Teacher Attitude

The truck driver was enjoying his meal at a local diner and happened to look towards the door when it opened. That was probably the only reason he ever paid attention to the old lady who came in. She was quite ordinary looking, a little bent, wisps of white hair had escaped from under her hat. She had good clean clothes, a bit old fashioned perhaps, but that was sort of expected from an old lady.
He bit into his hamburger and expected the lady to disappear into one of the booths quietly. But not this old lady.


There was the sound of running steps and the owner and all the waiters hurried from behind the counter to meet the old lady.
- Mrs Cosby! They shouted, - How pleased we are to meet you!
The old lady smiled and greeted them all.
- Susan, Bob, Alyssa, Carmen… Good to see you all. How have you been? Life has been good to you?


- Very good, indeed, Mrs Cosby! Bob, the owner said, - Now, let me take your coat.
Very carefully he took the old lady's coat. The truck driver watched with interest. He had never seen a diner owner help anyone out of their coat before. And he had been driving across the country for quite a few years to say the least.


- And I shall bring you a little soup first. Then you can decide what it is you wish to eat this time, Alyssa smiled and returned to the kitchen.
- But at first I shall tidy up your table! Susan said.


This she did - she wiped the table clean and out of nowhere appeared a bright white, clean table cloth. Carmen seemed to pull a vase with a yellow rose from her pocket.


- Now you sit down and make yourself comfortable, Mrs Cosby! Bob helped her to sit down, - There… Now, what would you like to drink? Water with a touch of lemon?
When Bob passed his table, the truck driver could not resist.
- Excuse me…
- Yes? Would you like more coffee? Bob asked.


- No, thank you, maybe later. I was just wondering… What is so special about the old lady over there?
- Teacher attitude, Bob smiled.
- Teacher attitude? The truck driver did not believe his ears.
- I'll explain soon if you wait, Bob said.


And out of sheer curiosity the truck driver waited, watching in awe how the waiters did everything in their power to make the old lady really enjoy her meal. And when she was finished, Bob refused to take any payment from her. He escorted her to the door and stood there, waving as long as it took for her to reach the corner and turn out of sight.
Then he turned, saw the truck driver and walked to him.


- Now, a story about teacher attitude and the importance of motivation, he said and sat down.
- Was this Mrs Cosby your teacher then?
- Yes, the best one. Though we probably did not make it very easy for her at first… You know how every school seems to have a class that everyone thinks will never graduate? Trouble makers, that's what we were.
Bob smiled.


- None of our teachers stayed for long. And so, one morning, the door to the class room opened and a new teacher walked in, yet again. Mrs Cosby. We looked at her and gave her maybe a week. She looked too soft to ever handle us. And we sure gave her a hard time. But she never lost her temper, no matter what we did. And then came the last day of the first month she had been our teacher. That was the day she showed the teacher attitude she became so famous for.


- Her teacher attitude? What was so special about her teacher attitude?
- She opened her briefcase and took out a bunch of papers. We feared the worst - a test. But oh no, it was something that totally surprised us.
- Well what was it? The truck driver asked.


- Mrs Cosby asked each one of us to come to the front of the class, one by one, and gave us each a paper. In each paper she had written what the student in question had been good at during the last month.


The truck driver looked at Bob,
- She showed her teacher attitude by giving you a paper that told you what you were good at? I'm sorry, I don't get it.
- If you think about it, you'll get it alright. You see no one had ever believed in us. No one ever liked us. We were constantly told how good-for-nothing we were. And we had started to believe it ourselves. The teacher attitude we had met with before didn't encourage us to believe in ourselves.


And here, suddenly, was someone who had been observing us closely for a month. And a month when we made things as difficult for her as we could, mind you. And yet she could find something positive to say about each and every one of us.
Once she had delivered the papers, she continued with her teaching and for the first time we forgot to make her life miserable.


Someone called Bob and, he excused and left to serve a customer. After a while he returned and continued with his story.


- Mrs Cosby did this every month from then on. Each month we got a paper that emphasized our strengths, what we had been good at. I thought no one would ever see anything good about me - I was lousy at school. But she commented on my courage, how punctual I was, how good to settle arguments if I so wanted. And you know what happens when someone keeps telling you what you are good at?


The truck driver shook his head.
- Well, you begin to act as if that was true. You start to learn more to be even better, to prove them right.
And so with her positive teacher attitude transformed our class. We did not want to hurt her feelings anymore. We actually started to study. Other students and teachers could not understand what had happened.


And then came the day of our graduation. Yes, we actually graduated. Mrs Cosby hugged each and every one of us, and told us with tears in her eyes how proud she was of us.


