Poem/Prose/Short Essay – Author
If you woke up this morning with more health than illness,
you are more blessed than the million who won’t survive the week.
If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment,
the agony of torture or the pangs of starvation, you are ahead of 20 million people around the world.
If you attend a church meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture or death,
you are more blessed than almost 3 billion people in the world.
If you have food in your refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof over your head and a place to sleep,
you are richer than 75% of this world.
If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change
in a dish someplace, you are among the top 8% of the world’s wealthy.
If you can read this message, you are more blessed than over
two billion people in the world who cannot read anything at all.A Lesson In Life
Jerry is the manager of a restaurant. He is always in a good mood and always has something positive to say. When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would always reply, “If I were any better, I’d be twins!”
Many of the waiters at his restaurant quit their jobs when he changed jobs, so they could follow him around from restaurant to restaurant. The reason the waiters followed Jerry was because of his attitude. He was a natural motivator. If an employee was having a bad day, Jerry was always there telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation.
Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up to Jerry and asked him, “I don’t get it! No one can be a positive person all of the time. How do you do it?”
Jerry replied, “Each morning I wake up and say to myself, I have two choices today. I can choose to be in a good mood or I can choose to be in a bad mood. I always choose to be in a good mood. Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victom or I can choose to learn from it. I always choose to learn from it.”
“But that’s not always easy,” I protested.
“Yes it is,” Jerry said. “Life is all about choices. When you cut away all the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to situations. You choose how people will affect your mood. You choose to be in a good mood or a bad mood. It’s your choice how you live your life.”
Several years later, I heard that Jerry left the back door of his restaurant open one morning, and was robbed by three armed men. While trying to open the safe, his hand, shaking from nervousness slipped off the combination. The robbers panicked and shot him. Luckily, Jerry was found quickly and rushed to the hospital with fragments of the bullets still in his body.
I saw Jerry about six months after the accident. When I asked him how he was, he replied, “If I were any better, I’d be twins. Want to see my scars?”
I declined to see his wounds, but did ask him what had gone through his mind as the robbery took place. “The first thing that went through my mind was that I should have locked the back door,” Jerry replied. “Then after they shot me, as I lay on the floor, I remembered that I had two choices: I could choose to live or choose to die. I chose to live.”
“Weren’t you scared?” I asked.
Jerry continued, “The paramedics were great. They kept telling me I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the Emergency Room, and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared. In their eyes, I read ‘He’s a dead man.’ I knew I needed to take action.”
“Well there was a big nurse shouting questions at me,” said Jerry. “She asked if i was allergic to anything.” ‘Yes,’ I replied. The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply. I took a deep breath and yelled, ‘Bullets!’
Over their laughter, I told them, ‘I am choosing to live. Please operate on me as if I am alive, not dead’.”
Jerry lived thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of his amazing attitude. I learned from him that every day you have the choice to either enjoy life or to hate it.
The only thing that is truly yours that no one can control or take from you is your attitude, so that if you take care of that, everything else in life becomes much easier.
Now you have two choices to make:
1. You can just forget this story now, OR
2.You can forward it to someone you care about. – unknown, courtesy of Jack Shea.
i am here, and here i will be till the mountains will be dust, and the dust in mountain to return will trust. – AlbanianI have seen falling down from the sky rain of bullets, and coming out of the land rivers of blood, but yet i have not seen freedom. — Children of Kosovo. Forever – unknown, thanks to kravatsimDo not stand on my grave and weep;
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow;
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain;
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awake in the morning’s hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush.
Of the quiet birds in circled flight,
I am the star that shines at night.
Do not stand by my grave and cry;
I am not there, I did not die.
unknown, thanks to Tom Sullivan Jr.