Stranger

A while ago, my Dad met a stranger who was new to our small town. From the beginning, Dad was fascinated with this enchanting newcomer and soon invited him to live with our family. The stranger was quickly accepted and was around from then on. As I grew up, I never questioned his place in my family. In my young mind, he had a special niche. My parents were complementary instructors: Mom taught me good from evil, and Dad taught me to obey. But the stranger...he was our storyteller. He would keep us spellbound for hours on end with adventures, mysteries and comedies.If I wanted to know anything about politics, history or science, he always knew the answers about the past, understood the present and even seemed able to predict the future! He took my family to the first major league ball game. He made me laugh, and he made me cry. The stranger never stopped talking, but Dad didn't seem to mind. Sometimes, Mom would get up quietly while the rest of us were shushing each other to listen to what he had to say, and she would go to the kitchen for peace and quiet. (I wonder now if she ever prayed for the stranger to leave.) Dad ruled our household with certain moral convictions, but the stranger never felt obligated to honor them. Profanity, for example, was not allowed in our home... Not from us, our friends or any visitors. Our longtime visitor, however, got away with four-letter words that burned my ears and made my dad squirm and my mother blush. My Dad didn't permit the liberal use of alcohol. But the stranger encouraged us to try it on a regular basis. He made cigarettes look cool, cigars manly and pipes distinguished. He talked freely (much too freely!) about sex. His comments were sometimes blatant, sometimes suggestive, and generally embarrassing. I now know that my early concepts about relationships were influenced strongly by the stranger. Time after time, he opposed the values of my parents, yet he was seldom rebuked... And NEVER asked to leave. More than fifty years have passed since the stranger moved in with our family. He has blended right in and is not nearly as fascinating as he was at first. Still, if you could walk into my parents' den today, you would still find him sitting over in his corner, waiting for someone to listen to him talk and watch him draw his pictures.

His name?.... .. .

We just call him 'TV.'

(Note: This should be required reading for every household!)


He has a wife now....We call her 'Computer.'

Their first child is "Cell Phone".
Second child "I Pod"

THE FASTEST RUNNER

A princess once declared that she would marry the person who defeated her in running a race. She was an accomplished runner and was adamant that her suitor should be a better runner than her. Many princes from near and far came to contest a race with her. One by one, she ran a race with each one of them; but each time she was the winner. She hurt the ego of many a vain and handsome prince.

As news of this peculiar condition for the hand of the princess spread, more and more princes and nobles came to try their luck. But destiny was always tilted in favour of the princess. She was getting more and more famous as the faster runner, here and yonder. But there was one drawback too and that was that she was getting older and her parents feared that she may die an old maid!

One day a handsome young boy asked for an audience with the king. He said, “Lord, I have a request to make. Please give me the finest jewels of your queen, just for a day. I shall return them to you tomorrow, in double. The king was intrigued. He asked his queen to give her best jewels to the boy. Somehow, he found a strange look of serenity on the face of the lad and his gut feeling said that the fellow was not a crook. The boy tied the jewels in a bandana and went out. A few minutes later he sought an audience with the princess. He challenged her to a race. She guffawed at the sight of his bare feet and his bandana bag. But she agreed to race with him.

As soon as they started, the lad took a giant leap forward and dropped the most beautiful pieces of jewellery from his bandana there. As he moved forward in leaps and bounds he kept dropping pieces of precious jewellery on the track. The princess saw the beautiful gold necklace; its diamonds and sapphires sparkling in the sun! She dashed forward to pick it up and ran again. A few steps ahead, she found a lovely jhumka for the ear, but it was only one, where was its pair? She ran further in search of the other one and found it further down the track. She continued to run, collecting the jewellery all along.

The young fellow meanwhile had long since reached his destination. By the time the princess reached, she was loaded with jewels, but she had lost the race!

So, as per the condition, the boy was to marry the princess! Imagine the surprise of the king, when he saw his daughter, wearing all the family jewels, standing beside the familiar face that had cast its spell on the king!

