Posted on July 26, 2009 - by Joanne Del Core
Words to live by
An excerpt that even after many re-reads, continues to evoke thought and reflection.
“Stay brutally optimistic. See the opportunity in every difficulty and anticipate the most favorable outcome out of every situation. Whatever you look for, that’s what you’ll find. We can get better or we can get bitter; it all depends on the lessons we draw from each experience. Optimism is like electricity – very little happens without it. Know this truth: you have all the resources you’ll ever need to handle all the challenges you’ll ever have. It’s in the true emergencies that the true you emerges. Resolve to identify the most powerful benefit you offer to the people around you and then deliver it. “The purpose of life,” said George Bernard Shaw, “is a life of purpose.” What’s yours? Where are you investing your personal energy: self-preservation or adding values to others? Here’s the well-being paradox: if you’re only concerned about yourself, you cannot take care of yourself. Only by helping others can you succeed.”
There’s a place that I call the in-between stage that I’m fully aware of today. It’s a place where you sit in momentary silence while you’re waiting for something to happen, (which can occur a hundred, maybe even a hundred million times a day). It’s that really tiny space in time when you’re waiting for the subway to arrive as you stand patiently on the platform and hear it barreling down the tunnel, or when you’re waiting to receive your change from the cashier at the grocery store and she hands you back your receipt in hand. Or perhaps when you’re in the waiting line, queued up for the ATM machine during rush hour traffic.
I was encouraged by the idea of becoming “enlightened” one October evening in 2007. I was scheduled to see the Dalai Lama and I was buzzing with curiosity and intrigue. I felt incredibly awake, like as if all of my senses were functioning at a higher frequency, like as if my body already knew that this would be an event to remember and that it would resonate very deeply with me.
