For Today, This is All I Have
This is a good poem sent to be by a good friend. I do hope you will read it and think about it.
What will Matter
Author: Michael Josephson
Ready or not, some day it will all come to an end.
There will be no more sunrises, no minutes,
hours or days.
All the things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten, will pass to someone else.
Your wealth, fame and temporal power
will shrivel to irrelevance.
It will not matter what you owned or
what you were owed.
Your grudges, resentments, frustrations and
jealousies will finally disappear.
So too, your hopes, ambitions,
plans and to-do lists will expire.
The wins and losses that once seemed
so important will fade away.
It won't matter where you came from or what side of the tracks you lived on at the end.
It won't matter whether you were beautiful or brilliant.
Even your gender and skin color will be irrelevant.
So what will matter?
How will the value of your days be measured?
What will matter is not what you bought, but what you built; not what you got, but what you gave.
What will matter is not your success,
but your significance.
What will matter is not what you learned,
but what you taught.
What will matter is every act of integrity, compassion, courage or sacrifice that enriched, empowered or encouraged others to emulate your example.
What will matter is not your competence,
but your character.
What will matter is not how many people you knew, but how many will feel a lasting loss when you're gone.
What will matter is not your memories, but the memories that live in those who loved you.
What will matter is how long you will be remembered, by whom and for what.
Living a life that matters doesn't happen by accident.
It's not a matter of circumstance but of choice.
Choose to live a life that matters.
I was thinking more about resolutions for the new year. I think it is a good thing to have some goals for yourself during the new year. It’s good for us if we have something to aim for and to labor to achieve it. Tomorrow, I’ll mention some areas in which you could make some goals for yourself.
~Isaac Asimov
Joke of the Day
Alice was to bake a cake for the Baptist Church ladies' group bake sale, but she forgot to do it until the last minute.
She remembered it the morning of the bake sale and after rummaging through cabinets she found an angel food cake mix and quickly made it while drying her hair and dressing and helping her son Bryan pack up for Scout camp.
But when Alice took the cake from the oven, the center had dropped flat and the cake was horribly disfigured. She said, "Oh dear, there's no time to bake another cake."
This cake was so important to Alice because she did so want to fit in at her new church, and in her new community of new friends. So, being inventive, she looked around the house for something to build up the center of the cake.
Alice found it in the bathroom -- a roll of toilet paper & newspaper. She plunked it in and then covered it with icing. Not only did the finished product look beautiful, it looked perfect!
Before she left the house to drop the cake by the church and head for work, Alice woke her daughter Amanda and gave her some money and specific instructions to be at the bake sale the minute it opened at 9:30, and to buy that cake and bring it home.
When the daughter arrived at the sale, she found that the attractive perfect cake had already been sold. Amanda grabbed her cell phone and called her Mom. Alice was horrified. She couldn't imagine what had gone wrong. Alice was beside herself. Everyone would know, what would they think? "Oh, my," she wailed! She would be ostracized, talked about, ridiculed. All night Alice lay awake in bed thinking about people pointing their fingers at her and talking about her behind her back.
The next day, Alice promised herself that she would try not to think about the cake and she would attended the fancy luncheon/bridal shower at the home of a friend of a friend and try to have a good time. Alice did not really want to attend because the hostess was a snob who more than once had looked down her nose at the fact that Alice was a single parent and not from the founding families of town, but having already RSVP 'd she could not think of a believable excuse to stay home.
The meal was elegant, the company was definitely upper crust old South. Then, to Alice's horror, the CAKE in question was presented for dessert.
Alice felt the blood drain from her body when she saw the cake. She started out of her chair to rush to tell her hostess all about it, but before she could get to her feet, the Mayor's wife said, "What a beautiful cake!"
Alice, who was still stunned, sat back in her chair when she heard the hostess (who was a prominent church member) say, "Thank you, I baked it myself."
Alice smiled and thought to herself, "God is good."
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