Continuing our consideration of happiness, we come the the point where you begin to realize how often and how easily you let happiness slip through your fingers. It is epidemic, but fortunately not contagious. In the heat of any moment you have a choice as to whether or not you will give your authority away …
Tag: wisdom
Facing the Mistakes of Life II
"Mistakes are the growing pains of wisdom, the assessments we pay on our stock of experience, the raw material of error to be transformed into higher living. Without them there would be no individual growth, no progress, no conquest. Mistakes are the knots, the tangles, the broken threads, the dropped stitches in the web of …
Facing the Mistakes of Life I
As human beings endowed with the capacity of free will we are faced with a profound responsibility and an uncommon privilege. If you’ve lived any amount of time you realize that you occasionally make good choices and every so often you make a bad one. The good choices are as instructive as the bad ones, …
Alchemy of Calmness II
People have gone to great lengths to achieve the elusive state of being called calmness. They've surrendered, medicated, denied, avoided, distracted and withdrawn themselves to death, trying desperately to wrap their hands and heads around what appears to be a fleeting experience. Calmness, like happiness, cannot be pasted on from the outside. It must emerge …
The Canon of the Way and the Power
"The skilful traveller leaves no traces of his wheels or footsteps; the skilful speaker says nothing that can be found fault with or blamed; the skilful reckoner uses no tallies; the skilful closer needs no bolts or bars, while to open what he has shut will be impossible; the skilful binder uses no strings or …
Fool’s Gold and Fool’s Mate
"The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants." ~ General Omar Bradley Education - whether formally given or self-taught - is necessary, but not sufficient to the expression of balanced wisdom. I have known highly-educated medical doctors, for instance, whose fervent devotion to …
The Currents of Inspiration
"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty." ~ Henry Ford I am a firm believer in the power of lifelong learning. That said, I agree with Thoreau's assertion that "It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know." This may seem contradictory, but allow me to …
Masterful Living
"The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators." ~ Edward Gibbon Wise is the man who uses every type of circumstance to greatest possible advantage. When others complain, he handles the discomfort quietly while looking for the openings. When others curse he gives thanks, no matter how grim the outlook. …
Beatific Vision
"Truth is the beginning of every good thing, both in heaven and on earth; and he who would be blessed and happy should be from the first a partaker of truth, for then he can be trusted." ~ Plato I've frequently argued that man suffers greatly whenever his understanding is distorted by false and limiting …
Problem Solving 101
"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." ~ Albert Einstein My riding lessons are a constant source of inspiration and realization for me and I've found that lesson learned in the ring translate into valuable principles for more effective living. The most recent realization came as a …
Gregory Hake 