This Too Shall Pass

Times are tough. 
Sounds so cliche, but the feeling is that it's never been THIS tough. 
Businesses are taking a hit, but like FDR said, "if you gotta hit back, don't hold back"
In this trying times, I remember this piece.




by Helen Steiner Rice


If I can endure for this minute
Whatever is happening to me,
No matter how heavy my heart is
Or how dark the moment may be-

If I can remain calm and quiet
With all the world crashing about me,
Secure in the knowledge God loves me
When everyone else seems to doubt me-
If I can but keep on believing
What I know in my heart to be true,
That darkness will fade with the morning
And that this will pass away, too-

Then nothing in life can defeat me
For as long as this knowledge remains
I can suffer whatever is happening
For I know God will break all of the chains
That are binding me tight in the darkness
And trying to fill me with fear-
For there is no night without dawning
And I know that my morning is near.

The Folded Napkin

HAPPY THANKSGIVING PEOPLE!


I try not to be biased, but I had my doubts about hiring Stevie. His placement counselor assured me that he would be a good, reliable busboy. But I had never had a mentally handicapped employee and wasn't sure I wanted one. I wasn't sure how my customers would react to Stevie.
He was short, a little dumpy with the smooth facial features and thick-tongued speech of Downs Syndrome. I wasn't worried about most of my trucker customers because truckers don't generally care who buses tables as long as the meatloaf platter is good and the pies are homemade. Thefour-wheeler drivers were the ones who concerned me; the mouthy collegekids traveling to school; the yuppie snobs who secretly polish their silverware with their napkins for fear of catching some dreaded"truck stop germ" the pairs of white-shirted business men on expense accounts who think every truck stop waitress wants to be flirted with. I knew those people would be uncomfortable around Stevie so I closely watched him for the first few weeks.
I shouldn't have worried. After the first week, Stevie had my staff wrapped around his stubby little finger, and within a month my truck regulars had adopted him as their official truck stop mascot. After that,I really didn't care what the rest of the customers thought of him. He was like a 21-year-old kid in blue jeans and Nikes, eager to laugh and eager to please, but fierce in his attention to his duties. Every salt and pepper shaker was exactly in its place, not a bread crumb or coffeespill was visible when Stevie got done with the table. Our only problem was persuading him to wait to clean a table until after the customers were finished. He would hover in the background, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, scanning the dining room until a table was empty.Then he would scurry to the empty table and carefully bus dishes and glasses onto his cart and meticulously wipe the table up with apracticed flourish of his rag. If he thought a customer was watching, his brow would pucker with added concentration. He took pride in doing his job exactly right, and you had to love how hard he tried to please each and every person he met.
Over time, we learned that he lived with his mother, a widow who was disabled after repeated surgeries for cancer. They lived on their SocialSecurity benefits in public housing two miles from the truck stop. Their social worker, who stopped to check on him every so often, admitted they had fallen between the cracks. Money was tight, and what I paid him was probably the difference between them being able to live together and Stevie being sent to a group home. That's why the restaurant was a gloomy place that morning last August, the first morning in three years that Stevie missed work.
He was at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester getting a new valve or something put in his heart. His social worker said that people with Downs Syndrome often have heart problems at an early age so this wasn't unexpected, and there was a good chance he would come through the surgery in good shape and be back at work in a few months. A ripple of excitement ran through the staff later that morning when word came that he was out of surgery,in recovery, and doing fine.
Frannie, the head waitress, let out a war hoop and did a little dance in the aisle when she heard the good news.
Marvin Ringers, one of our regular trucker customers, stared at the sight of this 50-year-old grandmother of four doing a victory shimmy beside his table. Frannie blushed, smoothed her apron and shot Marvin a withering look.
He grinned. "OK, Frannie, what was that all about?" he asked.
"We just got word that Stevie is out of surgery and going to be okay."
"I was wondering where he was. I had a new joke to tell him. What was the surgery about?"
Frannie quickly told Marvin and the other two drivers sitting at hisbooth about Stevie's surgery, then sighed: " Yeah, I'm glad he is going to be OK," she said. "But I don't know how he and his Momare going to handle all the bills. From what I hear, they're barely getting by as it is." Marvin nodded thoughtfully, and Frannie hurried off to wait on the rest of her tables. Since I hadn't had time to round up a busboy to replace Stevie and really didn't want to replace him, the girls were busing their own tables that day until we decided what to do.
After the morning rush, Frannie walked into my office. She had a couple of paper napkins in her hand and a funny look on her face.
"What's up?" I asked.
"I didn't get that table where Marvin and his friends were sitting cleared off after they left, and Pete and Tony were sitting there when Igot back to clean it off," she said. "This was folded and tucked under a coffee cup"
She handed the napkin to me, and three $20 bills fell onto my desk when Iopened it. On the outside, in big, bold letters, was printed"Something For Stevie."
"Pete asked me what that was all about," she said, "so I told him about Stevie and his Mom and everything, and Pete looked at Tonyand Tony looked at Pete, and they ended up giving me this.
She handed me another paper napkin that had "Something ForStevie" scrawled on its outside. Two $50 bills were tucked within its folds. Frannie looked at me with wet, shiny eyes, shook her head and said simply: "truckers."
That was three months ago. Today is Thanksgiving, the first day Stevie is supposed to be back to work. His placement worker said he's been counting the days until the doctor said he could work, and it didn't matter at all that it was a holiday. He called 10 times in the past week, making sure we knew he was coming, fearful that we had forgotten him or that his job was in jeopardy. I arranged to have his mother bring him to work. I then met them in the parking lot and invited them both to celebrate his day back.
Stevie was thinner and paler, but couldn't stop grinning as he pushed through the doors and headed for the back room where his apron and busing cart were waiting. "Hold up there, Stevie, not so fast," Isaid. I took him and his mother by their arms. "Work can wait for a minute. To celebrate your coming back, breakfast for you and your mother is on me!"
I led them toward a large corner booth at the rear of the room. I could feel and hear the rest of the staff following behind as we marched through the dining room. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw booth after booth of grinning truckers empty and join the procession. We stopped in front of the big table. Its surface was covered with coffee cups, saucers and dinner plates, all sitting slightly crooked on dozens of folded papernapkins. "First thing you have to do, Stevie, is clean up this mess," I said. I tried to sound stern.
Stevie looked at me, and then at his mother, then pulled out one of thenapkins. It had "Something for Stevie" printed on the outside.As he picked it up, two $10 bills fell onto the table. Stevie stared at the money, then at all the napkins peeking from beneath the tableware,each with his name printed or scrawled on it. I turned to his mother."There's more than $10,000 in cash and checks on that table, all from truckers and trucking companies that heard about your problems.
"Happy Thanksgiving."
Well, it got real noisy about that time, with everybody hollering and shouting, and there were a few tears, as well.
But you know what's funny? While everybody else was busy shaking hands and hugging each other, Stevie, with a big smile on his face, was busy clearing all the cups and dishes from the table..
Best worker I ever hired.
Plant a seed and watch it grow.

