April 10

  

Today's quotation:

This is the art of courage: to see things as they are and still
believe that the victory lies not with those who avoid the bad,
but those who taste, in living awareness, every drop of the good.

Victoria Lincoln

Today's Meditation:

There is so much good in this world that we simply do not see.  If we were to believe that the world is a reflection of our newspapers and newscasts, it would be a world full of crimes and death and destruction.  But when we consider how many days we've lived on this planet and how few real crimes we've actually witnessed (depending on where we live, of course), and when we consider the number of good and kind actions that we've seen that never have been in the papers, we start to see the world in a different way.

The good is here--it's all around us, just waiting for us to tap into it, to take from it, to contribute to it.  It's in people who care and who give all they can to others.  It's in the small acts of kindness and mercy that we see regularly.  It's in the people who volunteer to help others and the people who make a living by helping others, like doctors and firemen and police officers and teachers.

We can spend our lives avoiding bad things, doing our best not to have the unpleasant aspects of the world make their marks on our lives, but if we try to do so, we'll be backing away from life.  And when we back away from it we're backing away from the good as well as the bad.  Our greatest successes have come as the result of learning through many failures and setbacks, and it's important that we keep in mind that what we might see as bad may be a necessary stepping stone to get to the good.
Questions to consider:

Have you ever had something that you thought was bad turn out to be good?  How did that make you feel about your original evaluation?

Are there times when the need to avoid the bad outweighs the possibility
of missing potential good things?

How can we strengthen our awareness to include more of the good things of this world?
For further thought:

We must have courage to bet on our ideas, to take the calculated
risk, and to act.  Everyday living requires courage if life is
to be effective and bring happiness.

Maxwell Maltz
   
  

  

  




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