesses to being a practical idealist whose experience as a community organizer has given him the tools to transform our society and our planet. And while he admits it is a tall order, he remains unbowed. "My methodology is to help heal individuals first, who’ll then work on strengthening their families, which in turn will help heal their communities," he explains. "The idea is this will eventually help the world, but it all has to start from within."
1 comments:
Sweet!
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