LIFE
"Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans." --- John Lennon
Here's what I wanted to tell you today. GET A LIFE! A real life! -- Not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the larger house.
Get a life in which you notice the stars in the sky, a life in which you stop and watch how a red-tailed hawk circles over the mountains tops in Carefree, Arizona. Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you.
And remember that love is not leisure, it is work. Pick up the phone. Send an e-mail. Write a letter. Get a life in which you are generous. And realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for granted. Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to spread it around. Take money you would have spent on beers and give it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a big brother or sister. All of you want to do well. But if you do not do good things, then doing well will never be enough. It is so easy to waste our lives, our days, our hours, and our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the color of our kids' eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again. It is so easy to exist instead of to live.
This year I have learned to live. Something happened to me, something that changed my life in ways that, if I had my way, it would never have been changed at all. And what I learned from it is what, today March 27th 2008, seems to be the hardest lesson of all. I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get. I learned to look at all the good in the world and try to give some of it back because I believed in it, completely and utterly. And I tried to do that, in part, by telling others what I have learned.
Learn to be happy. And think of life as a terminal illness, because if you do, you will live it with joy and passion, as it ought to be lived.
Mike Anderson passed away one year ago today.
Thanks Mr. A – I miss you
Adapted from a commencement speech made by Anna Quindlen at Villanova University~
Roger Boggs - Sensei
Goshin Karate & Judo Academy
6245 E. Bell Road #120
Scottsdale, AZ. 85254
480-951-2236
http://www.goshinkarate.com/
http://www.goshinjudo.com/
http://www.goshingirls.com/
http://www.goshingear.com/
E-Mail - GoshinKarate@cox.net
1 comment:
Mr. Boggs, Nice Letter.
I feels like it came from the heart.
"Get a Life"
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