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26 May 2009
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I am always
content with what happens, for I know that what God chooses is better
than what I choose.
Epictetus |
Destiny
is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice; it is not
a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.
William
J. Bryan |
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No matter
what accomplishments you achieve, somebody helps you.
Althea Gibson |
We
don't know who we are until
we see what we can do.
Martha
Grimes |
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Rewards
and Service
Earl Nightingale
If
any person alive is discontented with his or her rewards,
they should examine their service. Action;
reaction. "As ye sow, so shall ye
reap." What you put out will determine what you
must get back in return. It's so simple, so basic, so
true--and yet, so misunderstood.
If a
business is not expanding to the quick and exciting tempo of
the times, it must examine its contribution--its
service. If a person is unhappy with his or her
income, that person must examine and reevaluate his or her
service.
Now,
whom do we serve? Each of us serves a portion of
humanity. And humanity, to any given person, is the
people with whom he or she comes in contact. It is
family, friends, neighbors, coworkers, customers, prospects,
employers--all those one has chosen to serve.
Everyone--everyone with whom we have any kind of contact--is
to us humanity. And our rewards will be determined by
the extent to which we serve.
Never
before in the history of the world have human beings been so
interdependent. It is as impossible to live without
serving others as it would be to live if others were not
constantly serving us. And this is good. The
more closely knit this interdependence becomes, the greater
will be human achievement. We need each other, and we
literally cannot live without each other.
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Every time
we strike a match, drink a glass of water, turn out the
lights, pick up the telephone, drive our car, put on our
clothes, take a bath, mow the lawn or go fishing (try making
your own fishhooks sometime), we're being served by other
human beings. Every time we look at our watch, we are
being served by a great industry, and by the efforts of
thousands of human beings.
We
all seek rewards, and we should understand that rewards come
in two forms: tangible and intangible. That is,
rewards include the money we earn, the home we buy, the car
we drive, the clothes we wear; and they also include our
happiness, our peace of mind, our inner satisfaction, the
people we meet and enjoy.
But
remember this: Whatever you seek in the form of
rewards, you must first earn in the form of service to
others. All attempts to sidestep this law will end in
failure, frustration, and ultimately, demoralization. . . .
To
come up with ways to increase your service, read books on
your specialty; read what others have found to work well for
them. At the same time, think of original and creative
ways to increase your service--ways that are unique with you
and the way you are.
Going
at it strong for a week or a month and then falling back
into old habits is just like working for a week or a month
on a plot of ground and then abandoning it. Before
long, it will be no better than before.
Each
morning, and during the day, ask yourself this
question: "How can I increase my service today,
knowing that my rewards in life must be in exact proportion
to my service?" Do this every day, and you will
have started to form one of life's most valuable habits. . .
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If
you're worried about your income or your future, you're
concentrating on the wrong end of the scale. Look at
the other end; concern yourself only with increasing your
service--with becoming great where you are--and your income
and your future will take care of themselves. Don't be
like the person sitting in front of that empty fireplace and
asking for heat; you're asking for the impossible.
Pile in the wood first. The heat will come as a
result.
Next
time you're off by yourself in a quiet place, contemplate
your plot of ground, your life, and begin to sow the seeds
that will yield you a rich and abundant life.
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Eyes
Wide Open
tom walsh
Bad
Parking
My
wife and I were walking through the parking lot at the
supermarket the other day when we noticed one of those
huge pick-up trucks that almost no one in the world really
needs, parked a good foot and a half into the next parking
space. There was plenty of room in its own space,
but the driver had chosen to park very poorly and make
sure that no one could use the space next to theirs.
"It
takes all kinds," was my first response, because I've
spent years trying to get past a lot of the judgmental
tendencies that I was taught while I was young.
"What a shame that people have to do things like
that," my wife offered.
I
stopped and thought about it for a few seconds, then
looked around at the rest of the parking lot. There
were a good five hundred cars in it at that hour, and from
the looks of it, 99% of them were parked well--their
drivers had shown the courtesy necessary to park in a way
that still allowed other people to park. "Think
about it," I said. "Four hundred
ninety-nine people have parked well, and one individual
parks poorly and we start using the word 'people' to
describe the driver." Because the simple truth
of the matter is that when we see one person doing
something rude or obnoxious, we forget about the thousands
of people who aren't doing something rude or obnoxious.
When a
driver cuts us off in traffic, we tend to be more likely
to say "Why do people drive like such idiots?"
rather than "Why is this particular person driving so
poorly at this particular time?" I've been
driving for many years, and the percentage of good drivers
FAR outweighs the percentage of poor drivers.
"People" don't necessarily drive poorly, but
individuals do.
Why is
it so easy to generalize negative things to all people,
when most people are kind and considerate and thoughtful
at least some of the time? I wish I had an answer to
that--my guess is that it has something to do with
avoiding conflict with individuals, even if the conflict
is just in our minds. It could also have to do with
our ego's tendency to want to set ourselves apart from
everyone else, for that's how the ego thrives, by getting
us to focus on how separate we are, how different we
are. As with most things, it's probably a
combination of many factors.
I do
see the results of such thinking, though. It gets
quite easy for us to be judgmental and to find things that
are "wrong" with others, and the more we do
that, the more we put ourselves up on a pedestal that
keeps us separate. We're also far less likely to see
the positive side of things if we keep focused on the
negative--my wife and I almost didn't notice the many cars
that were parked well because the car that was parked
poorly captured our attention. Once we fall into
this trap, how many of the wonderful things in the world
do we miss because we're focused on the things that may
not be so wonderful?
