Blaise Pascal

The secret of genius is to carry the spirit
of the child into old age, which means
never losing your enthusiasm.

Aldous Huxley

There is real magic in enthusiasm.  It spells the difference between mediocrity and accomplishment.

Norman Vincent Peale

(The following ten "lessons" are taken from Edelman's "Twenty-Five Lessons for Life," in her book The Measure of Our Success:  A Letter to My Children and Yours.)

1.  There is no free lunch.  Don't feel entitled to anything you don't sweat and struggle for.  And help our nation understand that it's not entitled to world leadership based on the past or on what we say rather than how well we perform and meet changing world needs.

2.  Set goals and work quietly and systematically toward them.  We must all try to resist quick-fix, simplistic answers and easy gains, which often disappear just as quickly as they come.

3.  Assign yourself.  My Daddy used to ask us whether the teacher had given us any homework.  If we said no, he'd say, "Well, assign yourself."  Don't wait around for your boss or your co-worker or spouse to direct you to do what you are able to figure out and do for yourself.  Don't do just as little as you can to get by.

4.  Don't be afraid of taking risks or of being criticized.  An anonymous sage said, "If you don't want to be criticized don't say anything, do anything, or be anything."  Don't be afraid of failing.  It's the way you learn to do things right.

5.  Remember and help others remember that the fellowship of human beings is more important than the fellowship of race and class and gender in a democratic society.  Be decent and fair and insist that others be so in your presence.  Don't tell, laugh at, or in any way acquiesce to racial, ethnic, religious, or gender jokes or to practices intended to demean rather than enhance another human being.

6.  Be confident that you can make a difference.  Don't get overwhelmed.  Sometimes when I get frantic about all I have to do and spin my wheels, I try to recall Carlyle's advice:  "Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand."

7.  "Slow down and live" is an African song I sing inside my head when I begin flitting around like a hen with her head wrung off:  "Brother slow down and live, brother slow down and live, brother slow down and live, you've got a long way to go.  Brothers love one another, brothers love one another, brothers love one another, you've got a long way to go."

8.  Choose your friends carefully.  Stay out of the fast lane, and ignore the crowd.  You were born God's original.  Try not to become someone's copy.

9.  Listen for "the sound of the genuine" within yourself and others.  Meditate and learn to be alone without being lonely.  "Small," Einstein said, "is the number of them that see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts."  Try to be one of them.

10.  You are in charge of your own attitude--whatever others do or circumstances you face.  The only person you can control is yourself.  Worry more about your attitude than your aptitude or lineage.

Living for Today Doesn't Mean Ignoring the Future

I've been amazed recently at the number of people who show up at the Grand Canyon without reservations for lodging.  They come to a National Park that has over four million visitors a year and some 900 hotel rooms, somehow expecting a room to be waiting for them.  I recently overheard someone at one of the cafeterias say to her husband, "I think it's ridiculous that they don't have a room available for us."

Ridiculous?  Hardly.  I didn't say anything, but the obvious thought that came to mind was that it was a bit ridiculous to come to the Grand Canyon without having made reservations.

I'm a huge proponent of living for today, of taking care of today's tasks in the here and now and not worrying about what the future will bring.  But sometimes it's quite obvious that today's task is making plans for tomorrow; otherwise, we'll face problems tomorrow that definitely can bring us down.

In the case of the Grand Canyon, a lack of planning (such as making reservations) can have a huge impact on people's vacations.  Given the fact that there are only some 900 rooms in the park itself, and another thousand right outside the park, many people end up driving 40, 60, or 75 miles just to get the closest available lodging--and usually much more expensive than they would have paid at the park.

A relative of mine will be moving this summer, and she and her family are already looking for apartments in the city they're moving to.  They know that if they get here with a truck full of furniture and don't have a place to move that furniture into, they'll end up paying a lot of money for storage and end up having to unload and then load again and then unload again when they find an apartment.

We're going to visit a national park tomorrow, and part of my day today was looking up hiking trails and other things to do at the park.  While I like to try to stay focused in the present, I know that if I don't do the research for tomorrow we may end up wasting a lot of time and even missing some of the best parts of the park.  As it is, we now have three sets of plans for tomorrow that we hope will make our visit more enjoyable with the limited amount of time we have to spend.

When people tell us not to think about tomorrow, they don't mean not to plan when planning is appropriate.  Sometimes the most important task in our lives today is getting ready for tomorrow.  The words that we read about tomorrow have more to do with worrying about what tomorrow may bring, even though we really have no idea what tomorrow really will turn out like.  They're talking about dreading possibilities and focusing on possible negative outcomes, while that worry can keep us depressed and anxious all day today--even though tomorrow hasn't come yet and nothing has even happened yet.

Planning is important in our lives, and it would be a shame if we were to neglect it for the sake of "living for today."  One of the most important facts that we can acknowledge is that sometimes, the most important task facing us on this day is that of making sure that tomorrow is taken care of.  That way, we can avoid many unpleasant problems when tomorrow becomes today, and by avoiding those problems we make sure that that today is as pleasant as can be.

From The Wayfarer on the Open Road
Ralph Waldo Trine

To love the fields and the wild flowers, the stars,
the far-open sea, the soft, warm earth, and to live
much with them alone; but to love struggling and weary
men and women and every pulsing, living creature better.

Our complex modern life, especially in our larger centers, gets us running so many times into grooves that we are prone to miss, and sometimes for long periods, the all-round, completer life.  We are led at times almost to forget that the stars come nightly to the sky, or even that there is a sky; that there are hedgerows and groves where the birds are always singing and where we can lie on our backs and watch the treetops swaying above us and the clouds floating by an hour or hours at a time; where one can live with his soul or, as Whitman has put it, where one can loaf and invite one's soul.

We need changes from the duties and the cares of our accustomed everyday life.  They are necessary for healthy, normal living.  We need occasionally to be away from our friends, our relatives, from the members of our immediate households.  Such changes are good for us; they are good for them.  We appreciate them better, they us, when we are away from them for a period, or they from us.

We need these changes occasionally in order to find new relations--this in a twofold sense.  By such changes there come to our minds more clearly the better qualities of those with whom we are in constant association; we lose sight of the little frictions and irritations that arise; we see how we can be more considerate, appreciative, kind.

In one of those valuable essays of Prentice Mulford entitled ''Who Are Our Relations?" he points us to the fact, and with so much insight and common sense, that our relations are not always or necessarily those related to us by blood ties, those of our immediate households, but those most nearly allied to us in mind and in spirit, many times those we have never seen, but that we shall sometime, somewhere be drawn to through the ceaselessly working Law of Attraction, whose basis is that like attracts like.  And so in staying too closely with the accustomed relations we may miss the knowledge and the companionship of those equally or even more closely related.

We need these changes to get the kinks out of our minds, our nerves, our muscles--the cobwebs off our faces. We need them to whet again the edge of appetite. We need them to invite the mind and the soul to new possibilities and powers. We need them in order to come back with new implements, or with implements redressed, sharpened, for the daily duties. It is like the chopper working too long with axe unground. There comes the time when an hour at the stone will give it such persuasive power that he can chop and cord in the day what he otherwise would in two or more, and with far greater ease and satisfaction.

We need periods of being by ourselves - alone.  Sometimes a fortnight or even a week will do wonders for one, unless he or she has drawn too heavily upon the account.  The simple custom, moreover, of taking an hour, or even a half hour, alone in the quiet, in the midst of the daily routine of life, would be the source of inestimable gain for countless numbers.