The new 10 commandments

1] Prayer is not a "spare wheel" that you pull out when in trouble, but it is a "steering wheel" that directs the right path throughout.

2] So a Car's WINDSHIELD is so large & the Rear view Mirror is so small? Because our PAST is not as important as our FUTURE.
So, Look Ahead and Move on.

3] Friendship is like a BOOK. It takes few seconds to burn, but it takes years to write.
4] All things in life are temporary.
If going well, enjoy it, they will not last forever.
If going wrong, don't worry, they can't last long either.

5] Old Friends are Gold! New Friends are Diamond!
If you get a Diamond, don't forget the Gold!
Because to hold a Diamond, you always need a Base of Gold!
6] Often when we lose hope and think this is the end, GOD smiles from above and says, "Relax, sweetheart, it's just a bend, not the end!
 
7] When GOD solves your problems, you have faith in HIS abilities; when GOD doesn't solve your problems HE has faith in your abilities.

8] A blind person asked St. Anthony: "Can there be anything worse than losing eye sight?" He replied: "Yes, losing your vision!"

9] When you pray for others, God listens to you and blesses them, and sometimes, when you are safe and happy, remember that someone has prayed for you.
10] WORRYING does not take away tomorrow's TROUBLES, it takes away today's PEACE.

Advice to a younger me

Advice to a younger me

by
Joseph J.Mazzella

      All of us at some point in our lives have wished that we could write a letter to our younger selves. We have wished we could pass on the wisdom we have learned and help them to avoid some of the pain and struggles that we have gone through. I think that my own advice to the younger me would be quite simple. This is what I would say.
    
Wake up earlier more often and take the time to watch the sun rising over the hills. Bend down to smell the flowers in the Spring. Swim more in the Summer. Play in the Fall leaves. Make snow angels every Winter.
Turn the TV off in the afternoon and go play with your dogs instead. Don’t rush through those Sunday family dinners. Savor every bite of food and joy in them.

Tell your Mom and Grandma you love them everyday and hug them every chance you can. . Don’t complain about chopping wood with your Dad. Enjoy every moment you have with him. And don’t argue so much with your brothers.

Life is too short to spend being miserable.

     Stop being so shy. Other people are just like you inside. Smile more. Laugh a lot. Sing often. They are joy creators.Share a kind word every chance you get.
Give your inner goodness to everyone. Don’t worry about the future.
Instead enjoy this day God has given you. Make the time to play with your young children. One day you will blink and they will be as big as you are.
Quit wishing you were rich in money. Yet, rejoice at being rich in heart. Realize that happiness is simple.
It is we who are complicated.

Know in your heart that God loves you just as you are. Know in your heart that you can love too. Then go out and share your love with the world. When you do you will have the joy you have always longed for.
     How I wish I could give this advice to the younger me, but I can’t.
He probably wouldn’t have listened anyway.
Still, it isn’t too late to follow this advice today and that is all that matters.

Success is about working towards what you want to achieve

            Conrad Hilton, the founder of the Hilton chain of hotels, said: "Success is made to order." He was right. An achievement is a sum total of many things - talent, aptitude, knowledge and desire.
            If you analyse each of your achievements, you will soon discover that it all started with the goal that you wanted to achieve.
            Well-defined goals, tackled with competence and confidence through a proper plan of action, are the building blocks of achievements. They are our escalators to tomorrow, a vehicle that takes you to success.
            What are some of the important points to remember when you go about setting goals and planning for them?

BE ENTHUSIASTIC
            The worst bankrupt is the person who has lost enthusiasm, lose everything but enthusiasm and you will come through your trials and find success.

TAKE EFFECTIVE DECISIONS
            Most people have no idea how much stress they can create through indecision.
            If you are the kind of person who cannot decide between two courses of action, afraid that the course you choose might turn out to be a mistake, bear in mind that indecision is expensive and nearly always the worst mistake you can make.
            Some decisions require a great deal of thought and plenty of information. But once all the facts are available, the successful individual will reach a decision and stop thinking about the various pros and cons, so that he can devote all his energy and effort to making the decision work.

