I have had a copy of this prose/poem by Max Ehrmann (1927)in my possession for years. I think it makes a good contribution to my 'wisdom' literature. I hope you enjoy it as I have.
Go placidly amidst the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Monday, February 27, 2012
Second Readings
As I read, I invariably mark up the book I am reading. If you likewise do that, think with me for a moment about what you are doing. You are reading the material once, then you go back and highlight the interesting or important part—that’s reading number two, which reinforces your first reading—and you do this with the idea in mind that you will someday revisit the book and at least review your original highlights because they were important to you. That will be reading number three.
I have found this practice to be very valuable for me as I study. It is also of value to me in more casual reading because it allows me to easily find and enjoy once again the highlighted material.
If we go through life and visit something that is interesting to us only once, I think we miss a great deal. I always learn something more on repeat readings. That is why religious people are encouraged to read the scriptures, for example, over and over because of the new insights that invariably come.
And the principle is shown to be sound in other areas of our life. What if we kissed our loved-one only once and let it go at that? Or what if we played golf at a good golf course only once, or took a vacation to a great get-away spot only once, or enjoyed the company of a new friend and then never saw him/her again?
I pity those who never get past a ‘first reading.’ I pity more those who never read at all. As I told my children when they were young: A person who does not read does not have much of an advantage over one who cannot read.
Reading lets you experience other ideas, other lives. Rereading keeps them with you.
I have found this practice to be very valuable for me as I study. It is also of value to me in more casual reading because it allows me to easily find and enjoy once again the highlighted material.
If we go through life and visit something that is interesting to us only once, I think we miss a great deal. I always learn something more on repeat readings. That is why religious people are encouraged to read the scriptures, for example, over and over because of the new insights that invariably come.
And the principle is shown to be sound in other areas of our life. What if we kissed our loved-one only once and let it go at that? Or what if we played golf at a good golf course only once, or took a vacation to a great get-away spot only once, or enjoyed the company of a new friend and then never saw him/her again?
I pity those who never get past a ‘first reading.’ I pity more those who never read at all. As I told my children when they were young: A person who does not read does not have much of an advantage over one who cannot read.
Reading lets you experience other ideas, other lives. Rereading keeps them with you.
Friday, February 24, 2012
Our Circumstances
I have a favorite story that I have told on a number of circumstances that I would like to share with you. I heard it from Jeffrey R. Holland nearly forty years ago during my first summer session at Brigham Young University.
Louis Agassiz, a famous scientist of the 19th Century, gave a lecture in London.
After the lecture a little old lady came up to him in the receiving line and said to him, rather resentfully and spitefully, that he spoke well because he had all the advantages in life but that the poor or average person had few of the opportunities he had to learn what he knew and that he better appreciate it.
After taking this dressing down he asked her, “And what do you do in life?”
She said she and her sister ran a boarding house and that she was the cook. He then said, “And where do you do your work?” She thought that was a stupid question and said, “In the kitchen, of course, while standing on the floor.”
“And what is the material of your floor, Ma’am?”
“Glazed brick.”
“Have you ever wondered what is a glazed brick?”
“No.”
“Hmmm. Well, here’s my card. Write me a note when you have time and tell me what is a glazed brick.”
Well, that made her mad enough to go home and do it. She consulted a dictionary and found that a glazed brick was a piece of baked clay. Realizing that wasn’t enough to send to a renowned Harvard-trained naturalist she consulted an encyclopedia and got more information. Her curiosity piqued, she next went to a brick factory and a tile maker. Then she went deeper into the library and consulted the history and geology sections to find out more about clay and clay beds. She finally decided there were over 120 different kinds of bricks and glazed tiles. She could tell Professor Agassiz that, so she wrote him a note of over thirty pages and said, “Here’s your glazed brick.”
