Self-Help Happiness Blog

What legacy do you want to leave behind? I know, the cat needs feeding (we have two kittens), the house is a mess (still? again? it gets hard to keep track) and there’s a show you want to watch. Daily life is so full that we don’t often step back to see if we are even heading in the direction we want to go in.

Take a moment today to think about how you want to be remembered. Then think about your day’s agenda. Have you scheduled time to do things that will help you achieve that legacy?

Nobody will remember you for having fed the cat. Nobody will remember you for your clean house. Nobody will remember you for what you watched.

They will remember you for the love you spread and the good deeds you did. What will you do to be remembered?

The Buddhist Proverb says:

If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking.

But how do you know you are walking in the right direction? Here are a few questions you can ask yourself:

Do most of the things I do make people smile, laugh and say “Thank you!”? Or do most of the things I do make people frown, turn away or…or…or nothing?

Do most of the things I do make me a better person – stronger, kinder, smarter, more capable? Or do most of the things I do just kill time and take up space?

When I leave the world, will the world be a better place?

After accounting for all the food I have consumed, all the plastic and metal that have been fabricated for my use, all the trees that have been chopped down for a rook over my head and a seat under my seat, will the total value of my life be positive?

When I die will people cry because they loved me so much? Or because they didn’t get enough inheritance?

You can probably come up with your own questions, too. But it is not the questions that count, nor the answers. It’s what you choose to do with the answers that counts.

It turns out that Ralph Lauren is more than just a fashion designer; he is also a philosopher:

“We all get report cards in many different ways, but the real excitement of what you’re doing is in the doing of it. It’s not what you’re gonna get in the end – it’s not the final curtain – it’s

really in the doing it, and loving what I’m doing.”

Being a parent, I get report cards from my kids all the time.  It is easy to get caught up in the marks.  But it is much more important to make sure my kids are:

A) Doing their best.

B) Excited about learning and improving.

The real report card is whether we are truly living our lives and not just passing through

Knowledge.  Understanding.  Wisdom.

Which is best to have?  What is the difference between them, anyway?

Knowledge is simple.  It is about facts and information, just observing what they are.

Understanding is a little deeper – it is about realizing what the information (the knowledge) means.

Wisdom is deeper still.  It is like understanding the understanding – how you should react to or feel about the information, now that you understand it.

EXAMPLE:

Knowledge: The government is creating seven new programs this year.

Understanding: Either the government will dip into my pockets now to pay for these new programs, or it will add to the national debt so that many years from now it won’t bother dipping into my pockets – it will just take my pants away.

Wisdom: I should fight the new government programs.  Or, I should live it up while I can, while I still have my pants. Or, I should seek how I can milk these programs to get my money back and earn interest so that one day (when my pants are taken away) I can buy them back.

Which brings me to what inspired this blog post…a quote from Malcolm Gladwell.

Since my brain really only works in the morning, I try to keep that time free for writing and thinking and don’t read any media at all until lunchtime, when I treat myself to The New York Times–the paper edition. At this point, I realize, I am almost a full 24 hours behind the news cycle. Is this is a problem? I have no idea. My brother, who is a teacher, always says that we place too much emphasis on the speed of knowledge acquistion, and not the quality of knowledge acquistion: I guess that means that the fact that I am still on Monday, when everyone else is on Tuesday, is okay.

These days, people rush to get the latest information.  They grab the knowledge.  But do they take the time to understand?  Or even more time to gain wisdom from it?  No, they are on to the next piece of information.

Once upon a time we revered our elders for their wisdom.  Now we tend to mock them for being behind the times.  My parents can’t use computers or any of the new-fangled gadgets.  They don’t have the information-overload that so impresses us in today’s “whiz kids”.

But is knowledge alone worth very much?  I think most people will agree that there is a hierarchy where wisdom is at the top, then understanding and finally knowledge (OK, finally would be ignorance).  But how important is it to seek wisdom, or is knowledge “good enough”?

What do you think?

I have to admit, I’ll never understand suburbia. I get out of my car and I see perfectly manicured lawns as far as the eye can see. I would understand if one or two people had spent a lot of time on their lawns, perhaps gardening hobbyists, people with a fairly obsessive nature, etc.

But every single lawn is perfectly manicured. All I can wonder is , “Doesn’t anybody here have anything else to do? Does lawn manicuring hold such a high priority in their lives that, with all the competing pressures of modern life, they somehow all find the time to pay this much attention to grass?”