AVOID PROCRASTINATION.
            Procrastination is the greatest disease that afflicts mankind.
            Successful people do not procrastinate, especially in matters they know are important to them.
            As someone has rightly said, "People don't fail because they intend to fail. They fail because they fail to do what they intent to do".

Thought of the Day

You are my friend when you can guard my failure,
challenge my thought
and celebrate my success.

Speech versus Silence

There are two kinds of speeches and two kinds of silences. 

Speech is either truth or a falsification, and silence is either fruition or heedlessness. 

If one speaks the truth, his words are better than his silence, but he who invents falsifications, his silence is better than his speech.

- Al-Hujwiri, "The Kashf al-Mahjub"

Sleeping while the wind blows

Years ago, a farmer owned land along the Atlantic seacoast. 
He constantly advertised for hired hands. Most people were 
reluctant to work on farms along the Atlantic. They dreaded the 
awful storms that raged across the Atlantic, wreaking havoc on the buildings and crops. 
As the farmer interviewed applicants for the job, he received 
a steady stream of refusals.

Finally, a short, thin man, well past middle age, approached 
the farmer. "Are you a good farm hand?" the farmer asked him. 
"Well, I can sleep when the wind blows," answered the little man.

Although puzzled by this answer, the farmer, desperate for help, 
Hired him. The little man worked well around the farm, busy from 
dawn to dusk,  and the farmer felt satisfied with the man's work. 
Then one night the wind howled loudly in from offshore. 
Jumping out of bed, the farmer grabbed a lantern and rushed 
next door to the hired hand's sleeping quarters. He shook the 
little man and yelled, "Get up!  A storm is coming! 
Tie things down before they blow away!" 
The little man rolled over in bed and said firmly, "No 

sir. I told you, I can sleep when the wind blows."

Enraged by the response, the farmer was tempted to fire him on 
the spot. Instead, he hurried outside to prepare for the storm. 
To his amazement, he discovered that all of the haystacks had 
been covered with tarpaulins. The cows were in the barn, the chickens were in the coops, and the doors were barred. 
The shutters were tightly secured.  Everything was tied down. 

Nothing could blow away. The farmer then understood what his 
hired hand meant, so he returned to his bed to also sleep while 
the wind blew. 

When you're prepared, spiritually, mentally, and physically, 
you have nothing to fear. Can you sleep when the 
wind blows through your life? 
The hired hand in the story was able to sleep because he 
had secured the farm against the storm. 

We secure ourselves against the storms of life by
grounding ourselves in the Word of God. 

We don't need to understand, we just need to hold 
His hand to have peace in the middle of storms. 

Reborn again today

I lost a childhood toy … but have the memory of the person who gave me that gift with unconditional love.

I lost the privileges and fantasies of childhood … but had the opportunity of growing and living free.

I lost a lot of people whom I loved and still love … but had the affection and now have a model from their lives.


I lost many things many times in my life.

But in that “loss,” today I aspire for the value of “gain;”

… because it is always possible to fight for that which we love; and because there is always time to start all over again.

It is not important which period of life you are in when you tire.

The most important thing is that it is always possible and necessary to restart.

Re-birth is a new opportunity;

it is renewing the hopes in life;

and more importantly, it is believing in oneself.


Did you suffer greatly at any one time?

 … that was a time for learning.


Did you cry a lot?

 … you were cleansing the soul.



Did you feel spiteful?

 ... it was a lesson on forgiveness.



At times, were you alone?

 ... it was because you closed the door.



Were there times you believed everything was lost?

 ... it was simply the beginning of your improvement.


Today is an excellent day to start a new life project.

Where do you want to go?

Look higher, dream higher, desire the best; life brings us what we aspire.

Today is the great mental cleaning day.

Throw away all that binds you to the past; all that hurts you.

Discard everything into the garbage bin; clean your heart; prepare it for a new life, and for new love; for we are passionate.


If we think small; only the small will come.

If we think firmly on the best, on the positive and we strive for it; the best will come in our lives.

Life calls you; it invites you to a new adventure, a new journey, a new challenge.

This day, promise yourself: that you will do anything possible to achieve your objectives;

trust in life, and most of all, trust in yourself.

Relationship

Do you know what the relationship is between your two eyes??

They blink together,

they move together,

they cry together,

they see things together,

and they sleep together,

but they never see each other;

....that's what friendship is.

Conan O'Brien at Dartmouth 2011

Everyone keeps talking about Steve Job's speech at Stanford.
Yes, it was a great one, but I feel it's being devalued when people don't put into practice what he said.
Here's a another great speech and it's from Conan O'Brien.
Not in the same vein as Steve Jobs', but hilarious and inspiring at the same time.

I've been living in Los Angeles for two years, and I've never been this cold in my life. I will pay anyone here $300 for GORE-TEX gloves. Anybody. I'm serious. I have the cash.

Before I begin, I must point out that behind me sits a highly admired President of the United States and decorated war hero while I, a cable television talk show host, has been chosen to stand here and impart wisdom. I pray I never witness a more damning example of what is wrong with America today.

Graduates, faculty, parents, relatives, undergraduates, and old people that just come to these things: Good morning and congratulations to the Dartmouth Class of 2011. Today, you have achieved something special, something only 92 percent of Americans your age will ever know: a college diploma. That’s right, with your college diploma you now have a crushing advantage over 8 percent of the workforce. I'm talking about dropout losers like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg. Incidentally, speaking of Mr. Zuckerberg, only at Harvard would someone have to invent a massive social network just to talk with someone in the next room.