He wrote back. “This is a fine piece of work. If you change this and that and the other, I’ll prepare it for publication and send you that which is due you from the publication.” She made the changes, thought no more of it, and was surprised when a check for $250 came for her in the mail. His attached note said, “I’ve published your piece. What was under the brick?”
She wrote back and said, “Ants.”
He wrote back: “What’s an ant?”
“She went to work and this time she was excited. She found 1825 different kinds of ants. She found that there were ants so small that you could put three to the head of a pin and still have plenty of room left over. She found that there were ants an inch long that moved in armies half a mile wide and destroyed everything in their path. She found that some ants were blind; some milked cows and shared it with other ants. She found more ants than anybody had ever found so she wrote Dr. Agassiz something of a treatise, numbering 360 pages. He published it and sent her the money and royalties, which continued to come in.”
The moral? A previously poorly educated and previously short-visioned and unchallenged boarding house keeper had discovered a new life. [With this new source of income and expertise], says Dr. Holland, “she saw the lands and places of her dreams on a little carpet of vitrified kaolin [which is what a brick is] and on the wings of flying ants that may lose their wings on the afternoon they die.” (Jeffrey R. Holland, ten-stake fireside address at Brigham Young University, June 2, 1974)
How many people who are unemployed or underemployed in today’s difficult times might be challenged to do something similar? Probably thousands.
Louis Agassiz, a famous scientist of the 19th Century, gave a lecture in London.
After the lecture a little old lady came up to him in the receiving line and said to him, rather resentfully and spitefully, that he spoke well because he had all the advantages in life but that the poor or average person had few of the opportunities he had to learn what he knew and that he better appreciate it.
After taking this dressing down he asked her, “And what do you do in life?”
She said she and her sister ran a boarding house and that she was the cook. He then said, “And where do you do your work?” She thought that was a stupid question and said, “In the kitchen, of course, while standing on the floor.”
“And what is the material of your floor, Ma’am?”
“Glazed brick.”
“Have you ever wondered what is a glazed brick?”
“No.”
“Hmmm. Well, here’s my card. Write me a note when you have time and tell me what is a glazed brick.”
Well, that made her mad enough to go home and do it. She consulted a dictionary and found that a glazed brick was a piece of baked clay. Realizing that wasn’t enough to send to a renowned Harvard-trained naturalist she consulted an encyclopedia and got more information. Her curiosity piqued, she next went to a brick factory and a tile maker. Then she went deeper into the library and consulted the history and geology sections to find out more about clay and clay beds. She finally decided there were over 120 different kinds of bricks and glazed tiles. She could tell Professor Agassiz that, so she wrote him a note of over thirty pages and said, “Here’s your glazed brick.”
He wrote back. “This is a fine piece of work. If you change this and that and the other, I’ll prepare it for publication and send you that which is due you from the publication.” She made the changes, thought no more of it, and was surprised when a check for $250 came for her in the mail. His attached note said, “I’ve published your piece. What was under the brick?”
She wrote back and said, “Ants.”
He wrote back: “What’s an ant?”
“She went to work and this time she was excited. She found 1825 different kinds of ants. She found that there were ants so small that you could put three to the head of a pin and still have plenty of room left over. She found that there were ants an inch long that moved in armies half a mile wide and destroyed everything in their path. She found that some ants were blind; some milked cows and shared it with other ants. She found more ants than anybody had ever found so she wrote Dr. Agassiz something of a treatise, numbering 360 pages. He published it and sent her the money and royalties, which continued to come in.”
The moral? A previously poorly educated and previously short-visioned and unchallenged boarding house keeper had discovered a new life. [With this new source of income and expertise], says Dr. Holland, “she saw the lands and places of her dreams on a little carpet of vitrified kaolin [which is what a brick is] and on the wings of flying ants that may lose their wings on the afternoon they die.” (Jeffrey R. Holland, ten-stake fireside address at Brigham Young University, June 2, 1974)
How many people who are unemployed or underemployed in today’s difficult times might be challenged to do something similar? Probably thousands.
