“There can be no true living without the red blood of courage; it is never in what we bear but in how we bear it. Without courage we are but feeble slaves of condition, accepting life dumbly and with cowardly resignation in all that it may bring of good or ill. It is the steady glow of moral heroism in the dull round of daily duties that counts most, not the spectacular showing on some great occasion.” ~ William George Jordan
I’ve long maintained that great people are made so because of their ability to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary.
Everything that comes to you is not the result of your doing. That said, there is no value in bemoaning your fate, blaming humanity or the gods or feeling yourself a victim of circumstance. At the end of the day it’s not what happens to you that counts, it’s how you handle what happens.
Gregory Hake 
As we acknowledge the simplicity of how we live our world comes alive no matter if we are engaged in seemingly big events or in making our beds, doing the laundry, walking down the street. Here is the key to knowing eternal life now!
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“At the end of the day it’s not what happens to you that counts, it’s how you handle what happens.” Well said!!
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Once again this shows how backwards our standards as a culture tend to be with regards what defines success or what is to be desired. Shooting stars captivate more dreams than those who show the ‘steady glow’ of altruistic living. In considering these ideas, I’ve become far more admiring of those who show this consistent attentiveness to the needs of the world around them; it sure does take great courage to lose yourself to this – to help others achieve fulfillment. You’ve got to stand up for what is right, with the right attitude. It indeed changes everything about you. Your own growth occurs by virtue of you helping others reach their potential, for you are looking to provide and this spirit of benificence as it works through you is the source of your own healing, of your own maturity, taking care of your own real needs. Resources come to those with this vision, though perhaps at their own pace, but come they do – I can see this clearly as I look back in my own life through these lens – and they come as we effectively demonstrate resourcefulness. The wasteful one surely will always be lacking in their own eyes.
This solution is deceptively simple, so much so that many quickly glance over what the sages have echoed over millenia and thus don’t end up giving it much thought. We think we need more to solve our problems, more technology as a nation or more ‘things’ as people to finally be the person we’ve imagined to be, free of problems. But we fail to see the comprehensive truth of righteous living.
This is an elegant solution, for its resourcefulness and its complete inclusiveness. The solution is inside of each of us – bravo for honing in on this precious nugget of wisdom!
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“We do what we do because it’s the right thing to do; and, if you noticed it…it’s yours to handle correctly.”
Thanks for this reminder today, internal orientation matters most, especially in the little things!
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There are so many opportunities each day to handle things better than we did last time. There is really no excuse to not have a constant upward progression in how we live our lives. If we do not understand that courage is necessary for the little situations in our lives as well as the large ones, we will find ourselves stuck in a “one step forward two steps back” situation at best, because the little situations outnumber the large ones to such a large extent. We need to be on our game at all times, working hard even in the situations that might not seem important in the big picture. We will eventually find that the totality of those small circumstances add up to something big, and it is all about the day to day choices when all is said and done.
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Thanks for coming back to this point repeatedly in your posts over the years. It’s plain and simple, what we do with what happens to us is THE most important thing. I remember periods of my life waiting for the perfect set of circumstances to occur to “make my move”…it never happened. As a result I missed countless opportunities to make a difference in the world.
It’s those who wake up to the fact that we have what’s at hand in any given moment and that we are the ones who have a direct cause on the difference we make.
Thanks Gregg, I continue to find daily inspiration through your writing.
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Whining through life or facing daily occurrences with feeble, petulant complaint robs you of your life and at some point your opportunity to
change it, as the habit becomes a self fullfilling prophecy of dissapointing conditions. This is where it pays to listen to yourself before you speak.
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Once again, wonderful post, thank you.
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