My first job as your commencement speaker is to illustrate that life is not fair. For example, you have worked tirelessly for four years to earn the diploma you’ll be receiving this weekend.

That was great.

And Dartmouth is giving me the same degree for interviewing the fourth lead in Twilight. Deal with it. Another example that life is not fair: if it does rain, the powerful rich people on stage get the tent. Deal with it.

I would like to thank President Kim for inviting me here today. After my phone call with President Kim, I decided to find out a little bit about the man. He goes by President Kim and Dr. Kim. To his friends, he's Jim Kim, J to the K, Special K, JK Rowling, the Just Kidding Kimster, and most puzzling, "Stinky Pete." He served as the chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, spearheaded a task force for the World Health Organization on Global Health Initiatives, won a MacArthur Genius Grant, and was one of TIME Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in 2006. Good God, man, what the hell are you compensating for? Seriously. We get it. You're smart. By the way Dr. Kim, you were brought to Dartmouth to lead, and as a world-class anthropologist, you were also hired to figure out why each of these graduating students ran around a bonfire 111 times.

But I thank you for inviting me here, Stinky Pete, and it is an honor. Though some of you may see me as a celebrity, you should know that I once sat where you sit. Literally. Late last night I snuck out here and sat in every seat. I did it to prove a point: I am not bright and I have a lot of free time.

But this is a wonderful occasion and it is great to be here in New Hampshire, where I am getting an honorary degree and all the legal fireworks I can fit in the trunk of my car.

You know, New Hampshire is such a special place. When I arrived I took a deep breath of this crisp New England air and thought, "Wow, I'm in the state that's next to the state where Ben and Jerry's ice cream is made."

But don't get me wrong, I take my task today very seriously. When I got the call two months ago to be your speaker, I decided to prepare with the same intensity many of you have devoted to an important term paper. So late last night, I began. I drank two cans of Red Bull, snorted some Adderall, played a few hours of Call of Duty, and then opened my browser. I think Wikipedia put it best when they said "Dartmouth College is a private Ivy League University in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States." Thank you and good luck.

To communicate with you students today, I have gone to great lengths to become well-versed in your unique linguistic patterns. In fact, just this morning I left Baker Berry with my tripee Barry to eat a Billy Bob at the Bema when my flitz to Francesca was Blitz jacked by some d-bag on his FSP.

Yes, I've done my research. This college was named after the Second Earl of Dartmouth, a good friend of the Third Earl of UC Santa Cruz and the Duke of the Barbizon School of Beauty. Your school motto is "Vox clamantis in deserto," which means "Voice crying out in the wilderness." This is easily the most pathetic school motto I have ever heard. Apparently, it narrowly beat out "Silently Weeping in Thick Shrub" and "Whimpering in Moist Leaves without Pants." Your school color is green, and this color was chosen by Frederick Mather in 1867 because, and this is true—I looked it up—"it was the only color that had not been taken already." I cannot remember hearing anything so sad. Dartmouth, you have an inferiority complex, and you should not. You have graduated more great fictitious Americans than any other college. Meredith Grey of Grey's Anatomy. Pete Campbell from Mad Men. Michael Corleone from The Godfather. In fact, I look forward to next years' Valedictory Address by your esteemed classmate, Count Chocula. Of course, your greatest fictitious graduate is Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Man, can you imagine if a real Treasury Secretary made those kinds of decisions? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Now I know what you're going to say, Dartmouth, you're going to say, well "We've got Dr. Seuss." Well guess what, we're all tired of hearing about Dr. Seuss. Face it: The man rhymed fafloozle with saznoozle. In the literary community, that's called cheating.

Your insecurity is so great, Dartmouth, that you don't even think you deserve a real podium. I'm sorry. What the hell is this thing? It looks like you stole  it from the set of Survivor: Nova Scotia. Seriously, it looks like something a bear would use at an AA meeting.

No, Dartmouth, you must stand tall. Raise your heads high and feel proud.

Because if Harvard, Yale, and Princeton are your self-involved, vain, name-dropping older brothers, you are the cool, sexually confident, lacrosse playing younger sibling who knows how to throw a party and looks good in a down vest. Brown, of course, is your lesbian sister who never leaves her room. And Penn, Columbia, and Cornell—well, frankly, who gives a shit.

Yes, I've always had a special bond with this school. In fact, this is my second time coming here. When I was 17 years old and touring colleges, way back in the fall of 1980, I came to Dartmouth. Dartmouth was a very different place back then. I made the trip up from Boston on a mule and, after asking the blacksmith in West Leb for directions, I came to this beautiful campus. No dormitories had been built yet, so I stayed with a family of fur traders in White River Junction. It snowed heavily during my visit and I was trapped here for four months. I was forced to eat the mule, who a week earlier had been forced to eat the fur traders. Still, I loved Dartmouth and I vowed to return.

But fate dealt a heavy blow. With no money, I was forced to enroll in a small, local commuter school, a pulsating sore on a muddy elbow of the Charles  River. I was a miserable wretch, and to this day I cannot help but wonder: 

What if I had gone to Dartmouth?

If I had gone to Dartmouth, I might have spent at least some of my college years outside and today I might not be allergic to all plant life, as well as most types of rock.

If I had gone to Dartmouth, right now I'd be wearing a fleece thong instead of a lace thong.

If I had gone to Dartmouth, I still wouldn't know the second verse to "Dear Old Dartmouth." Face it, none of you do. You all mumble that part.

