It read:
There is a girl who inspires us all
She’s blonde and stands around 5 feet tall
She’s seen exotic locales and far away places
But she’s grounded in life with the issues she faces
She’s affected so many, especially me
Her story is one of great victory
Let’s examine the journey that has been her life
It’s had many highs, but also some strife
Academically talented at a very young age
Even early on, she made her way to the stage!
She traveled quite often and lived on her own
It’s wonderful to see just how much she’s grown
She is a success in the true sense of the word
To call her anything less would just be absurd!
I look up to her despite my being older
She’s always been there for me, and offered her shoulder
I can’t say enough on how much good she has done
When it comes to compassion, she is second to none.
What lies ahead for her you ask?
Her future is bright; she is up for the task
I love her so much and she makes me so proud
I hope she realizes, it is I she has wowed!
Tara has given me more than she may realize. After all those years of looking up to her as my sister, I’m grateful she’s by my side as my friend.
~Lori Deschene
The Golden Buddha
And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.
~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
In the fall of 1988 my wife Georgia and I were invited to give a presentation on self-esteem and peak performance at a conference in Hong Kong. Since we had never been to the Far East before, we decided to extend our trip and visit Thailand.
When we arrived in Bangkok, we decided to take a tour of the city’s most famous Buddhist temples. Along with our interpreter and driver, Georgia and I visited numerous Buddhist temples that day, but after a while they all began to blur in our memories.
However, there was one temple that left an indelible impression in our hearts and minds. It is called the Temple of the Golden Buddha. The temple itself is very small, probably no larger than thirty feet by thirty feet. But as we entered, we were stunned by the presence of a ten-and-a-half-foot tall, solid-gold Buddha. It weighs over two-and-a-half tons and is valued at approximately 196 million dollars! It was quite an awesome sight — the kindly gentle, yet imposing solid-gold Buddha smiling down at us.
As we immersed ourselves in the normal sightseeing tasks (taking pictures while oohing and aahing over the statue), I walked over
to a glass case that contained a large piece of clay about eight inches thick and twelve inches wide. Next to the glass case was a typewritten page describing the history of this magnificent piece of art.
Back in 1957 a group of monks from a monastery had to relocate a clay Buddha from their temple to a new location. The monastery was to be relocated to make room for the development of a highway through Bangkok. When the crane began to lift the giant idol, the weight of it was so tremendous that it began to crack. What’s more, rain began to fall. The head monk, who was concerned about damage to the sacred Buddha, decided to lower the statue back to the ground and cover it with a large canvas tarp to protect it from the rain.
Later that evening the head monk went to check on the Buddha. He shined his flashlight under the tarp to see if the Buddha was staying dry. As the light reached the crack, he noticed a little gleam shining back and thought it strange. As he took a closer look at this gleam of light, he wondered if there might be something underneath the clay. He went to fetch a chisel and hammer from the monastery and began to chip away at the clay. As he knocked off shards of clay, the little gleam grew brighter and bigger. Many hours of labor went by before the monk stood face to face with the extraordinary solid-gold Buddha.
Historians believe that several hundred years before the head monk’s discovery, the Burmese army was about to invade Thailand (then called Siam). The Siamese monks, realizing that their country would soon be attacked, covered their precious golden Buddha with an outer covering of clay in order to keep their treasure from being looted by the Burmese. Unfortunately, it appears that the Burmese slaughtered all the Siamese monks, and the well-kept secret of the golden Buddha remained intact until that fateful day in 1957.
As we flew home on Cathay Pacific Airlines I began to think to myself, “We are all like the clay Buddha, covered with a shell of hardness created out of fear, and yet underneath each of us is a ‘golden Buddha,’ a ‘golden Christ’ or a ‘golden essence,’ which is our real self. Somewhere along the way, between the ages of two and nine, we begin to cover up our ‘golden essence,’ our natural self. Much like the monk with the hammer and the chisel, our task now is to discover our true essence once again.”
~Jack Canfield
Start with Yourself
Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.
~Winston Churchill
The following words were written on the tomb of an Anglican Bishop in the Crypts of Westminster Abbey: When I was young and free and my imagination had no limits, I dreamed of changing the world. As I grew older and wiser, I discovered the world would not change, so I shortened my sights somewhat and decided to change only my country.
But it, too, seemed immovable.
As I grew into my twilight years, in one last desperate attempt, I settled for changing only my family, those closest to me, but alas, they would have none of it.
