Excellent Advice

Here is a gem shared by J:
"To all the girls who are in a hurry to have a boyfriend or get married, a piece of Biblical advice - Ruth patiently waited for her mate Boaz. While you are waiting on YOUR Boaz, don't settle for any of his relatives: Broke-az, Po-az, Lyin-az, Cheatin-az, Dumb-az, Cheap-az, Lockedup-az, Goodfornothin-az, LAzy-az, and especially his third cousin Beatinyo-az. Wait on your Boaz and make sure he respects Yoaz."

Hahahahahahahaha. Excellent advice :)

Encouraged

I have a meeting with a poet this morning. I googled him to prepare for our meeting, so I won't be an ignoramus, and learnt this is his favourite quote: "Nada te turbe, solo Dios basta" (St Teresa of Avila).

It means - "Nothing shall disturb you; God is enough." 

I like this man already.

The Right Thing

The quote for the day was this: "Success is simple. Do what's right, the right way, at the right time." (Arnold Glasgow) I wonder, though, is it simple? Sometimes it doesn't feel like I know what is the right thing to do. And I can't say I have always done things the right way. And I have my share of missed opportunities - times when I could have done the right thing but lacked the courage or will to.

I doubt I will ever reach a time or phase in life when I can say this is right for me at this point in time and I am doing it the way I want to. I would like to be able to say that. But that is not always possible for me. Yes, sometimes I don't do what is right for me because I think about the implications of my decision on others. Many times I have done what is right in a bull-headed way and negated the effect of my right action through the manner in which I did it. Once I was drawn into doing something wrong because I took the bait when my friend said "Do you always do what is right?" It seems incredibly stupid now but the knowledge I had done so many wrong things before consoled me into adding one more wrong action to my long list.

Sometimes, preachers make decisions look so easy. Do what the Bible says. Right is right in God's eyes. Wrong is wrong. But sometimes two decisions both look and feel right. Then what?

Then I need wisdom and discretion; then I need good friends' advice; then I need to tell myself "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make straight your paths." (Prov 3:5-6)

I am OK

"I learned that it is perfectly ok to be different. It is ok to be intelligent and ambitious; informed and generous; and comfortable with power. And that it is natural to want to have a strong voice and to want to play a bigger role. Because the alternative is to stay unfulfilled, restless, and powerless."

- Marina Kotsianas, 'What I Learned on My Way to 50+"

I found this quote in a website I was browsing. And it resonates with me. For too long I realise I have been pretending to be dumber than I was, not voicing my opinion even when I had one, uncomfortable when making decisions that needed to be made, just to keep the family going and an ego satisfied. No more. It is ok to disagree, it is ok to say, "thus far and no more". I am OK just the way God made me.

Don't Settle!

"Sometimes life's going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love, and that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking, and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it, and like any great relationship it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don't settle."

- Steve Jobs, Stanford Commencement Address, 2005

It's a Matter of How You Look at It

"The past cannot be changed. What is done is done. But the perception of the past can be modified. You can hang on to the anger and the memories that keep on destroying life day in and day out OR you can be set free to live one day at a time. You can help heal the past with humour by enlarging your perspective, dropping your fears, and seeing many of the hurting incidents of the past as the ridiculous anecdotes they really are. You can laugh today because you did all your crying yesterday."

- Anonymous
http://www.learnwell.org/laugh.htm

Where I Am

"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."

- Soren Kierkegaard

For all that has been, Lord, thanks. For all that is to come, Lord, yes.

Wisdom

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

~ Mark Twain

Somthing to Think About

"Nations, like individuals, languish when they only have uncritical lovers or unloving critics. "

"One paradox of the human condition is that the most logical point at which to undertake painful reform is in good times. The pain will be less then. But virtually no society, and especially no democratic society, can administer significant pain in good times. It takes a crisis to make change possible. Hence, there is a lot of wisdom in the principle, “never waste a ­crisis.”
- Kishore Mahbubani, Dean,LKY School of Public Policy, NUS.

Prof Mahbubani is a thinker I respect. This afternoon I will be attending a talk by him at my office and I am really looking forward to it. He is an old school gentleman and sometimes I wonder what would happen to Singapore when his generation of fearless speakers passes on.

Here are two articles Prof Mahbubani wrote that we have been asked to read as a preamble to his talk:

"Can America Fail?"

"Can Singapore Fail?"

My Quote of the Day Today!!!!

No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.

Quote

"....which brings us to the good thing about getting older: you get to see how things play out — what happens to people, what doesn't. It's like finally getting to the best part of a novel. Sure, you can always read ahead. But it doesn't mean as much if you weren't there for the first part!"

- Ann Cannon

Quote

"It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes.... we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions - especially selfish ones." - Alexander Solzhenitsyn

I agree. Often we make wrong choices not because we did not know, but because that choice was an easier one to make and it made us feel better, not because it put us in a difficult place.

A Passage that Spoke to me

"Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness. It therefore has nothing (as far as I know) to say to people who do not know they have done anything to repent of and who do not feel that they need any forgiveness.

It is after you have realized that there is a real Moral Law, and a Power behind the law, and that you have broken that law and put yourself wrong with that Power - it is after all this, and not a moment sooner, that Christianity begins to talk. When you know you are sick, you will listen to the doctor. When you have realized that our position is nearly desperate you will begin to understand what the Christians are talking about. They offer an explanation of how we got into our present state of both hating goodness and loving it. They offer an explanation of how God can be this impersonal mind at the back of the Moral Law and yet also a Person. They tell you how the demands of this law, which you and I cannot meet, have been met on our behalf, how God Himself becomes a man to save man from the disapproval of God....

I quite agree that the Christian religion is, in the long run, a thing of unspeakable comfort. But it does not begin in comfort; it begins in the dismay I have been describing, and it is no use at all trying to go on to that comfort without first going through that dismay. In religion, as in war and everything else, comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking for it. If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth - only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair."

~C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (1943)

Words To Ponder

"Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not."
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Words to Ponder

“People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering.”

~ St Augustine

Words to Ponder

"It is easier to build strong children than repair broken men."
- Frederick Douglass

Words to Live by (1)

"This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature, instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy."

- George Bernard Shaw