"Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last you create what you will." -- George Bernard Shaw

"The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty." -- Winston Churchill

Friday, December 7, 2007

Recording time

Many times I've wished that I'd kept a better record of my life. Actually, there are a lot of things I wish I had done and a lot of things that I still want to do. Where do we begin reconciling what we didn't do that we wanted to do, with what we actually did, even if it didn't turn out the way we wanted? I don't know of many things in my life that actually turned out the way I wanted, some have turned out better and some, obviously have not turned out as well as I had hoped. It might be significant that the things that have turned out better are those most likely to be related to my eternal happiness (family). I just wish I had a higher success rate, well, that I had less things go worse than I had hoped. I read a quote once, back in my days of collecting quotes, by the way, I'm thinking of typing them up soon, anyone interested? Anyway, back to the quote, "Of all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest of these, it might have been." That wasn't the one I was thinking of, but it seemed to apply. Years of not reading (anywhere near like what I used to) and not perusing through my quote book has gradually dulled my memory. The gist of the one I was actually thinking of is the disparity between what we are and what we could be. I realize we will never attain in this life to what we actually could be, but we should at least be drawing closer and lessoning the gap, right? As I've worked with James in his classes, I've noticed that we all define success in different ways, to some it's money, to others it's educational accomplishments, to yet others, it is family, career, etc. We each write our definition of success, but do we write it as what we want to accomplish or do we base it on what we have accomplished so that we feel we have been successful up to this point? What do you consider success?

2 comments:

down in the valley said...

Hmmmm. What is success? Could it be what brings you peace? Or is there always some restlessness because success is unattainable?

Hmmmmm.......

down in the valley said...

As for your quotes--will you type them in different colored ink? :>) Of course I'm interested.