Live Beyond Yourself

When you are eighty or ninety, and you’re sitting on the porch rocking and looking back on your life, how will you feel about it? You won’t have to answer to anyone to fulfill their expectations – nor your parents or your business associates or your spouse. What would you have done with the gift of life? The answer will be important to you then, so the question should be important to you now.

The course of your life is determined by:

-       the RELATIONSHIPS you FORM

-       the DECISIONS you MAKE

-       the ACTIONS you TAKE

Each has the potential to change the course of your life.

If you’re not doing something with your life, it doesn’t matter how long it is. If you are doing something with your life, it doesn’t matter how long it is. Life does not consist of years lived, but of its usefulness. It's not duration but about donation. Your focus must be beyond yourself. If you are giving, loving, serving, helping, encouraging, and adding value to others, you are living a useful life. 

George Bernard Shaw has this to say: "This is the true joy of life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations."

That is significance!