If I had gone to Dartmouth, I'd have a liver the size and consistency of a bean bag chair.

Finally, if I had gone to Dartmouth, today I'd be getting an honorary degree at Harvard. Imagine how awesome that would be.

You are a great school, and you deserve a historic commencement address. That's right, I want my message today to be forever remembered because it changed the world. To do this, I must suggest groundbreaking policy. Winston Churchill gave his famous "Iron Curtain" speech at Westminster College in 1946. JFK outlined his nuclear disarmament policy at American University in 1963. Today, I would like to set forth my own policy here at Dartmouth: I call it "The Conan Doctrine." Under "The Conan Doctrine":

- All bachelor degrees will be upgraded to master's degrees. All master's degrees will be upgraded to PhDs. And all MBA students will be immediately  transferred to a white collar prison.

- Under "The Conan Doctrine," Winter Carnival will become Winter Carnivale and be moved to Rio. Clothing will be optional, all expenses paid by the Alumni Association.

- Your nickname, the Big Green, will be changed to something more kick-ass like "The Jade Blade," the "Seafoam Avenger," or simply "Lime-Zilla."

- The D-Plan and "quarter system" will finally be updated to "the one sixty-fourth system." Semesters will last three days. Students will be encouraged to take 48 semesters off. They must, however, be on campus during their Sophomore 4th of July.

- Under "The Conan Doctrine," I will re-instate Tubestock. And I will punish those who tried to replace it with Fieldstock. Rafting and beer are a much better combination than a field and a beer. I happen to know that in two years, they were going to downgrade Fieldstock to Deskstock, seven hours of fun sitting quietly at your desk. Don't let those bastards do it.

And finally, under "The Conan Doctrine," all commencement speakers who shamelessly pander with cheap, inside references designed to get childish applause, will be forced to apologize—to the greatest graduating class in the history of the world. Dartmouth class of 2011 rules!

Besides policy, another hallmark of great commencement speeches is deep, profound advice like "reach for the stars." Well today, I am not going to waste your time with empty clichés. Instead, I am going to give you real, practical advice that you will need to know if you are going to survive the next few years.

- First, adult acne lasts longer than you think. I almost cancelled two days ago because I had a zit on my eye.

- Guys, this is important: You cannot iron a shirt while wearing it.

- Here's another one. If you live on Ramen Noodles for too long, you lose all feelings in your hands and your stool becomes a white gel.

- And finally, wearing colorful Converse high-tops beneath your graduation robe is a great way to tell your classmates that this is just the first of many horrible decisions you plan to make with the rest of your life.

Of course there are many parents here and I have real advice for them as well. Parents, you should write this down:

- Many of your children you haven't seen them in four years. Well, now you are about to see them every day when they come out of the basement to tell you the wi-fi isn't working.

- If your child majored in fine arts or philosophy, you have good reason to be worried. The only place where they are now really qualified to get a job is ancient Greece. Good luck with that degree.

- The traffic today on East Wheelock is going to be murder, so once they start handing out diplomas, you should slip out in the middle of the K's.

And, I have to tell you this:

- You will spend more money framing your child's diploma than they will earn in the next six months. It's tough out there, so be patient. The only people  hiring right now are Panera Bread and Mexican drug cartels.

Yes, you parents must be patient because it is indeed a grim job market out there. And one of the reasons it's so tough finding work is that aging baby  boomers refuse to leave their jobs. Trust me on this. Even when they promise you for five years that they are going to leave—and say it on television—I mean you can go on YouTube right now and watch the guy do it, there is no guarantee they won't come back. Of course I'm speaking generally.

But enough. This is not a time for grim prognostications or negativity. No, I came here today because, believe it or not, I actually do have something real to tell you.

Eleven years ago I gave an address to a graduating class at Harvard. I have not spoken at a graduation since because I thought I had nothing left to say. But then 2010 came. And now I'm here, three thousand miles from my home, because I learned a hard but profound lesson last year and I'd like to share it with you. In 2000, I told graduates "Don't be afraid to fail." Well now I'm here to tell you that, though you should not fear failure, you should do your very best to avoid it. Nietzsche famously said "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger." 

But what he failed to stress is that it almost kills you. Disappointment stings and, for driven, successful people like yourselves it is disorienting. What Nietzsche should have said is "Whatever doesn't kill you, makes you watch a lot of Cartoon Network and drink mid-price Chardonnay at 11 in the morning."

Now, by definition, Commencement speakers at an Ivy League college are considered successful. But a little over a year ago, I experienced a profound  and very public disappointment. I did not get what I wanted, and I left a system that had nurtured and helped define me for the better part of 17 years. I went from being in the center of the grid to not only off the grid, but underneath the coffee table that the grid sits on, lost in the shag carpeting that is underneath the coffee table supporting the grid. It was the making of a career disaster, and a terrible analogy.

But then something spectacular happened. Fogbound, with no compass, and adrift, I started trying things. I grew a strange, cinnamon beard. I dove into the world of social media. I started tweeting my comedy. I threw together a national tour. I played the guitar. I did stand-up, wore a skin-tight blue leather suit, recorded an album, made a documentary, and frightened my friends and family. Ultimately, I abandoned all preconceived perceptions of my career path and stature and took a job on basic cable with a network most famous for showing reruns, along with sitcoms created by a tall, black man who dresses like an old, black woman. I did a lot of silly, unconventional, spontaneous and seemingly irrational things and guess what: with the exception of the blue leather suit, it was the most satisfying and fascinating year of my professional life. To this day I still don't understand exactly what happened, but I have never had more fun, been more challenged—and this is important—had more conviction about what I was doing.

