LIFE – PURPOSE IN LIFE
Fear less, hope more; eat less, chew more; whine less, breathe more; talk less, say more; hate less, love more; and all good things are yours.
—Swedish proverb
Robert Fulghum, in his book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, has written:
1. Share everything.
2. Play fair.
3. Don’t hit people.
4. Put things back where you found them.
5. Clean up your own mess.
6. Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
7. Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
8. Wash your hands before you eat.
9. Flush.
10. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
11. Live a balanced life—learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
12. Take a nap every afternoon.
13. When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.
14. Be aware of wonder.
A town outside San Francisco has a population of five hundred, but it is surrounded by cemeteries with thousands of graves. At an entrance to the town is a sign, “It’s great to be alive.”
Life can’t give me joy and peace;
It’s up to me to will it.
Life just gives me time and space;
It’s up to me to fill it.
The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
—William James
A ninety-three-year-old man finally conceded he couldn’t live alone. After much thought, he decided he didn’t want to live with his daughter. So he went to see a local nursing home.
After one look at a large room where older people sat silently staring into space, he quipped, “Well, one thing’s for sure; if I come here, we are going to have to turn this waiting room into a living room!”
I think of life as a good book. The further you get into it, the more it begins to make sense.
—Harold S. Kusher
The Manchester, New Hampshire, Union Leader carried the following paragraph, which appeared first in the Evangelist Magazine: “The average man or woman in the United States who has reached seventy years of age has spent his time from birth to that date in this way:
3 years in education
8 years in amusement
6 years in eating
11 years in working
24 years in sleeping
5 ½ in washing and dressing
6 years in walking
3 years in conversation
3 years in reading
6 months in church”
Anthony Campolo took a survey of ninety-five-year-olds. He asked them, “If you could live your life over, what would you do differently?” They said two things: “We would reflect more” and “We would do more things that would last beyond our lifetime.”
Fear not that your life shall come to an end, but rather that it shall never have a beginning.
—John Henry Newman
Life is a battle (Marcus Aurelius); a hollow bubble (E. V. Cooke); an empty dream (Robert Browning); a walking shadow (Shakespeare); a long tragedy (Isaac Watts); a jest (John Gay); a document to be interpreted (Amiel); a cup of tea (J. M. Barrie); a dusty corridor, shut at both ends (Roy Campbell); a bumper filled by fate (Thomas Blacklock); a smoke that curls (W. E. Henley).
There was a very cautious man
Who never laughed or played.
He never risked, he never tried,
He never sang or prayed!
And when one day he passed away
His insurance was denied,
For since he never really lived,
They claimed he never died!
Twelve Things to Remember
1. The value of time.
2. The success of perseverance.
3. The pleasure of working.
4. The dignity of simplicity.
5. The worth of character.
6. The power of kindness.
7. The influence of example.
8. The obligation of duty.
9. The wisdom of economy.
10. The virtue of patience.
11. The improvement of talent.
12. The joy of originating.
—Marshall Field
A long life may not be good enough, but a good life is long enough.
—Benjamin Franklin
One morning a radio announcer was telling of a special offer for Life magazine. He closed by saying, “Enjoy Life at half price.”
Many people are trying to enjoy life at half price! But it doesn’t work.
After the ball hit him on the right temple, a man was taken to the hospital, where x-rays of his head showed nothing. No doubt that’s why he failed to duck.
It is interesting to observe some of the estimates men of note have made of life. Christopher Morley said, “There are ingredients in the good life: learning, earning, and yearning.” John Christian said, “Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.” Robert Frost said, “Life is tons of discipline.” And back in 1958, the New York Times quoted Nikita Khrushchev as saying, “Life is short, live it up!”
I like living better and better the older I get. I wish it could go on forever.
—Howard Pyle
As Shakespeare’s drama Macbeth draws near its close, the central figure is shown in his castle of Dunsinane, surrounded by a few of his officers and soldiers. Macbeth has run his bloodstained course to power, but his sins are catching up with him. He is besieged in his castle. Word is brought to him that Lady Macbeth, who nerved him to his crimes, is dead. Then Macbeth breaks forth into these words:
“Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
The Vanderbilt University student application form includes the question, “How do you view life: as a journey, a drama, a jungle?”
Not what we gain
But what we gave
Measures the worth
of the lives we live.
The average man lives but seventy-four years. That is approximately 888 months, 3,848 weeks, 27,010 days, 648,240 hours, 38,894,400 minutes and 2,022,508,800 heartbeats.
—Jon Johnston
James A. Knight, in his book For the Love of Money, says that, when he was visiting in Bergen, Norway, the guide told him of a family who lived on a small farm located on the top of a mountain outside of Bergen. The rough country and the height made it impossible to use horses, and a two-hour walk was required to reach the farm on top of the mountain from the point where the transportation stopped. But the family was independent. They made essentially everything they needed. The mother would sometimes knit as she climbed up and down the mountain.
An American, after he had seen how hard this life was for this family, asked the mother, “Does it pay to live here and put up with all of this?” She replied, without a moment’s hesitation, “Life itself is pay enough.”
There are three tenses to a person’s life: What he is, what he has become, and what he is becoming.
—Aristotle
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And departing leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.
—Longfellow, “Psalm of Life”
Life does not consist in what a person possesses, but in what possesses him.
Is life a living death or a dying life?
—Augustine
Life is definitely uncertain. For instance, Justinian died entering a painted room and Adrian was choked to death by a fly.
