“Lesson one, The world owes you nothing!”
“Lesson two, The country owes you nothing!”
“Lesson three, What do you owe yourself? A Great Life!”
The little girl looked up at her grandparents. Into their eyes she searched for more, but their eyes kept repeating the same messages, over and over.
Those three lessons would continue echoing in her ears, heart, mind and soul for the rest of her life. The souls’ of her family will hear those same words repeated again and again for generations to come. She, like her grandparents, made it so. And like them, none of a great life came easily. That was the unspoken fourth lesson.
To reach for anything is a mighty task. To aspire for a great life is to inspire life itself. At five the trusting little girl faced her future with the courage of an explorer, undaunted by unknowns, fears, and ever present naysayers. From the perspective of her young life, she looked up to her grandparents, whose lives were great and wonderful to her. She owed her grandparents nothing more than to have a great life.
What do you owe yourself? Is a great life beyond your personal expectation of a future? Have you sat down and let your dreams diminish around you; dissolving your aspirations into a puddle of self-doubt at your feet? Yes, only you can assess your present status on this and other matters, without remorse or staged regret.
In the interim of life, between that moment of birth and our last token breadth at death, we are constant captives of an event where we create who we are to become. Consequently and without hesitation, we cannot afford to stand still and let things find us or happen to us. We just make them so.
Life and living are imperatives. Thus, we must create great things in our lives, as we compete with time for the attention of opportunities.
A five year old has decades ahead of her to mastermind a super life. Also, the same can be said for someone fifty or even seventy years of age. Yet, time doesn’t change, but the attention of opportunities becomes more focused and less generous as we grow older. Not surprisingly with additional years behind us, we become keenly aware of what qualities inhabit and inhibit a living dream. In understanding those attributes we are left free to discard the superfluous, in exchange for what we already have—A Great Life, nothing more and nothing less.
To clarify, age brings us to a point when we can realize how much space in our lives has been taken up by “stuff.” It is then that we finally discover how badly we have cluttered our lives and our minds with meaningless material worth nothing. At that point we simply push the filter button and purge all that is not needed. Simultaneously, we filter-out future foolish acquisitions of items, which lose value a second after we think about them. Therefore, a great life requires constant vigilance and self-regulation, in order to keep itself healthy in all things deemed important.
A final comment: A person who has a great life has lived an unusual experience in today’s world. She has practiced living honestly, genuinely, and with a style that walks in the footsteps of a rare specimen of humanity: the unselfish. Look around inside your life. Are you on the path of a great life?
Please share with friends, family and colleagues.Michael Mason Norman, ED.D. (Doc)