How could this be true? Well, it's simple: There are few things more liberating in this life than having your worst fear realized. I went to college with many people who prided themselves on knowing exactly who they were and exactly where they were going. At Harvard, five different guys in my class told me that they would one day be President of the United States. Four of them were later killed in motel shoot-outs. The other one briefly hosted Blues Clues, before dying senselessly in yet another motel shoot-out. Your path at 22 will not necessarily be your path at 32 or 42. One's dream is constantly evolving, rising and falling, changing course. This happens in every job, but because I have worked in comedy for twenty-five years, I can probably speak best about my own profession.

Way back in the 1940s there was a very, very funny man named Jack Benny. He was a giant star, easily one of the greatest comedians of his generation. And a much younger man named Johnny Carson wanted very much to be Jack Benny. In some ways he was, but in many ways he wasn't. He emulated Jack Benny, but his own quirks and mannerisms, along with a changing medium, pulled him in a different direction. And yet his failure to completely become his hero made him the funniest person of his generation. David Letterman wanted to be Johnny Carson, and was not, and as a result my generation of comedians wanted to be David Letterman. And none of us are. My peers and I have all missed that mark in a thousand different ways. But the point is this : It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique. It's not easy, but if you accept your misfortune and handle it right, your perceived failure can become a catalyst for profound re-invention.

So, at the age of 47, after 25 years of obsessively pursuing my dream, that dream changed. For decades, in show business, the ultimate goal of every  comedian was to host The Tonight Show. It was the Holy Grail, and like many people I thought that achieving that goal would define me as successful.  But that is not true. No specific job or career goal defines me, and it should not define you. In 2000—in 2000—I told graduates to not be afraid to fail, and I still believe that. But today I tell you that whether you fear it or not, disappointment will come. 

The beauty is that through disappointment you can gain clarity, and with clarity comes conviction and true originality.

Many of you here today are getting your diploma at this Ivy League school because you have committed yourself to a dream and worked hard to achieve it. And there is no greater cliché in a commencement address than "follow your dream." Well I am here to tell you that whatever you think your dream is now, it will probably change. And that's okay. Four years ago, many of you had a specific vision of what your college experience was going to be and who you were going to become. And I bet, today, most of you would admit that your time here was very different from what you imagined. Your roommates changed, your major changed, for some of you your sexual orientation changed. I bet some of you have changed your sexual orientation since I began this speech. I know I have. But through the good and especially the bad, the person you are now is someone you could never have conjured in the fall of 2007.

I have told you many things today, most of it foolish but some of it true. I'd like to end my address by breaking a taboo and quoting myself from 17 months ago. At the end of my final program with NBC, just before signing off, I said "Work hard, be kind, and amazing things will happen." Today, receiving this honor and speaking to the Dartmouth Class of 2011 from behind a tree-trunk, I have never believed that more.

Thank you very much, and congratulations.

Balanced life

My ex-boss used to extol on this article.
Slow Dance. About taking life at a pace where you're comfortable.
Instead of just going through everything at breakneck speed and ending up a person without a proper soul.
Striking the balance between work and life.
This reminds me of this.


Awesome reminder on the need to have a Balanced Life - balancing your balance sheet .........

 Our Birth is our Opening Balance!
Our Death is our Closing Balance!
Our Prejudiced Views are our Liabilities
Our Creative Ideas are our Assets
Heart is our Current Asset
Soul is our Fixed Asset
Brain is our Fixed Deposit
Thinking is our Current Account
Achievements are our Capital
Character & Morals, our Stock-in-Trade
Friends are our General Reserves
Values & Behaviour are our Goodwill
Patience is our Interest Earned
Love is our Dividend
Children are our Bonus Issues
Education is Brands / Patents
Knowledge is our Investment
Experience is our Premium Account
The Aim is to Tally the Balance Sheet Accurately.
The Goal is to get the Best Presented Accounts Award.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Some very Good and Very bad things ..
The most destructive habit....... ........ ......Worry
The greatest Joy......... ......... ......... ....Giving
The greatest loss..................Loss of self-respect
The most satisfying work......... ........He! lping others
The ugliest personality trait....... .......Selfishness
The most endangered species..... ....Dedicatedleaders
Our greatest natural resource.... ......... ......Our youth
The greatest 'shot in the arm'........ .Encouragement
The greatest problem to overcome.... ......... ...Fear
The most effective sleeping pill....... Peace of mind
The most crippling failure disease...... .......Excuses
The most powerful force in life........ ........... Love
The most dangerous act.............................. .A gossip
The world's most incredible computer.... ....The brain
The worst thing to be without..... ......... ..... Hope
The deadliest weapon...... ........ .........The tongue
The two most power-filled words....... .... 'I Can'
The greatest asset....... .......... ......... ...........Faith
The most worthless emotion.... .......... ....Self- pity
The most beautiful attire...... ......... .........SMILE!
The most prized possession.. ........ .....Integrity
The most powerful channel of communication. ..Prayer
The most contagious spirit...... ......... ......Enthusiasm
Life ends; when you stop Dreaming,
Hope ends; when you stop Believing,
Love ends; when you stop Caring,
And Friendship ends; when you stop Sharing...!!!

So keep sharing ...........

