The Thought for the Day – February 28, 2016
If we fail, we fall. If we succeed – then we will face the next task. – J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
Failure and success are interesting animals. Both are fundamental aspects of our human experience. Both our feared by some. Both always present new opportunities.
If you fail at something, all right, you tried something and it didn’t work. It happens. It happens a lot, actually, especially to those who ultimately find success.
Failure, at first, is a difficult prospect to face, especially if you’ve never failed at anything before. However, after you get a couple of failures under your belt you realize that all failure is a receipt issued by fate showing you tried to improve yourself. Failure is never an end, unless you quit, which is the only real failure.
If we succeed – then we will face the next task…
Success, though is not an end either. You accomplish one thing, odds are the prospect of something greater – an opportunity to better what you’ve already become – will present itself in fairly short order. We cannot rest on our laurels because there will always be someplace new our time and talents will want to take us. As one cycle of our life ends another begins.
The key to a good life is to be open to these cycles, to be open to what nature and circumstance put in front of us. It is something every one of us can do every day, and success is waiting for those who do.
The Thought for the Day – February 26, 2016
Michelangelo saw the art of sculpture as, crucially, a process of self-discovery, of self-actualization. – Miles Unger, Michelangelo: A Life in Six Masterpieces
In some respects, Michelangelo was no different than any other artist through the ages: he worked his art because he was compelled to by something inside him. This compulsion was put there by nature – or providence or whatever force your belief system tells you – and he was merely answering it. It is the life of every artist from time immemorial: you say what you feel needs to be said in your chosen medium, whether you end up living down the ages or selling your wares at the local crafts fair.
But we do not have to be artists or live down the ages in order to attain self-discovery and self-actualization. It is there for the taking for all of us, every day. All of us – you, me, your aunt in Duluth – were born with certain talents. All of us can do something well. The happiest lives are lived by those who utilize those talents.
That we can all do something well is a lesson learned in school, where some were good at math classes, some better at English and some were good athletes. An annoying few were good at everything, but they were the exception. Everyone could do something well.
It’s no different as adults. We still have things we can do well and I think we are happiest when we are doing these things. It doesn’t have to make us famous or rich, it only has to be important to us. That’s why you are reading this, because it was important to me to write it; something inside me said this is what I was meant to write today.
Self-discovery and self-actualization are there for anyone willing to follow their heart and trust their instincts. Your heart will tell you where you want to go. Your instincts will show you how to get there. The journey to self-discovery and self-actualization is long, but it is the only journey that matters.
The Thought for the Day – February , 2016
We choose to go to the moon in this decade, and do other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.
– John F Kennedy, speech at Rice University, 9/12/62
Nations are no different than us humans: we need challenges to get the most out of our collective talents.
The Apollo program did that brilliantly and regular readers of mine know I have always been a big fan of our manned missions to the moon. I still think they are mankind’s finest hours, a line of demarcation separating all that came before from everything that has followed.
America has not done anything great since Apollo. We decided not to send men to Mars afterwards and we have collectively been marking time ever since. The only nation to put humans on another celestial body can no longer even put men into space anymore, a circumstance which doesn’t fill us with half the shame it really should.
I don’t really think this country has been led since Kennedy said let’s go to the moon. Since then we haven’t been led, we’ve been managed. We have not had a president since that has been both willing and able to marshal the very best of our collective talents.
…not because they are easy but because they are hard…
America needs a great national endeavor to get the most out of our collective talents. Nations, like humans, will always get out of their existences what they put into them. America, once great, has stopped trying to be great and has been mired in mediocrity for a couple-three generations now.
The fault is ours. Only when we start demanding better of ourselves and our country will America be great again.
The Thought for the Day – February 23, 2016
Everyone has it within his power to say, this I am today, that I shall be tomorrow. – Louis L’Amour, The Walking Drum
Our introduction to L’Amour came in our 40’s. We had never bother to read him before because we had dismissed him as a hack Western writer. His books were, heck are, available everywhere and we figured our reading time could be better spent.
Our loss. Today’s quote is one of many from L’Amour that provides a simple, true and often ignored insight into our human experience.
Now, L’Amour will never be regarded as one of this country’s great writers. The critic who said L’Amour would have benefited from a freshman composition course was probably right. More than once we’ve found ourselves with not too much L’Amour book remaining and an awful lot of plot left to go and his characters have more than their share of luck, both good and bad.
No matter. L’Amour didn’t have a freshman composition course. L’Amour was a self-taught writer who spent most of his young adulthood scrambling and wandering and his insights into our Human Experience are brilliant, as good as anyone this language had produced, including Gore Vidal, and insights into our human experience are one of the things you pay us writers for. L’Amour was an excellent example of what a writer’s only job is: experience life and report our findings to our readers.
…this I am today, that I shall be tomorrow.
This is a power each one of us has. It may not seem like it sometimes because everyday life throws a hundred things our way to distract us from what we were meant to do. But if we are not happy with our lives today each of us can work toward want we want to be tomorrow. It’s something we tend to ignore sometimes, lost as we sometimes are in the cacophony of our own life.
It’s our greatest gift as humans, really, the ability to make something good happen for ourselves. We can squander our time on this planet or we can utilize our time and our talents and make something good happen for us. The choice, every day, is ours.