It doesn matter how tall your grandfather was

What matters, what really matters, is where you are going. Who your parents are is of little consequence. But who you choose to make yourself into, well, that is the key. Are you sitting in stagnant waters, in the dark pools of liquid memory? Or are you swimming in the vibrant river of hope and faith and possibility?

Are you actively climbing to new heights , filling life with imagination and creativity and activity? That, my friend, is the secret to a happy life. So break the pull of yesterday by living and doing today what will create an amazing tomorrow!

When we own our past and take responsibility for wounds and how they impact our life we can create a beautiful life. Thank you so much for your comments, kind words, and insight. And yet such thinking drives us deeper into the mud of anger and despondency and despair.

Negative thoughts pile up on negative emotions and we end up suffocating under the weight. You are so right that we need to own our pasts and take responsibility for our wounds.

We thereby are able to summon something inside to recognize the power we have to choose, to be, to become, to learn, to grow, and to rise above our pain and suffering, even transform our suffering into something profoundly meaningful, the results of which can be that beautiful life you mentioned. I just saw you are also a high school teacher.

That is great!! Have a great holiday weekend! Have a wonderful holiday weekend yourself! And enjoy the vacation — so important for a balanced life — I need to go on them more often!

Because what we all are, at our core, is individuals. Thank you so much for stopping by, Stuart. And thanks for the kind words. Lincoln really is a treasure trove of great quotables.

I have two more to go in this somewhat disjointed series, 16 Principles of Happiness from the 16th President. You are absolutely right about the role our families play in our lives and about the choice we have once we hit that stage of understanding, as you said. I like to think of it in terms of the proverbial Book of Me.

My family wrote or co-wrote the first several chapters. Some people continue to write into those chapters the same theme that was set in the first several. We even have the editing authority to go back and add interpretive commentary in the margins of the chapters our parents wrote, redefining what everything they wrote means. The most exciting part, though, is the authorship and creative license we have over the rest of the book, taking our life story in whatever new and meaningful directions we choose to take it.

Stuart, thanks for the added value you brought to the post. While I believe step 5 is an excellent one, I also have experienced this is not practical if you want to do this for a long time. In the beginning, it is fun, but after 3 weeks it becomes work. For me there was a serious need of more organized structured, and it only works if there is enough detail, regular update monthly and a regular time in my schedule — in the morning and sometimes in the evening to do it.

Awesome insight. Thanks for the clarification. I like the idea of needing more detail to have longer term relevance. You have made these themes very simple, clear and practical. Great and again good feedback from the others. Terrence Perry recently posted … Hello world! Cancel Reply. Is there any better or equal hope in the world?

I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him. They have clung to me all my life. Welcome, or unwelcome, agreeable, or disagreeable, whether this shall be an entire slave nation, is the issue before us.

I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow. I was losing interest in politics, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again. What I have done since then is pretty well known. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided.

It will become all one thing or all the other. If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business. If once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow-citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.

How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Important principles may, and must, be inflexible. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free — honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God.

Both may be, and one must be wrong. Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Log in. Famous Quotations. Study now. See Answer. Best Answer. It means that you have to grow at your pace. Study guides. Q: What does quote If you have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was mean?

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