[Faith-talk] Thought for October 20th

[Ericka]

So true and thank you for posting this. I've seen it before but it's always a good lesson to relearn.

Ericka Short
"Friends are like flowers in the garden of life"

Sent from my iPhone

> On Oct 20, 2015, at 1:17 PM, Poppa Bear via Faith-talk <faith-talk at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> By Anna Quindlen 
> 
> I'm a novelist. My work is human nature. Real life is all I know. Don't ever
> confuse the two, your life and your work. 
> 
> You will walk out of here this afternoon with only one thing that no one
> else has. There will be hundreds of people out there with your same degree;
> there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living.
> But you will be the only person alive who has sole custody of your life. 
> 
> Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk, or
> your life on a bus, or in a car, or at the computer. Not just the life of
> your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank account but your
> soul. 
> 
> People don't talk about the soul very much anymore. It's so much easier to
> write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a resume is a cold comfort on a
> winter night, or when you're sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you've gotten
> back the test results and they're not so good. 
> 
> Here is my resume: I am a good mother to three children. I have tried never
> to let my profession stand in the way of being a good parent. I no longer
> consider myself the center of the universe. I show up. I listen. I try to
> laugh. I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make marriage vows
> mean what they say. 
> 
> I am a good friend to my friends, and they to me. Without them, there would
> be nothing to say to you today, because I would be a cardboard cutout. But I
> call them on the phone, and I meet them for lunch. I would be rotten, or at
> best mediocre at my job, if those other things were not true. You cannot be
> really first rate at your work if your work is all you are. 
> 
> So here's what I wanted to tell you today: Get a life. A real life, not a
> manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the larger house. 
> 
> Do you think you'd care so very much about those things if you blew an
> aneurysm one afternoon, or found a lump in your breast? Get a life in which
> you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze over Seaside
> Heights, a life in which you stop and watch how a red tailed hawk circles
> over the water or the way a baby scowls with concentration when she tries to
> pick up a Cheerio with her thumb and first finger. Get a life in which you
> are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you. And remember that
> love is not leisure, it is work. Pick up the phone. Send an e-mail. Write a
> letter. 
> 
> Get a life in which you are generous. And realize that life is the best
> thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for granted. Care so
> deeply about its goodness that you want to spread it around. Take money you
> would have spent on beers and give it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be
> a big brother or sister. 
> 
> All of you want to do well. But if you do not do good too, then doing well
> will never be enough. 
> 
> It is so easy to waste our lives, our days, our hours, our minutes. It is so
> easy to take for granted the color of our kids' eyes, the way the melody in
> a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again. 
> 
> It is so easy to exist instead of to live. I learned to live many years ago.
> I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that it is not
> a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get. 
> 
> I learned to look at all the good in the world and try to give some of it
> back because I believed in it, completely and utterly. And I tried to do
> that, in part, by telling others what I had learned. By telling them this: 
> 
> Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby's ear. Read in
> the backyard with the sun on your face. Learn to be happy. And think of life
> as a terminal illness, because if you do, you will live it with joy and
> passion as it ought to be lived.
> 
> This message is from a commencement speech made by a Pulitzer Prize-winning
> author, Anna Quindlen, at Villanova University.
> 
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