7 & 7: Replenished vs. Consumed.

REFLECTION:

What a shame to organize one’s life without regard for growth and development, short-sighted, to end premature and used up. What a shame. With planning and good pacing, it is possible to grow reserves. But good and bad expand in equal measure depending on what is exercised. The good grown replenishes. The bad grown consumes. Enthusiasm comes in chasing one’s potential. Aspire and achieve and never feel depleted. The competition is with yourself not others. Never to be futile. Never to be hopeless. And if this world does not provide the opportunity to fulfill your every dream, be content to lay the ground for the next generation. Fill it up for them. Much worse than this would be to savage a meager victory and leave behind scorched earth for your children to till. Fame and fortune means little if confined to a single generation. Better for the cup to overflow – not with money, gild or glitter – but with love, and memories and time well-spent generating hope and securing another’s future.

MUSES:

A great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.
Albert Schweitzer

All our talents increase in the using, and every faculty both good and bad strengthens by exercise.
Anne Bronte

No one keeps up his enthusiasm automatically. Enthusiasm must be nourished with new actions, new aspirations, new efforts, new vision. Compete with yourself; set your teeth and dive into the job of breaking your own record. It is one’s own fault if his enthusiasm is gone; he has failed to feed it.
Anonymous

There is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.
Albert Camus

I must study politics and war, that my sons may have the liberty to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, and naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.
John Adams

It’s not that I’m not grateful for all this attention. It’s just that fame and fortune ought to add up to more than fame and fortune.
Robert Fulghum