Life can make choices for us. Sometimes these choices seem unhappy or unfair, but in the end we control our own destiny because we can decide how people and events affect us.
So much of our happiness lies within the choices that we make. We can accept that life isn’t the way we want it to be, or we can change it so that it will be.
If your life feels like it is lacking the power that you want and the motivation that you need, sometimes all you have to do is shift your point of view.
當你覺得心有餘而力不足，缺乏前進動力時，你須要做的就是改變你的觀點與角度。
By training your thoughts to concentrate on the bright side of things, you are more likely to have the incentive to follow through on your goals. You are less likely to be held back by negative ideas that might limit your performance.
Life doesn’t always give us the joys we want. We don’t always get our hopes and dreams, and we don’t always get our own way. But don’t give up hope, because you can make a difference one situation and one person at a time.
Courage takes many forms. There is physical courage, there is moral courage. Then there is a still higher type of courage — the courage to brave pain, to live with it, to never let others know of it and to still find joy in life; to wake up in the morning with an enthusiasm for the day ahead. — Howard Cosell
The word "discovery" literally means, uncovering something that's hidden from view. But what really happens is a change in the viewer. The familiar offers comfort few can resist, and fewer still want to disturb. But as relatively recent inventions such as the telescope and microscope have taught us, the unknown has many layers. Every truth has geological strata, and you can't have an orthodoxy without a heresy.
All of us have read thrilling stories in which the hero had only a limited and specified time to live. Sometimes it was as long as a year; sometimes as short as twenty-four hours, but always we were interested in discovering just how the doomed man chose to spend his last days or his last hours. I speak, of course, of free men who have a choice, not condemned criminals whose sphere of activities is strictly delimited.
Such stories set us thinking, wondering what we should do under similar circumstances. What associations should we crowd into those last hours as mortal beings? What happiness should we find in reviewing the past, what regrets?
Sometimes I have thought it would be an excellent rule to live each day as if we should die tomorrow. Such an attitude would emphasize sharply the values of life. We should live each day with a gentleness, a vigor, and a keenness of appreciation which are often lost when time stretches before us in the constant panorama of more days and months and years to come. There are those, of course, who would adopt the epicurean motto of “ Eat, drink, and be merry, ” but most people would be chastened by the certainty of impending death.
Most of us take life for granted. We know that one day we must die, but usually we picture that day as far in the future, when we are in buoyant health, death is all but unimaginable. We seldom think of it. The days stretch out in an endless vista. So we go about our petty task, hardly aware of our listless attitude towards life.
The same lethargy, I am afraid, characterizes the use of all our faculties and senses. Only the deaf appreciate hearing, only the blind realize the manifold blessings that lie in sight. Particularly does this observation apply to those who have lost sight and hearing in adult life. But those who have never suffered impairment of sight or hearing seldom make the fullest use of these blessed faculties. Their eyes and ears take in all sights and sound hazily, without concentration, and with little appreciation. It is the same old story of not being grateful for what we conscious of health until we are ill.
I have often thought it would be a blessing if each human being were stricken blind and deaf for a few days at some time during his early adult life. Darkness would make him more appreciative of sight; silence would teach him the joys of sound.
Now and then I have tested my seeing friends to discover what they see. Recently I was visited by a very good friend who had just returned from a long walk in the woods, and I asked her what she had observed. “Nothing in particular,” she replied. I might have been incredulous had I not been accustomed to such responses, for long ago I became convinced that the seeing see little.
How was it possible, I asked myself, to walk for an hour through the woods and see nothing worthy of note? I who cannot see find hundreds of things to interest me through mere touch.
I feel the delicate symmetry of a leaf. I pass my hands lovingly about the smooth skin of a silver birch, or the rough shaggy bark of a pine. In spring I touch the branches of trees hopefully in search of a bud, the first sign of awakening Nature after her winter’s sleep. I feel the delightful, velvety texture of a flower, and discover its remarkable convolutions ; and something of the miracle of Nature is revealed to me.
Occasionally, if I am very fortunate, I place my hand gently in a small tree and feel the happy quiver of a bird in full song. I am delighted to have the cool waters of a brook rush through my open fingers. To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug. To me the pageant of seasons is a thrilling and unending drama, the action of which streams through my finger tips.
At times my heart cries out with longing to see all these things. If I can get so much pleasure from mere touch, how much more beauty must be revealed by sight. Yet, those who have eyes apparently see little. The panorama of color and action fills the world is taken for granted. It is human, perhaps, to appreciate little that which we have and to long for which we have not, but it is a great pity that in the world of light and the gift of sight is used only as a mere convenience rather than as a means of adding fullness to life.
Youth
is not just a stage of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a
matter of rosy cheeks, red lips, and supple knees; it is a matter of
the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it
is the freshness of the deep spring of life.
Youth
means the predominance of courage over timidity, of adventure over
the love of ease. Nobody grows old merely by living a number of
years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.
Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human being’s heart the
love of wonder, the unfailing
childlike appetite for what next, and the joy of the game of living. So
long as your heart receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, and
courage, so long are you young. When your heart is covered with the
snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, then you are grown old,
even at 20.
You
are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your
self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old
as your despair.
