Father’s Day is an extra special occasion at Quest for Eternal Sunshine. Our entire platform was initially created to support the launch of Quest for Eternal Sunshine—A Holocaust Survivor’s Journey from Darkness to Light, which I co-authored with my father, Mendek Rubin, based on an unfinished manuscript I found after he died in 2012. It was a truly magical father-daughter posthumous collaboration that altered the course of my life.

My father had Alzheimer’s during the last ten years of his life, but he never lost his enthusiasm for his spiritual journey. Even when he could rarely remember his own name, he spent much of his time viewing the poems, artwork and positive affirmations he’d created earlier in his life which he taped all over the walls of his room. He also cherished his well-read copy of the book, The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom, by Don Miguel Ruiz, carrying it around as if it was his guidebook.

I recently listened to The Four Agreements on Audible and was blown away by how alike my dad’s wisdom is to Ruiz’s, so Father’s Day feels like the perfect occasion to share some reflections. The Four Agreements came out in 1997, only a few years after my dad wrote his own story, and I’m sure it thrilled him to see revelations similar to his own articulated so succinctly and powerfully. Ruiz’s book eventually became extremely popular, selling over ten million copies in the United States alone.

In The Four Agreements, Ruiz explains how our worldview and beliefs are as arbitrary and illusory as any dream. Although they are never based on an objective reality, we believe them so completely because of how well trained we are by our families and society. As children, we learn to accept particular rules and values through a system of reward and punishment in the form of praise and approval for being “good,” and criticism and condemnation for being “bad.” As we start trying to make ourselves into the person we believe we should be out of fear of not being accepted, we quickly lose touch with our true nature, which causes endless suffering.

As a keen observer of the human mind and how easily it can be programmed to believe almost anything at all, my father was in total agreement with Ruiz. Much of his focus was on how we can—and why we must—liberate ourselves from blind, habitual faithfulness to our inherited conditioning. My dad wrote, “As I grew to understand the depth, strength, and destructive tendencies of my slavish devotion to my thoughts, I became outraged and despairing. Shouldn’t humans be free to choose and shape our own destinies? I wanted to shout, loud and long enough for everyone to hear, ‘We must not be willing to live forever as slaves to our limited minds and antiquated belief systems!’”

Both my father and Ruiz viewed emotional suffering as a wake-up call that can help us become aware of the countless “agreements” we’ve internalized from the outside world, including what is considered acceptable behavior, which characteristics are attractive versus ugly, and what success looks like. As Ruiz put it, “We search for freedom because we are no longer free; we search for happiness because we are no longer happy; we search for beauty because we no longer believe we are beautiful.”

Ruiz promises that if we dedicate ourselves to replacing our old agreements with the following four new agreements, we can begin to live our own truth and become free to truly enjoy our life:

1. Be Impeccable with Your Word
Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

2. Don’t Take Anything Personally
Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.

3. Don’t Make Assumptions
Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama.

4. Always Do Your Best
Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.

Reflecting on Ruiz’s four agreements, I see how my father naturally embodied them all. He understood the immense power of words to sow seeds of love or hatred; I can’t remember him ever saying a negative word about anyone. He always looked for the best in every person, striving to see them with fresh eyes, free from projected assumptions. More than anyone else I’ve ever known, my dad always gave his best effort to each moment. He paid extremely close attention to the task at hand, didn’t rush or multi-task, and no matter how focused he was on achieving his goal, he always savored the experience.

The Four Agreements gave me a new framework for seeing my father’s healing journey: as a process of consciously discarding the old agreements that caused him suffering and replacing them with new agreements that brought him peace and joy. The most transformative agreement that he committed to embodying every single day was, “To always have faith in the limitless power of love.” Over time, my father began to experience life just as Ruiz described: “What you will see is love coming out of the trees, love coming out of the sky, love coming out of the light. You will perceive love from everything around you. This is the state of bliss.”

So on this Father’s Day, as I hold my sweet dad in my heart with boundless appreciation and gratitude, I wish you all a beautiful, joyful, and love-filled weekend.

Myra

The Four Agreements for Father’s Day