Monday, February 13, 2012
An Offender for a Word
I am offended that the source for truth so many rely upon (our public media) seems to be in the business of obscuring truth by the methods they use. In an interview with a media mogul that I listened to last evening on NPR the guest candidly admitted that “we emphasize conflict” and that they “pump up” issues that can cast the issue or political candidate in a certain light to fit their corporate bias. The media, of course, piously tout their ‘fact checkers’ but the significance of the assertions they choose to check is largely a sham. They shine the spotlight on one thing to take the focus off of something else.
Take, for example, the issue the media (and some candidates such as Newt Gingrich) made of presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s comment a week or so ago that he (Romney) wasn’t too worried about the “poor” in our society. If you listened to the rest of the sentence, Mr. Romney said he wasn’t too concerned, either, about the rich—that both classes had structures in place to deal with their concerns. What he was trying to emphasize was the plight of the unemployed middle class in America. Context was ignored by the media in favor of highlighting a hot-button word or phrase.
In my youth I had an English class that used as its text a book titled “Language in Thought and Action” with a chapter, as I recall, titled ‘Ideas in Context’ by professor and later U.S. Senator S. I. Hayakawa . Without remembering much about specifics of the book, the title made a great impression upon me. He said, “Hitler is gone, but if the majority of our fellow citizens are more susceptible to the slogans of fear and race hatred than to those of peaceful accommodation and mutual respect among human beings, our political liberties remain at the mercy of any eloquent and unscrupulous demagogue.”
Who among the actors on the current political stage might fit that description?
We must keep ideas, statements, even behaviors in context and be slow to judge others without first considering the context or frame of reference of the actor. We must be careful of adopting these approaches ourselves.
The Old Testament prophet Isaiah thundered “Woe unto them that seek deep to hide their counsel from the Lord and their works are in the dark…surely your turning of things upside down shall be esteemed as the potter’s clay…for the terrible one [i.e., the critic shall be] brought to nought, and the scorner [will be] consumed and all that watch for iniquity [without just cause will be]cut off; that make a man an offender for a word, and lay a snare for him…and turn aside the just for a thing of nought.” (Isaiah 29:15-16, 20-21).
Beware of ‘spin doctors.’
Take, for example, the issue the media (and some candidates such as Newt Gingrich) made of presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s comment a week or so ago that he (Romney) wasn’t too worried about the “poor” in our society. If you listened to the rest of the sentence, Mr. Romney said he wasn’t too concerned, either, about the rich—that both classes had structures in place to deal with their concerns. What he was trying to emphasize was the plight of the unemployed middle class in America. Context was ignored by the media in favor of highlighting a hot-button word or phrase.
In my youth I had an English class that used as its text a book titled “Language in Thought and Action” with a chapter, as I recall, titled ‘Ideas in Context’ by professor and later U.S. Senator S. I. Hayakawa . Without remembering much about specifics of the book, the title made a great impression upon me. He said, “Hitler is gone, but if the majority of our fellow citizens are more susceptible to the slogans of fear and race hatred than to those of peaceful accommodation and mutual respect among human beings, our political liberties remain at the mercy of any eloquent and unscrupulous demagogue.”
Who among the actors on the current political stage might fit that description?
We must keep ideas, statements, even behaviors in context and be slow to judge others without first considering the context or frame of reference of the actor. We must be careful of adopting these approaches ourselves.
The Old Testament prophet Isaiah thundered “Woe unto them that seek deep to hide their counsel from the Lord and their works are in the dark…surely your turning of things upside down shall be esteemed as the potter’s clay…for the terrible one [i.e., the critic shall be] brought to nought, and the scorner [will be] consumed and all that watch for iniquity [without just cause will be]cut off; that make a man an offender for a word, and lay a snare for him…and turn aside the just for a thing of nought.” (Isaiah 29:15-16, 20-21).
Beware of ‘spin doctors.’
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