The psychologist William Moulton Marston asked three thousand persons, “What do you have to live for?”
He was shocked to find that 94 percent were simply enduring the present while they waited for the future; waited for “something” to happen; waited for children to grow up and leave home; waited for next year; waited for another time to take a long dreamed-about trip; waited for someone to die; waited for tomorrow without realizing that all anyone ever has is today because yesterday is gone and tomorrow never comes.
—Douglas Lurton
LIMITATIONS
As a ship captain was about to embark on a voyage he said, “Woe is me, I’m confined to the oceans of this world.”
LISTENING
My wife said I never listen to what she says; at least I think that’s what she said.
The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said.
—Peter Drucker
Former Secretary of State Dean Rusk is quoted as having said, “One of the best ways to persuade others is with your ears—by listening to them.”
When Lyndon B. Johnson was a senator from Texas, he displayed a sign on his office wall which read, “You ain’t learnin’ nothin’ when you’re talkin’.”
An aspiring politician asked Oliver Wendell Holmes how to get elected to office. He replied, “To be able to listen to others in a sympathetic manner is, perhaps, the most effective mechanism in the world for getting along with people and tying up their friendship for good.”
Good listeners are not only popular everywhere but after a while they know something.
—Bits & Pieces
A high school class in music appreciation was asked the difference between listening and hearing. At first there was no response. Finally a hand went up and a youngster offered this wise definition: “Listening is wanting to hear.”
—Bits & Pieces
God gave us two ears but only one mouth. Some people say that’s because He wanted us to spend twice as much time listening as talking. Others claim it’s because He knew listening was twice as hard as talking.
I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
—Teleview
Skillful listening is the best remedy for loneliness, loquaciousness, and laryngitis.
—William A. Ward
“Do you have trouble hearing?” asked the teacher of a youngster who sat dreamily at his desk. “No, ma’am,” replied the boy. “I have trouble listening.”
Listening, not imitation, is the sincerest form of flattery
—Joyce Brothers
It’s easy to know all the answers if you don’t bother to listen to the questions.
When in the company of sensible men, we ought to be doubly cautious of talking too much, lest we lose two good things—their good opinion and our own improvement; for what we have to say we know, but what they have to say we know not.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Paul Tournier, Swiss psychiatrist, was asked one time to share his secret for counseling. He replied, “I don’t know how to help people. I simply listen and love and try to provide a safe place where people can come and report on their progress without any judgment.”
LITTLE THINGS
For the want of a nail,
a shoe was lost.
For the want of a shoe,
the horse was lost.
For the want of a horse,
a rider was lost.
For the want of a rider,
a battle was lost.
For the want of a battle.
a war was lost.
For the want of a war,
the kingdom was lost.
—Benjamin Franklin
Little things are the hinges on which great results turn.
God is great in great things, but very great in little things.
—Henry Dyer
Our great matters are little to His power; our little matters are great to His love.
—D. L. Moody
LITERATURE
If religious books are not widely circulated in this country, I do not know what is to become of us as a nation. If truth be not diffused, error will be; if God and His Word are not known and received, the Devil and his works will gain the ascendancy; if the evangelical volume does not reach every hamlet, the pages of a corrupt and licentious literature will; if the power of the Gospel is not felt throughout the land, anarchy and misrule, degradation and misery, corruption and darkness, will reign without mitigation or end.
—Daniel Webster
LONELINESS
One of my friends can always tell when he has reached the crisis stage of being lonely—it’s when he opens his junk mail and actually reads through it.
—Burton Hillis
Our language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone. It has created the word “loneliness” to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word “solitude” to express the glory of being alone.
—Paul Tillich
The great tragedy of life is not hunger or disease, but to feel unwanted.
—Mother Teresa
People are lonely because they build walls instead of bridges.
Loneliness is the first thing God’s eye named not good.
—John Milton
Loneliness is a growing problem in our society. A study by the American Council of Life Insurance reported that the most lonely group in America are college students. That’s surprising! Next on the list are divorced people, welfare recipients, single mothers, rural students, housewives, and the elderly. To point out how lonely people can be, Chuck Swindoll mentioned an ad in a Kansas newspaper. It read, “I will listen to you talk for 30 minutes without comment for $5.00.” Swindoll said, “Sounds like a hoax, doesn’t it? But the person was serious. Did anyone call? You bet. It wasn’t long before this individual was receiving ten to twenty calls a day. The pain of loneliness was so sharp that some were willing to try anything for a half hour of companionship.”
Isadora Duncan, the great ballet dancer who danced before the royalty of Europe and was considered one of the greatest ballet dancers of all time, said, “I have never been alone but that my heart did not ache, my eyes fill with tears, and my hands tremble for a peace and a joy that I never found.” She went on to say that in the midst of millions of admirers, she was actually a very lonely woman.
I am sixty-five and I am lonely and have never found peace.
—H. G. Wells
After the death of her husband, Queen Victoria said, “There was no one left to call me Victoria.” Even though she was a queen, she knew what it meant to be lonely.
A beautiful young Hollywood star with apparently everything a woman could want, ended her life. In the brief note she left was an incredibly simple explanation—she was unbearably lonely.
LONG–RANGE PLANNING
The undisciplined view is illustrated in a fable by the Russian poet Krylov about a pig who ate his fill of acorns under an oak tree and then started to root around the tree. A crow sitting in the oak tree remarked, “You should not do this. If you lay bare the roots, the tree will wither and die.” “Let it die,” replied the pig. “Who cares as long as there are acorns?”