Walking with joy..................

 

......................through the valley of the shadow. . .

Good question.....................

 When I thought back on past expedition experiences, it was clear to me that I had always drawn much of my motivation and resilience from those around me.  It was often the knowledge that I couldn't let my team down that drove me forwards when times were tough.  Now that I was to be alone, what would stop me giving up?

-Felicity Aston, Alone In Antarctica  

both at the same time...............

     F. Scott Fitzgerald, a contemporary of William Jennings Bryan, described this paradox.  "The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.  One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them better."  It seems to me that the lesson in both Bryan's and Fitzgerald's comments is to simultaneously choose life while serenely knowing that the mysterious future pull is doing exactly what it is supposed to be doing as our bodies age and die.  Thus we are in charge and we are not in charge, both at the same time, and it is all right for these two opposites to coexist.

-Wayne Dyer,  from Wisdom of the Ages

I see no reason to cap it at 64............

..................................................The Art of Blooming Late.

thanks Chris

One of life's many contradictions................

On politicians and responsibility...............

These cults of personality are dangerous and they elevate politicians to an undeserved status. The more we place politicians on pedestals and believe that they can personally make our lives better, the more we relinquish our own sense of personal responsibility. And to be perfectly clear, that is the only way we can hope to better our own lives, or anyone else’s for that matter.

-as culled from this Intellectual TakeOut blog post

via

Remember..................

"Serious problems, both personal and social in nature, are not solved by repeated acts of moral surrender."

-Robert Coles,  from Harvard Diary II

Contradictions........................

Never give up, which is the lesson I learned from boxing.  As soon as you learn to never give up, you have to learn the power and wisdom of unconditional surrender,  and that one doesn't cancel out the other; they just exist as contradictions.  The wisdom of it comes as you get older. 

-Kris Kristofferson

One hundred skills...............

...............................every man person should know.   15 on the list are beyond my experience and at this point in time they are likely to stay that way.

The ninth rule of happiness................

Go..................................

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.

-Max Ehrmann,  Desiderata

Says who.............................

John Cochrane, the Grumpy Economist, in a recent thoughtful essay posits:  "The first goal of taxation is to raise needed government revenue with minimum economic damage."

I wish it were so, but from the cheap seats it looks like Congress has purposely lost sight of the first goal.  They discovered a long time ago the joys of societal engineering through tax treatment.  Want some particular outcome?  A tax credit here, a deduction there, and, before you know it, magical things happen.  More recently they discovered that vast riches in campaign contributions are available to those willing to tinker around the edges of the Code.  A few obscure sentences slipped into some obscure legislation and suddenly some nameless entity reaps a financial windfall via the tax code.  Complexity has become their friend and their drug.  It is wishful thinking to believe that Congress will surrender it willingly.  Just saying.

Slackers of the World, Unite.........

Megan McArdle points out that the road to success often includes wrong turns, dead ends and rest stops.  Two wee excerpts:

After nearly flunking out of both high school and college, I realized it was much easier to go to class, and do my work, than to endure the inevitable denouement of slacking.

When the prodigal sons return to the fold, they often bring with them valuable information about the outside world.

Righting wrongs...........................

A story of how smart and determined people make things better.

Thanks Craig

Bear........................................

Dare.........................................

"A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free."
-Nikos Kazantzakis

Contrariness.................

via 

Don't.....................................

via

Finish lines.........................

Sean Carpenter points to four videos of fabulous finishes.  Never give up!

Saying "no".........................

"The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes.  It is very easy to say yes."
-Tony Blair

"Learn to say no.  It will be of more use to you than to be able to read Latin."
-Charles Haddon Spurgeon

"If I have one vice, and I call it nothing else, it is not to be able to say no."
-Abraham Lincoln

“Half of the troubles of this life can be traced to saying yes too quickly and not saying no soon enough.”
-Josh Billings

"No can be a hard word to say.  It taps fears of not being liked, and, especially, of not being productive.  Actually, by forcing us to become more focused, refusing to take on more tasks can make us more productive."
-Ralph Keyes

"What is a rebel?  A man who says no."
-Albert Camus

"I'm going to spend this month saying 'No.' I'll call it November." -anonymous image via mme scherzo