Then one of the neighbors comes out and starts pushing her lawn mower across an already low-cut lawn, somehow managing to cut it even lower. This is a lady with children. Is it just me, or is a huge section of society misplacing their priorities? Remember, your priorities are not what you say they are, but rather how you spend your life.

How do you spend your life? What are your priorities?

A father and his son, a young adult, were driving to the cottage. The father was worried, because his son had fallen into companionship with people who might lead him astray, and he was trying to help his son see that it was time for him to take his life a little more seriously.

“Aw, dad, I know you mean well, and I know I’m not really doing you proud, but I like to party. I’ll get on the right track some day. I don’t need to worry.”

They drove a little further, when suddenly the son said, “Hey dad, that was the turnoff for the cottage. You missed the turnoff.”

“I know,” said the father. “I think I’ll just keep driving this way for a while. I can always go back later to take the right road.”

A few more minutes – and a couple turnoffs – passed. The son began to think of the swimming he would miss if they arrived too late. “Dad, the farther you go down this road, the longer it will take to get back.”

The father replied, “That’s true. The further you go down the wrong track, the harder it is to get back. So when were you thinking of turning your life around to head down the right track?”

Where do you want to go? What do you want out of life? Most importantly, what are you waiting for?

As a follow-up to yesterday’s blog post on dying to be happy, I thought I would share with you the lyrics from Tim McGraw’s song, “Live Like You Were Dying”, which just played on Y101 A few minutes ago. 

He said I was in my early forties
with a lot of life before me
when a moment came that stopped me on a dime
and I spent most of the next days
looking at the x-rays
Talking bout the options
and talking bout sweet time
I asked him when it sank in
that this might really be the real end
how’s it hit you when you get that kinda news
man what’d you do

and he said
I went sky diving
I went Rocky Mountain climbing
I went 2.7 seconds on a bull named fumanchu
and I loved deeper and I spoke sweeter
and I gave forgiveness I’d been denying
and he said someday I hope you get the chance
to live like you were dying.

He said I was finally the husband
that most the time I wasn�t
and I became a friend a friend would like to have
and all the sudden going fishin
wasn’t such an imposition
and I went three times that year I lost my dad
well I finally read the good book
and I took a good long hard look
at what I’d do if I could do it all again

and then
I went sky diving
I went Rocky Mountain climbing
I went 2.7 seconds on a bull named fumanchu
and I loved deeper and I spoke sweeter
and I gave forgiveness I’d been denying
and he said someday I hope you get the chance
to live like you were dying.

Like tomorrow was a gift and you got eternity to think about
what’d you do with it what did you do with it
what did I do with it
what would I do with it?

Sky diving
I went Rocky Mountain climbing
I went 2.7 seconds on a bull named fumanchu
and then I loved deeper and I spoke sweeter
and I watched an eagle as it was flying
and he said someday I hope you get the chance
to live like you were dying.
To live like you were dying
To live like you were dying
To live like you were dying
To live like you were dying

Short blog post today. This little message says it all…please don’t let this happen to you.

From yesterday’s Daily Dose of Happiness: 

TIME

They say that time is money, but it’s not. Time is everything.

No matter what you are doing, you are spending time. You can’t slow
down or speed up the pace of the time you spend. All you can do is
increase or decrease the value of what you get for that time.

If you are spending a lot of your time in drudgery work or watching a
TV or computer screen, maybe you could do something to increase the
value of the time you are spending. Perhaps you would like to spend
more time with people, more time playing sports, more time
philosophizing…whatever you enjoy doing, whatever fulfills you,
that’s how you should spend your time. Because whatever you are
doing, you are spending it, and even where there is a money-back
guarantee, there is no time-back option.

From today’s Daily Dose of Happiness…

OWNERSHIP

Nothing is truly yours, except your own experiences.

Out here in farm country, I see a lot of signs that read, “This
land is our land; hands off government”. Of course, I know what they
mean, but the fact is that nobody owns the land. “ownership” is a
fairy tale we tell ourselves so that humans don’t harm each other
for use of things.

But the truth is, nobody own the land – not a grain of it. When my
very short tenure on this planet is through, the land will remain.

If I pass down my land to my daughters, someday they too will go. The
land will remain.

But our experiences never leave us. War. Floods. Meteor crashes.
Nothing can take away our experiences. And when we go, we take them
with us.

For my money (Can I call it “my”?), I would rather have dozens of
wonderful experiences that are all mine, than dozens of wonderful
things that never will be.