And now as I lie on my deathbed, I suddenly realize: If I had only changed my self first, then by example I would have changed my family.
From their inspiration and encouragement, I would then have been able to better my country and, who knows, I may have even changed the world.
~Anonymous
Nothing But the Truth!
The truth brings with it a great measure of absolution, always.
~R.D. Laing
David Casstevens of the Dallas Morning News tells a story about Frank Szymanski, a Notre Dame center in the 1940s, who had been called as a witness in a civil suit at South Bend.
“Are you on the Notre Dame football team this year?” the judge asked.
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“What position?”
“Center, Your Honor.”
“How good a center?”
Szymanski squirmed in his seat, but said firmly: “Sir, I’m the best center Notre Dame has ever had.”
Coach Frank Leahy, who was in the courtroom, was surprised. Szymanski always had been modest and unassuming. So when the proceedings were over, he took Szymanski aside and asked why he had made such a statement. Szymanski blushed.
“I hated to do it, Coach,” he said. “But, after all, I was under oath.”
~Dallas Morning News
Covering All the Bases
Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.
~Les Brown
A little boy was overheard talking to himself as he strode through his back yard, baseball cap in place and toting ball and bat. “I’m the greatest baseball player in the world,” he said proudly. Then he tossed the ball in the air, swung and missed. Undaunted, he picked up the ball, threw it into the air and said to himself, “I’m the greatest player ever!” He swung at the ball again, and again he missed.
He paused a moment to examine bat and ball carefully. Then once again he threw the ball into the air and said, “I’m the greatest baseball player who ever lived.” He swung the bat hard and again missed the ball.
“Wow!” he exclaimed. “What a pitcher!”
~Source Unknown
After church one Sunday morning, my five-year-old granddaughter was intently drawing on a piece of paper. When asked what she was drawing, she replied that she was drawing Go
d.
"But no one knows what God looks like," I said.
'They will when I finish this picture!" she answered.
~Jacque Hall
My Declaration of Self-Esteem
What I am is good enough if I would only be it openly.
~Carl Rogers
The following was written in answer to a 15-year-old girl’s question, “How can I prepare myself for a fulfilling life?”
I am me.
In all the world, there is no one else exactly like me.
There are people who have some parts like me but no one adds up exactly like me. Therefore, everything that comes out of me is authentically mine because I alone choose it.
I own everything about me — my body, including everything it does; my mind, including all my thoughts and ideas; my eyes, including the images of all they behold; my feelings, whatever they might be — anger, joy, frustration, love, disappointment, excitement; my mouth and all the words that come out of it — polite, sweet and rough, correct or incorrect; my voice, loud and soft; all my actions, whether they be to others or myself.
I own my fantasies, my dreams, my hopes, my fears.
I own all my triumphs and successes, all my failures and mistakes.
Because I own all of me, I can become intimately acquainted with me. By so doing, I can love me and be friendly with me in all my parts. I can then make it possible for all of me to work in my best interests.
I know there are aspects about myself that puzzle me, and other aspects that I do not know. But as long as I am friendly and loving to myself, I can courageously and hopefully look for the solutions to the puzzles and for ways to find out more about me.
However I look and sound, whatever I say and do, and whatever I think and feel at a given moment in time is me. This is authentic and represents where I am at that moment in time.
When I review later how I looked and sounded, what I said and did, and how I thought and felt, some parts may turn out to be unfitting. I can discard that which is unfitting and keep that which proved fitting, and invent something new for that which I discarded.
I can see, hear, feel, think, say and do. I have the tools to survive, to be close to others, to be productive, to make sense and order out of the world of people and things outside of me.
I own me and therefore I can engineer me. I am me and I am okay.
~Virginia Satir
The Bag Lady
The willingness to share does not make one charitable; it makes one free.
~Robert Brault
She used to sleep in the Fifth Street Post Office. I could smell her before I rounded the entrance to where she slept, standing up, by the public phones. I smelled the urine that seeped through the layers of her dirty clothing and the decay from her nearly toothless mouth. If she was not asleep, she mumbled incoherently.
Now they close the post office at six to keep the homeless out, so she curls up on the sidewalk, talking to herself, her mouth flapping open as though unhinged, her smells diminished by the soft breeze.
One Thanksgiving we had so much food left over, I packed it up, excused myself from the others and drove over to Fifth Street.
It was a frigid night. Leaves were swirling around the streets and hardly anyone was out, all but a few of the luckless in some warm home or shelter. But I knew I would find her.