A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs

By MONA SIMPSON

I grew up as an only child, with a single mother. Because we were poor and because I knew my father had emigrated from Syria, I imagined he looked like Omar Sharif. I hoped he would be rich and kind and would come into our lives (and our not yet furnished apartment) and help us. Later, after I’d met my father, I tried to believe he’d changed his number and left no forwarding address because he was an idealistic revolutionary, plotting a new world for the Arab people.

Even as a feminist, my whole life I’d been waiting for a man to love, who could love me. For decades, I’d thought that man would be my father. When I was 25, I met that man and he was my brother.

By then, I lived in New York, where I was trying to write my first novel. I had a job at a small magazine in an office the size of a closet, with three other aspiring writers. When one day a lawyer called me — me, the middle-class girl from California who hassled the boss to buy us health insurance — and said his client was rich and famous and was my long-lost brother, the young editors went wild. This was 1985 and we worked at a cutting-edge literary magazine, but I’d fallen into the plot of a Dickens novel and really, we all loved those best. The lawyer refused to tell me my brother’s name and my colleagues started a betting pool. The leading candidate: John Travolta. I secretly hoped for a literary descendant of Henry James — someone more talented than I, someone brilliant without even trying.

When I met Steve, he was a guy my age in jeans, Arab- or Jewish-looking and handsomer than Omar Sharif.

We took a long walk — something, it happened, that we both liked to do. I don’t remember much of what we said that first day, only that he felt like someone I’d pick to be a friend. He explained that he worked in computers.

I didn’t know much about computers. I still worked on a manual Olivetti typewriter.
I told Steve I’d recently considered my first purchase of a computer: something called the Cromemco.
Steve told me it was a good thing I’d waited. He said he was making something that was going to be insanely beautiful.

I want to tell you a few things I learned from Steve, during three distinct periods, over the 27 years I knew him. They’re not periods of years, but of states of being. His full life. His illness. His dying.

Steve worked at what he loved. He worked really hard. Every day.

That’s incredibly simple, but true.

He was the opposite of absent-minded.

He was never embarrassed about working hard, even if the results were failures. If someone as smart as Steve wasn’t ashamed to admit trying, maybe I didn’t have to be.

When he got kicked out of Apple, things were painful. He told me about a dinner at which 500 Silicon Valley leaders met the then-sitting president. Steve hadn’t been invited.
He was hurt but he still went to work at Next. Every single day.

Novelty was not Steve’s highest value. Beauty was.
For an innovator, Steve was remarkably loyal. If he loved a shirt, he’d order 10 or 100 of them. In the Palo Alto house, there are probably enough black cotton turtlenecks for everyone in this church.

He didn’t favor trends or gimmicks. He liked people his own age.
His philosophy of aesthetics reminds me of a quote that went something like this: “Fashion is what seems beautiful now but looks ugly later; art can be ugly at first but it becomes beautiful later.”

Steve always aspired to make beautiful later.
He was willing to be misunderstood.

Uninvited to the ball, he drove the third or fourth iteration of his same black sports car to Next, where he and his team were quietly inventing the platform on which Tim Berners-Lee would write the program for the World Wide Web.

Steve was like a girl in the amount of time he spent talking about love. Love was his supreme virtue, his god of gods. He tracked and worried about the romantic lives of the people working with him.
Whenever he saw a man he thought a woman might find dashing, he called out, “Hey are you single? Do you wanna come to dinner with my sister?”

I remember when he phoned the day he met Laurene. “There’s this beautiful woman and she’s really smart and she has this dog and I’m going to marry her.”
When Reed was born, he began gushing and never stopped. He was a physical dad, with each of his children. He fretted over Lisa’s boyfriends and Erin’s travel and skirt lengths and Eve’s safety around the horses she adored.
None of us who attended Reed’s graduation party will ever forget the scene of Reed and Steve slow dancing.

His abiding love for Laurene sustained him. He believed that love happened all the time, everywhere. In that most important way, Steve was never ironic, never cynical, never pessimistic. I try to learn from that, still.

Steve had been successful at a young age, and he felt that had isolated him. Most of the choices he made from the time I knew him were designed to dissolve the walls around him. A middle-class boy from Los Altos, he fell in love with a middle-class girl from New Jersey. It was important to both of them to raise Lisa, Reed, Erin and Eve as grounded, normal children. Their house didn’t intimidate with art or polish; in fact, for many of the first years I knew Steve and Lo together, dinner was served on the grass, and sometimes consisted of just one vegetable. Lots of that one vegetable. But one. Broccoli. In season. Simply prepared. With just the right, recently snipped, herb.

Even as a young millionaire, Steve always picked me up at the airport. He’d be standing there in his jeans.

When a family member called him at work, his secretary Linetta answered, “Your dad’s in a meeting. Would you like me to interrupt him?”

When Reed insisted on dressing up as a witch every Halloween, Steve, Laurene, Erin and Eve all went wiccan.

They once embarked on a kitchen remodel; it took years. They cooked on a hotplate in the garage. The Pixar building, under construction during the same period, finished in half the time. And that was it for the Palo Alto house. The bathrooms stayed old. But — and this was a crucial distinction — it had been a great house to start with; Steve saw to that.

This is not to say that he didn’t enjoy his success: he enjoyed his success a lot, just minus a few zeros. He told me how much he loved going to the Palo Alto bike store and gleefully realizing he could afford to buy the best bike there.
And he did.

Steve was humble. Steve liked to keep learning.

Once, he told me if he’d grown up differently, he might have become a mathematician. He spoke reverently about colleges and loved walking around the Stanford campus. In the last year of his life, he studied a book of paintings by Mark Rothko, an artist he hadn’t known about before, thinking of what could inspire people on the walls of a future Apple campus.