- My dear children, she said to us, - I knew you could make it. I knew how good you were, but it seems you did not know it yourself. Too long you had listened and believed the words of others who thought you were hopeless. And yet, here you are, and you have proved them wrong. This must be the proudest day of my life!
Then she handed each one of us a book. All the encouraging letter through the years were there, in hard covers.


- I want you each to keep this book and if ever during your life you feel unworthy, open this and read how good you are. You can be anything you want to be as long as you believe in yourself. Promise me you'll remember that!
Bob sighed.


- And we did. She turned a bunch of misfits into people who could achieve great things - because now we believed in ourselves. We went on to fulfil our dreams. Mine was to own a diner and here I am, instead of ruining my life with alcohol and drugs - and I was already going that way when Mrs Cosby appeared. So maybe now you understand why that old lady deserves all the respect we can give her.


The truck driver nodded. Then he asked for his bill.
Bob went to get it and when he returned he saw the truck driver talking to his cell phone. Not wanting to disturb he stood at some distance.


- Honey? Hi, yes, it is me. You know I thought I would drive home tonight. Yes, I know, it is a long way, but I can make it. You think you might make that special lasagne of yours for me? Yes, I'd really like to have some. You know you should sell that lasagne, it is so good, better than anyone else's! What? Why do I say so? Well because I think so. Just wanted to let you know you are the best lasagne cook I have ever met! You will? Great, see you in the evening! Love you too!


Alyssa saw Bob smiling when he returned.
- Let me guess - another one for Mrs Cosby?
- Yep, Bob laughed.
Alyssa smiled and gave Bob a little kiss on the cheek on her way to pour more coffee to a customer.


- You tell about Mrs Cosby to everyone on purpose, I am sure.
- Absolutely! That kind of teacher attitude deserves to be spread! And it works, every time. This truck driver just made his wife very happy by telling her what she was good at - making lasagne! Definitely one more point for Mrs Cosby!

Mouse Trap

A mouse looked through a crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife opening a package; what food might it contain?

He was aghast to discover that it was a mouse trap!

Retreating to the farmyard, the mouse proclaimed the warning, "There is a mouse trap in the house, there is a mouse trap in the house."

The chicken clucked and scratched, raised her head & said, "Mr. Mouse, I can tell you this is a grave concern to you, but it is of no consequence to me; I cannot be bothered by it."

The mouse turned to the pig & told him, "There is a mouse trap in the mouse."

"I am so very sorry Mr. Mouse," sympathized the pig, "but there is nothing I can do about it but pray; be assured that you are in my prayers."

The mouse turned to the cow, who replied, "Like wow, Mr. Mouse, a mouse trap; am I in grave danger, Duh?"

So the mouse returned to the house, head down and dejected to face the farmer's mouse trap alone.

That very night a sound was heard throughout the house, like the sound of a mouse trap catching its prey.

The farmer's wife rushed to see what was caught.

In the darkness, she did not see that it was a venomous snake whose tail the trap had caught.

The snake bit the farmer's wife.

The farmer rushed her to the hospital.

She returned home with a fever.

Now everyone knows you treat a fever with fresh chicken soup, so the farmer took his hatchet to the farm yard for the soup's main ingredient.

His wife's sickness continued so that friends and neighbors came to sit with her around the clock.
To feed them, the farmer butchered the pig.

The farmer's wife did not get well, in fact, she died, & so many people came for her funeral the farmer had the cow slaughtered to provide meat for all of them to eat.

So the next time you hear that someone is facing a problem & think that it does not concern you, remember that when the least of us is threatened, we are all at risk . . .

Grace Of God

The only survivor of a shipwreck was washed up on a small,  uninhabited island. He prayed feverishly for God to rescue him, and every day he scanned the horizon for help, but none seemed forthcoming.

Exhausted, he eventually managed to build a little hut out of driftwood to protect him from the elements and to store his few possessions. But then one day, after scavenging for food, he arrived home to find his little hut in flames, the smoke rolling up to the sky.

The worst had happened; everything was lost. He was stunned with grief and anger. "God, how could you do this to me!" he cried. Early the next day, however, he was awakened by the sound of a ship that was approaching the island. It had come to rescue him. "How did you know I was here?" asked the weary man of his rescuers. "We saw your smoke signal," they replied.

It is easy to get discouraged when things are going badly. But we shouldn't lose heart, because God is at work in our lives, even in the midst of pain and suffering. Remember, next time your little hut is burning to the ground--it just may be a smoke signal that summons The Grace of God.

