Our Two Choices Each of us has two distinct choices to make about what we will do with our lives. The first choice we can make is to be less than we have the capacity to be; to earn less; to have less; to read less and think less; to try less and to discipline ourselves less. These are among the choices that lead to an empty life. And, these are among the choices – if we make them – that lead us to a life of constant apprehension instead of a life of high anticipation and unlimited expectation. And the second choice? To do it all! To become all that we can possibly be, and we move toward the fulfillment of that life-condition by using our imagination and creativity and taking serious action with what both of those human gifts reveal to us. “Doing it all” includes reading every book that we possibly can, while remembering that there’s little difference between a person who can’t read and a person who won’t read; the result of both is ignorance and a human mind left unchanged and unchallenged. Doing it all also includes earning as much as we possibly can, it includes giving and sharing as much as we possibly can, and it includes the discipline to strive and to produce and accomplish as much as we can. All of us also have that choice, so our choices are relatively simple – to do or not to do. To be or not to be. To be all or to be less – or to be nothing at all. To think and feel and to believe on our fiftieth birthday about the way we did on our twentieth birthday; to have our eventual grave marker say two things about us – the year we were born and the year we died, with nothing with the ‘hyphen’ between those two numbers as evidence of what we did, of who we helped or changed, or how far we came between what we once were and of what we finally became. Like the tree, it would be a worthy challenge for us all to reach outward and upward to the full measure of our capabilities. Why not do all that we can, every moment that we can, the very best that we can and for as long as we can? What else is life about other than to excel? Results are the best measurement of human accomplishment; not conversation, not intentions, not explanations or excuses, and not justification or embellishment or exaggeration. Results! And if our results are less than our potential suggests that they should be and could be, then we must strive to become more today than we were the day before. The greatest life rewards are always reserved for those who bring great value to themselves and those in the world around them as a result of who and what they become and by the example they set. Be like the tree; grow as high and as wide as it is your nature to grow. - by Ron L. Reynolds
Posted on: Tue, 25 Mar 2014 13:43:12 +0000
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