On doing good.....................

 

.......................................and feeling good.

In theory anyway.......................

 

      backstory here

The very definition.........................

 ............................................of public service.

On service.................................

 Service, for me, for us, is not a transactional act.  It's not a trick we undertake to get people to give us their money.  Yes, of course, great service has strategic value.  Every day we go out with the belief that we need to re-earn our customer's trust and make it worthwhile for people to want to spend time and money with us.  But really, service is a way of being in the world.

-Ari Weinzweig

via

This is what public service......................

........................................looks like. 

Public service.........................

 ...............................looks a lot like this.

Checking in with Emerson............

“O, see how the masses of men worry themselves into nameless graves, while here and there, some great unselfish soul forgets himself into immortality.”

Has a man gained any thing who has received a hundred favors and rendered none? . . . He is great who confers the most benefits.

There is no penalty for virtue; no penalty to wisdom;  they are proper additions of being.  In a virtuous action, I properly am; in a virtuous act, I add to the world;  I plant into deserts conquered from Chaos and Nothing, and see the darkness receding on the limits of the horizon.  There can be no excess to love; none to knowledge; none to beauty, when these attributes are considered in the purest sense.  The soul refuses limits, and always affirms an Optimism, never a Pessimism.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson.  The first quote is widely attributed to Emerson, but the Oracle Google refused to tell me the original source.  The second two quotes come from his essay, Compensation

About security......................

     Most people never feel secure because they are always worried that they will either lose their job, lose the money they already have, lose their spouse, lose their health, and so on.  The only true security in life comes from knowing that every single day you are improving yourself in some way, that you are increasing the caliber of who you are and that you are valuable to your company, your friends, and your family.  I don't worry about maintaining the quality of of my life, because every day I work on improving it.  I constantly strive to learn and to make new and more powerful distinctions about ways to add value to other people's lives.  This gives me a sense of certainty that I can always learn, that I can always expand, that I can always grow.

-Anthony Robbins, Awaken The Giant Within

Call it an investment.....................

When you've done well and another has benefited by it, why like a fool do you look for a third thing on top—credit for the good deed or a favor in return?

-Marcus Aurelius,  Meditations, Book 7:73

      So why on earth do you need thanks or recognition for having done the right thing?  It's your job.

-Ryan Holiday, from today's entry in The Daily Stoic

Vessels.................................

     Our power as miracle-workers in the workplace is to pray that we be used — that our hands, our feet, our minds, and our behavior be of service to a greater good.  That we be empty vessels through which God will produce His extraordinary wonders.  We're simply here to serve a higher plan for the enlightenment of the world, and therein lie out happiness and success.

-Marianne Williamson,  The Law Of Divine Compensation

Must be something in the nature of man .....

     "I thank you for your polite wishes to see me restored to public life.  There was a time when I would have accepted of an Appointment Abroad. . . . But the time is past -- for my accepting of that or of any other appointment in the Government of the United States. -- I already see a System of influence bordering upon corruption established in our Country, which seems to proclaim to innocence & patriotism to keep their distance."

Benjamin Rush, as excerpted from a 1789 letter to John Adams, as printed here

Simple....................................

   
     "Life is so simple, really.  Think through what people want, watch what others fail to give them, and provide it.  Then bill 'em."

-Stuart Wilde,   The Trick to Money Is Having Some

A recipe................................

If you want to be happy, forget yourself. Forget all of it—how you look, how you feel, how your career is going. Just drop the whole subject of you…People dedicated to something other than themselves—helping family and friends, or a political cause, or others less fortunate than they—are the happiest people in the world.

-Michael Crichton, as taken from here

Useful..............................

     Invoking the story of David, Davies implored his students to "imbibe and cherish a public spirit.  Serve your generation.  Live not for your selves, but the public.  Be the servants of the Church;  the servants of your Country;  the servants of all."  He exhorted them to "esteem yourselves" not but how much "more happy, honourable and important" you can become but by how much "more useful you are!"

-Stephen Fried,  Rush:  Revolution, Madness & The Visionary Doctor Who Became A Founding Father, as he channels the Reverend Samuel Davies in his 1760 address to the graduating class of eleven at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton).

Kurt knows.........................

........................................................................public service.

to minister.........................

     Happiness lies not it the mere possession of money;  it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.  The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits.  These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.

-Franklin D. Roosevelt, culled from his first inaugural address, March 4, 1933

Got to get The Dog one of those vests.....

"I have confirmed that 30% of the public can’t identify a joke without the help of a service animal."

-Scott Adams, taken out of context here

The Dog:

All things..................................

“God does not lead all His servants by one road, nor in one way, nor at one time; for God is in all things;  and that man is not serving God aright, who can only serve Him in his own self-chosen way.” 

-Johannes Tauler

art via

On self-transcendence..............

“By declaring that man is responsible and must actualize the potential meaning of his life, I wish to stress that the true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than within man or his own psyche, as though it were a closed system. I have termed this constitutive characteristic "the self-transcendence of human existence." It denotes the fact that being human always points, and is directed, to something or someone, other than oneself--be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself--by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love--the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself. What is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence.” 

-Viktor Frankl