Try it
sometime--the next time you're out and about, notice how
quickly it can affect you when someone cuts in front of
you without saying "excuse me." Notice how
much longer that negative feeling tends to last than the
good feeling that came when someone else did the same
thing but excused themselves.
What
this comes down to, of course, is a matter of
choice. What do we choose to focus on? And if
we focus on something negative, does it hinder our view of
the positive? Do we lose sight of the beauty and
wonder around us because of one individual's actions, even
if what that person does definitely is abnormal? Our
lives are ours to live, and the way we see our world is up
to us. The next time you see someone doing something
that seems rude, look around and see how many people
aren't doing rude things--you may find out that the rude
person truly is an exception, and not really worth the
time or effort or energy that we spend thinking about him
or her.
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A
Parable
Megan McKenna
There
was a woman who wanted peace in the world and peace in her
heart and all sorts of good things, but she was very
frustrated. The world seemed to be falling
apart. She would read the papers and get
depressed. One day she decided to go shopping, and she
went into a mall and picked a store at random. She
walked in and was surprised to see Jesus behind the
counter. She knew it was Jesus because he looked just
like the pictures she'd seen on holy cards and devotional
pictures.
She
looked again and again at him, and finally she got up her
nerve and asked, "Excuse me, are you Jesus?"
"I
am."
"Do
you work here?"
"No,"
Jesus said, "I own the store."
"Oh,
what do you sell in here?"
"Oh,
just about anything!"
"Anything?"
"Yeah,
anything you want. What do you want?"
She
said, "I don't know."
"Well,"
Jesus said, "feel free, walk up and down the aisles,
make a list, see what it is you want, and then come back and
we'll see what we can do for you."
She
did just that, walked up and down the aisles. There
was peace on earth, no more war, no hunger or poverty, peace
in families, no more drugs, harmony, clean air, careful use
of resources. She wrote furiously. By the time
she got back to the counter, she had a long list.
Jesus took the list, skimmed through it, looked up at her
and smiled. "No problem." And then he
bent down behind the counter and picked out all sorts of
things, stood up, and laid out the packets.
She
asked, "What are these?"
Jesus
replied, "Seed packets. This is a catalog
store."
She
said, "You mean I don't get the finished product?"
"No,
this is a place of dreams. You come and see what it
looks like, and I give you the seeds. You plant the
seeds. You go home and nurture them and help them to
grow and someone else reaps the benefits."
"Oh,"
she said. And she left the store without buying
anything.
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From
Walden
Henry David Thoreau
We
must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by
mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn,
which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I
know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable
ability of people to elevate their lives by conscious
endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a
particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a
few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve
and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we
look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality
of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every person
is tasked to make his or her life, even in its details,
worthy of the contemplation of their most elevated and
critical hour. If we refused, or rather used up, such
paltry information as we get, the oracles would distinctly
inform us how this might be done.
I
went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to
front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could
not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die,
discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live
what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to
practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I
wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to
live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that
was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive
life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and,
if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and
genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the
world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and
be able to give a true account of it in my next
excursion. For most people, it appears to me, are in a
strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or
of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it
is the chief end of man here to "glorify God and enjoy
him forever."
Still
we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we
were long ago changed into humans; like pygmies we fight
with cranes; it is error upon error, and clout upon clout,
and our best virtue has for its occasion a superfluous and
evitable wretchedness. Our life is frittered away by
detail. Honest people have hardly need to count more
than their ten fingers, or in extreme cases they may add
their ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity,
simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as
two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a
million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your
thumb-nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of
civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and
quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for,
that people have to live, if we would not founder and go to
the bottom and not make our port at all, by dead reckoning,
and they must be great calculators indeed who succeed.
Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if
it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes,
five; and reduce other things in proportion. . . .
Why
should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We
are determined to be starved before we are hungry.
People say that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they
take a thousand stitches today to save nine tomorrow.
As for work, we haven't any of any consequence. . . .
Let
us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be
thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing
that falls on the rails. Let us rise early and fast,
or break fast, gently and without perturbation; let company
come and let company go, let the bells ring and the children
cry—determined to make a day of it. Why should we
knock under and go with the stream? Let us not be
upset and overwhelmed in that terrible rapid and whirlpool
called a dinner, situated in the meridian shallows.
Weather this danger and you are safe, for the rest of the
way is down hill. With unrelaxed nerves, with morning
vigor, sail by it, looking another way, tied to the mast
like Ulysses. If the engine whistles, let it whistle
till it is hoarse for its pains. If the bell rings,
why should we run? We will consider what kind of music
they are like. Let us settle ourselves, and work and
wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of
opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and
appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe. . . .
Time
is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it;
but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how
shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity
remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose
bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one.
I know not the first letter of the alphabet. I have
always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I
was born.
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The
finest test of character
is seen in the amount and the
power of
gratitude we have.
Milo
H. Gates
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As
there are silent depths in the ocean which the fiercest storm
cannot reach, so there are silent, holy depths of the hearts of
people
which the storm of sin and sorrow can never disturb.
To reach
this silence and to live consciously in it is peace.
James
Allen |
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