This happens in life too. If we stop at each juncture in life to gather, then our luggage increases and the race of life becomes hard to run. On the other hand if we travel light with an eye only on the goal, then we reach our destination faster.

Her name was Rose

The first day of school our professor introduced himself and challenged us to get to know someone we didn't already know. I stood up to look around when a gentle hand touched my shoulder. I turned around to find a wrinkled, little old lady beaming up at me with a smile that lit up her entire being. She said, 'Hi handsome. My name is Rose. I'm eighty-seven years old. Can I give you a hug?' I laughed and enthusiastically responded 'Of course you may!' and she gave me a giant squeeze. 'Why are you in college at such a young, innocent age?' I asked. She jokingly replied, 'I'm here to meet a rich husband, get married, and have a couple of kids....' 'No seriously,' I asked. I was curious what may have motivated her to be taking on this challenge at her age. 'I always dreamed of having a college education and now I'm getting one!' she told me. After class we walked to the student union building and shared a chocolate milkshake. We became instant friends. Every day for the next three months we would leave class together and talk nonstop. I was always mesmerized listening to this 'time machine' as she shared her wisdom and experience with me.
Over the course of the year, Rose became a campus icon and she easily made friends wherever she went. She loved to dress up and she revelled in the attention bestowed upon her from the other students. She was living it up. At the end of the semester we invited Rose to speak at our football banquet. I'll never forget what she taught us. She was introduced and stepped up to the podium. As she began to deliver her prepared speech, she dropped her three by five cards on the floor. Frustrated and a little embarrassed she leaned into the microphone and simply said, 'I'm sorry I'm so jittery.I gave up beer for Lent and this whiskey is killing me!I'll never get my speech back in order so let me just tell you what I know.'
As we laughed she cleared her throat and began, ' We do not stop playing because we are old; we grow old because we stop playing. There are only four secrets to staying young, being happy and achieving success. You have to laugh and find humour every day. You've got to have a dream. When you lose your dreams, you die. We have so many people walking around who are dead and don't even know it! There is a huge difference between growing older and growing up... If you are nineteen years old and lie in bed for one full year and don't do one productive thing, you will turn twenty years old. If I am eighty-seven years old and stay in bed for a year and never do anything I will turn eighty-eight. Anybody can grow older. That doesn't take any talent or ability. The idea is to grow up by always finding opportunity in change. Have no regrets. The elderly usually don't have regrets for what we did, but rather for things we did not do. The only people who fear death are those with regrets.' She concluded her speech by courageously singing 'The Rose.' She challenged each of us to study the lyrics and live them out in our daily lives...

At the year's end Rose finished the college degree she had begun all those years ago. One week after graduation Rose died peacefully in her sleep. Over two thousand college students attended her funeral in tribute to the wonderful woman who taught by example that it's never too late to be all you can possibly be.

Alexander's Last Words ......