Steve cultivated whimsy. What other C.E.O. knows the history of English and Chinese tea roses and has a favorite David Austin rose?

He had surprises tucked in all his pockets. I’ll venture that Laurene will discover treats — songs he loved, a poem he cut out and put in a drawer — even after 20 years of an exceptionally close marriage. I spoke to him every other day or so, but when I opened The New York Times and saw a feature on the company’s patents, I was still surprised and delighted to see a sketch for a perfect staircase.

With his four children, with his wife, with all of us, Steve had a lot of fun.
He treasured happiness.

Then, Steve became ill and we watched his life compress into a smaller circle. Once, he’d loved walking through Paris. He’d discovered a small handmade soba shop in Kyoto. He downhill skied gracefully. He cross-country skied clumsily. No more.

Eventually, even ordinary pleasures, like a good peach, no longer appealed to him.
Yet, what amazed me, and what I learned from his illness, was how much was still left after so much had been taken away.

I remember my brother learning to walk again, with a chair. After his liver transplant, once a day he would get up on legs that seemed too thin to bear him, arms pitched to the chair back. He’d push that chair down the Memphis hospital corridor towards the nursing station and then he’d sit down on the chair, rest, turn around and walk back again. He counted his steps and, each day, pressed a little farther.

Laurene got down on her knees and looked into his eyes.
“You can do this, Steve,” she said. His eyes widened. His lips pressed into each other.

He tried. He always, always tried, and always with love at the core of that effort. He was an intensely emotional man.

I realized during that terrifying time that Steve was not enduring the pain for himself. He set destinations: his son Reed’s graduation from high school, his daughter Erin’s trip to Kyoto, the launching of a boat he was building on which he planned to take his family around the world and where he hoped he and Laurene would someday retire.

Even ill, his taste, his discrimination and his judgment held. He went through 67 nurses before finding kindred spirits and then he completely trusted the three who stayed with him to the end. Tracy. Arturo. Elham.

One time when Steve had contracted a tenacious pneumonia his doctor forbid everything — even ice. We were in a standard I.C.U. unit. Steve, who generally disliked cutting in line or dropping his own name, confessed that this once, he’d like to be treated a little specially.
I told him: Steve, this is special treatment.
He leaned over to me, and said: “I want it to be a little more special.”

Intubated, when he couldn’t talk, he asked for a notepad. He sketched devices to hold an iPad in a hospital bed. He designed new fluid monitors and x-ray equipment. He redrew that not-quite-special-enough hospital unit. And every time his wife walked into the room, I watched his smile remake itself on his face.

For the really big, big things, you have to trust me, he wrote on his sketchpad. He looked up. You have to.

By that, he meant that we should disobey the doctors and give him a piece of ice.

None of us knows for certain how long we’ll be here. On Steve’s better days, even in the last year, he embarked upon projects and elicited promises from his friends at Apple to finish them. Some boat builders in the Netherlands have a gorgeous stainless steel hull ready to be covered with the finishing wood. His three daughters remain unmarried, his two youngest still girls, and he’d wanted to walk them down the aisle as he’d walked me the day of my wedding.

We all — in the end — die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories.

I suppose it’s not quite accurate to call the death of someone who lived with cancer for years unexpected, but Steve’s death was unexpected for us.

What I learned from my brother’s death was that character is essential: What he was, was how he died.
Tuesday morning, he called me to ask me to hurry up to Palo Alto. His tone was affectionate, dear, loving, but like someone whose luggage was already strapped onto the vehicle, who was already on the beginning of his journey, even as he was sorry, truly deeply sorry, to be leaving us.

He started his farewell and I stopped him. I said, “Wait. I’m coming. I’m in a taxi to the airport. I’ll be there.”
“I’m telling you now because I’m afraid you won’t make it on time, honey.”

When I arrived, he and his Laurene were joking together like partners who’d lived and worked together every day of their lives. He looked into his children’s eyes as if he couldn’t unlock his gaze.

Until about 2 in the afternoon, his wife could rouse him, to talk to his friends from Apple.
Then, after awhile, it was clear that he would no longer wake to us.
His breathing changed. It became severe, deliberate, purposeful. I could feel him counting his steps again, pushing farther than before.

This is what I learned: he was working at this, too. Death didn’t happen to Steve, he achieved it.

He told me, when he was saying goodbye and telling me he was sorry, so sorry we wouldn’t be able to be old together as we’d always planned, that he was going to a better place.
Dr. Fischer gave him a 50/50 chance of making it through the night.
He made it through the night, Laurene next to him on the bed sometimes jerked up when there was a longer pause between his breaths. She and I looked at each other, then he would heave a deep breath and begin again.

This had to be done. Even now, he had a stern, still handsome profile, the profile of an absolutist, a romantic. His breath indicated an arduous journey, some steep path, altitude.
He seemed to be climbing.
But with that will, that work ethic, that strength, there was also sweet Steve’s capacity for wonderment, the artist’s belief in the ideal, the still more beautiful later.
Steve’s final words, hours earlier, were monosyllables, repeated three times.
Before embarking, he’d looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life’s partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them.

Steve’s final words were:

OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.

Mona Simpson is a novelist and a professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. Since 1988, she has held the Sadie Samuelson Levy Chair in Languages and Literature at Bard College. She delivered this eulogy for her brother, Steve Jobs, on Oct. 16, 2011, at his memorial service at the Memorial Church of Stanford University.

Quote of the Day

Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are your own fears.

 - Rudyard Kipling