Encouragement, Inspiration and More…

Meet the sunrise with confidence.  Fill every golden minute with right thinking and worthwhile endeavor.  Do this and there will be joy for you in each golden sunset. — Alonzo Newton Benn

It looks for the good in people, instead of harping on the worst; it discovers what can be done instead of grumbling about what cannot; it regards problems, large or small, as opportunities; it pushes ahead when it would be easy to quit; it “lights the candle” instead of “cursing the darkness.”

If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up.  Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.  — Michael Jordan

That’s the title of the book I just finished reading.  It was written by Dawna Markova .  She is also wrote the only poem I have ever committed to memory.  It goes something like this:

I will not die an unlived life.
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching on fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible,
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance;
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.

Every individual has a place fill in the world and is important in some respect whether he chooses to be so or not.  — Nathaniel Hawthorne

A Girl Named Zippy:  Growing Up Small in Mooreland Indiana by Haven Kimmel is a great read.  Kimmel describes it as a memoir of a happy childhood.

Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step, only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find the right road. 

Do not abandon yourselves to despair.  We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it — and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid.  She will never sit on a hot stove lid again — and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore. 

Sometimes the only difference between a try and a triumph is a little umph.