Lessons from management

37 lessons to live Life that Matters

1. Discover what matters to you
   Success in the long run has less to do with finding the best idea, organizational structure, or business model, than with discovering what matters to you as individuals.
2. Have the courage to do what matters
   You create enduring success not because you are perfect or lucky but because you have the courage to do what matters to you.
3. Don’t rely on others’ approval
   Successful people don’t rely on the approval of others to pursue their cause or calling. They are more emotionally committed to doing what they love than being loved by others.
4. Redefine success
   The real definition of success is a life and work that bring personal fulfillment and lasting relationships and makes a difference in the world in which they live.
5. Don’t chase money and recognition
   Money and recognition are just outcomes of passionately working often on an entirely different objective that is often a personal cause or calling.
6. Recognize signs of passion
   Builders (the term used by the authors to refer to “enduringly successful people”) become lovers of an idea they are passionate about for years and years. They lose track of the passage of time while doing it. In a real sense, it’s something that they’d be willing to do for free, for its own sake.
7. Worry more about being what you love
   Most of us worry more about being loved than being what we love.
8. Be sure you do what you love
   It’s dangerous not to do what you love. If you don’t love what you’re doing, you’ll lose to someone who does. Passionate people try harder, try more things, and move faster than people who only do things for a living.
9. Check whether you’re on the right track
   You know that you are on the right track when you naturally obsess over what you love. What you love attracts you even when you’re too tired to do anything else.
10. Find your mission in life
    To find your mission in life is to discover the intersection between your heart’s deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger (Frederick Beekner).
11. Find place for your multiple passions
    You do need to find a place for everything that is meaningful to you (your portfolio of passions). When you exclude all other things except a single focus for your life, there is a danger that you might find it impossible to locate the real treasure.
12. Experiment with your other passions
    Carve out a little time each week to experiment in some way with one of your other passions.
13. Never retire from what you love
    Builders’ passions create meaning in their lives that is nothing short of lifelong obsession from which they seek no escape.
14. Have integrity to do what matters to you
    You should have integrity to do what matters to you. Do not waste your time if it doesn’t matter.
15. Be yourself
    You shouldn’t hijack someone else’s value system. To do so would be a violation of integrity to what matters in your life.
16. Listen to that little voice
    Happy endings come from listening to that little voice inside your head - some call it the whisper - about what matters to you.
17. Plug into the cause and get the power
    Whatever Builders are doing has so much meaning to them that the cause itself provides charisma and they plug into it as if it was electrical current. They are lifted up by its power.
18. Do what matters despite political correctness
    Doing things despite the political correctness of the path is the price of admission to almost every enduring life of lasting impact.
19. Do what matters despite popularity
    Builders cling to a personal commitment that’s so compelling to them - something so important to them that they would actually do it for free - that they must do it despite popularity.
20. Have passion, determination, and skill
    Life takes passion, determination, and skill. You can’t skip any of those three and expect to enjoy success built to last.
21. Be greedy to acquire knowledge for your dream
    If you should be greedy about anything, it should be about acquiring “intellectual capital” for your dream. Being your best at what you do is essential to success built to last.
22. Make a difference with your knowledge
    When you have “earned” knowledge, you have an ethical responsibility to “invest” that capital on making a difference.
23. Earn opportunities through expertise
    Opportunity comes from expertise, not just luck, talent, and passion.
24. Recognize when to move
    When Builders found that striving for excellence is unreachable or joyless, they saw it as a message to move onto something else.
25. Have the right attitude toward difficulties
    Having many difficulties perfects the being; having no difficulties ruins the being (Lao Tzu).
26. Make failure your friend
    Many highly accomplished people described themselves as so proficient at making mistakes that, if you didn’t know better, you might think they were losers.
27. Harvest failure
    Enduringly successful people harvest failure. They become more resolute after losing a battle they believe in because they learn from the loss. Losers call it failure; winners call it learning.
28. Always make new mistakes
    When you make mistakes, just be sure to make new ones.
29. Manage your weaknesses
    Builders don’t deny their flaws, nor do they allow them to paralyze action. They manage it, include it, cope with it, and don’t let it stop them.
30. Earn your luck through focus and knowledge
    Builders earn their luck, not simply getting lucky. They earn their luck by focusing on doing work that is meaningful to them and going deep to discover relevant clues along the way. It is focus and knowledge that allows them to observe the subtleties of their path and then take advantage of serendipitous events.
31. Have a prepared mind
    Only a prepared mind and open heart prevails.
32. Have clear goals
    Builders use planning and goals - often big goals - to put themselves into a serendipitous position.
33. Have explorer mentality
    Builders have explorer mentality. They have clear direction, but not the roadmap. What they seek in the long term doesn’t always turn out as expected.
34. Think about your relationships as long term
    If you want success that lasts, then you’re better off if you think about your relationships as being built to last.
35. Surround yourself with “A” players
    Builders spent the largest percentage of their time tracking down, surrounding themselves with, and developing the people who are “A” players.
36. Align your intentions, words, and actions
    Always watch whether your words and actions match your intentions, and are aligned with what you are trying to do.
37. Get the inconsistent stuff out
    Alignment requires that you get out of your life all the stuff that is inconsistent with your passions and goal. That includes people. Choose wisely.

Prayer of Serenity