She was dressed as she always was, even in summer: The warm woolly layers concealing her old, bent body. Her bony hands clutched the precious shopping cart. She was squatting against a wire fence in front of the playground next to the post office. “Why didn’t she choose some place more protected from the wind?” I thought, and assumed she was so crazy she did not have the sense to huddle in a doorway.
I pulled my shiny car to the curb, rolled down the window and said, “Mother... would you...” and was shocked at the word
“Mother.” But she was... is... in some way I cannot grasp.
I said, again, “Mother, I’ve brought you some food. Would you like some turkey and stuffing and apple pie?” At this the old woman looked at me and said quite clearly and distinctly, her two loose lower teeth wobbling as she spoke, “Oh, thank you very much, but I’m quite full now. Why don’t you take it to someone who really needs it?” Her words were clear, her manners gracious. Then I was dismissed: Her head sank into her rags again.
~Bobbie Probstein
Response/Ability
The willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life is the source from which self-respect springs.
~Joan Didion
the game we play
is let’s pretend
and pretend
we’re not
pretending
we choose to
forget
who we are
and then forget
that we’ve
forgotten
who are we really?
the center
that watches
and runs the show
that can choose
which way
it will go
the I AM
consciousness
that powerful
loving perfect
reflection
of the cosmos
but in our attempt
to cope with
early situations
we chose or were
hypnotized into
a passive position
to avoid
punishment
or the loss of love
we chose to deny
our
response/ability
pretending that
things just
happened
or that we were
being controlled
taken over
we put ourselves down
and have become
used to this
masochistic
posture
this weakness
this indecisiveness
but we are
in reality
free
a center
of cosmic energy
your will
is your power
don’t pretend
you don’t have it
or you won’t
~Bernard Gunther
The Rules for Being Human
Every human being is a problem in search of a solution.
~Ashley Montagu
1. You will receive a body.
You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for the entire period of this time around.
2. You will learn lessons.
You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called Life. Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or think them irrelevant and stupid.
3. There are no mistakes, only lessons.
Growth is a process of trial and error: Experimentation. The “failed” experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiment that ultimately “works.”
4. A lesson is repeated until learned.
A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can then go on to the next lesson.
5. Learning lessons does not end.
There is no part of life that does not contain its lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.
6. “There” is no better than “here.”
When your “there” has become a “here,” you will simply obtain another “there” that will again look better than “here.”
7. Others are merely mirrors of you.
You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects something you love or hate about yourself.
8. What you make of your life is up to you.
You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.
9. Your answers lie inside you.
The answers to Life’s ques
tions lie inside you. All you need to do is look, listen and trust.
10. You will forget all this.
~Chérie Carter-Scott
On Parenting
Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family.
~George Bernard Shaw
Training Camp
Sports is human life in microcosm.
~Howard Cosell
My childhood sucked. Thank God.
My parents divorced when I was 18 months old. My dad took me because, frankly, my mother didn’t want me. In fact, when the doctor first told my mother she was pregnant with me, her response was anger and disappointment. After I was born she was generally just disinterested in me and simply handed me over to my father. She was a woman who never really wanted to be a mother and thankfully for me she admitted that to herself and gave me up to my dad. He really didn’t know what to do with me either, but was willing to “do what had to be done” (one of his favorite mantras).
My dad was only 23 years old when I was born, and back then, men didn’t raise kids on their own. He had just moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to what must’ve seemed like the middle of nowhere (Albuquerque, New Mexico, where I was born) to be an overworked and grossly underpaid football coach for the university there. He was alone, lonely and wounded from the divorce, with no idea how to raise a son.
So he parented the only way he knew how — like he coached. That meant, no whining, no crying, no excuses, and lots of yelling. My dad was infamous on the gridiron for one of his coaching philosophies: no matter how hard a player was hit on the field and how hurt they got, they were not allowed to come out of the game. One time a linebacker got really smashed in the middle of the field, wobbled to the sideline and begged my dad to be taken out of the game. My dad grabbed him by the facemask and screamed, “Not unless you are showing bone.” The player pulled his shoulder pad back and his collarbone was sticking out of his neck skin like a Thanksgiving turkey. Thus came the line I heard hundreds of times: “No, you cannot stay home from school sick, unless you are ‘showing bone.’”
Chicken Soup for the Soul: All Your Favorite Original Stories Page 9