A Box Full Of Kisses

The story goes that some time ago, a man punished his 3-year-old daughter for wasting a roll of gold wrapping paper. Money was tight and he became infuriated when the child tried to decorate a box to put under the Christmas tree.

 Nevertheless, the little girl brought the gift to her father the next morning and said, "This is for you, Daddy."

The man was embarrassed by his earlier overreaction, but his anger flared again when he found out the box was empty. He yelled at her, stating, "Don't you know, when you give someone a present, there is supposed to be something inside? The little girl looked up at him with tears in her eyes and cried, "Oh, Daddy, it's not empty at all. I blew kisses into the box. They're all for you, Daddy."

The father was crushed. He put his arms around his little girl, and he begged for her forgiveness.

Only a short time later, an accident took the life of the child. It is also told that her father kept that gold box by his bed for many years and, whenever he was discouraged, he would take out an imaginary kiss and remember the love of the child who had put it there.

In a very real sense, each one of us, as humans beings, have been given a gold container filled with unconditional love and kisses... from our children, family members, friends, and God. There is simply no other possession, anyone could hold, more precious than this.

Attitude Is Everything

It’s our Attitude, and not necessarily our Aptitude, that determines our Altitude in life.

Jerry was the kind of guy you love to hate. He was always in a good mood and always had something positive to say. When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would reply, "If I were any better, I would be twins!"

He was a unique manager because he had several waiters who had followed him around from restaurant to restaurant. The reason the waiters followed Jerry was because of his attitude. He was a natural motivator. If an employee was having a bad day, Jerry was there telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation.

Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up to Jerry and asked him, "I don't get it! You can't be a positive person all of the time. How do you do it?"

Jerry replied, "Each morning I wake up and say to myself, Jerry, you have two choices today. You can choose to be in a good mood or you can choose to be in a bad mood.' I choose to be in a good mood. Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or I can choose to learn from it. I choose to learn from it. Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or I can point out the positive side of life. I choose the positive side of life."

"Yeah, right, it's not that easy," I protested.
"Yes it is," Jerry said. "Life is all about choices. When you cut away all the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to situations. You choose how people will affect your mood. You choose to be in a good or bad mood. The bottom line: It's your choice how you live life."

I reflected on what Jerry said. Soon thereafter, I left the restaurant industry to start my own business. We lost touch, but I often thought about him when I made a choice about life instead of reacting to it.

Several years later, I heard that Jerry did something you are never supposed to do in a restaurant business: he left the back door open one morning and was held up at gunpoint by three armed robbers.

While trying to open the safe, his hand, shaking from nervousness, slipped off the combination. The robbers panicked and shot him. Luckily, Jerry was found relatively quickly and rushed to the local trauma center.

After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, Jerry was released from the hospital with fragments of the bullets still in his body.

I saw Jerry about six months after the accident. When I asked him how he was, he replied, "If I were any better, I'd be twins. Wanna see my scars?"

I declined to see his wounds, but did ask him what had gone through his mind as the robbery took place.

"The first thing that went through my mind was that I should have locked the back door," Jerry replied. "Then, as I lay on the floor, I remembered that I had two choices: I could choose to live, or I could choose to die. I chose to live."

"Weren't you scared? Did you lose consciousness?" I asked.
Jerry continued, "The paramedics were great. They kept telling me I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the emergency room and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared. In their eyes, I read, 'He's a dead man.' I knew I needed to take action."

"What did you do?" I asked.
"Well, there was a big, burly nurse shouting questions at me," said Jerry. "She asked if I was allergic to anything. 'Yes,' I replied. The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply. I took a deep breath and yelled, 'Bullets!' Over their laughter, I told them, "I am choosing to live. Operate on me as if I am alive, not dead."

Jerry lived thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of his amazing attitude. I learned from him that every day we have the choice to live fully.

Attitude, after all, is everything.

Steve Jobs Quote which I like

So when a good idea comes, you know, part of my job is to move it around, just see what different people think, get people talking about it, argue with people about it, get ideas moving among that group of 100 people, get different people together to explore different aspects of it quietly, and, you know — just explore things.
“In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. It’s interior decorating. It’s the fabric of the curtains of the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.”
“Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?”
“I’m the only person I know that’s lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year. It’s very character-building.”
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
“Death…the single best invention of Life. It’s life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.”

Iam really sad today, I don't know you personally but your speech and Quotes touched me a lot. "You had that fire inside You" which I think I don't have. I really miss u and the world miss you. "May your soul rest in peace"

Steve Jobs "stay hungry stay foolish"

 Steve Jobs delivering his commencement speech to the graduates of Stanford University in 2005. In it he talks about getting fired from Apple in 1.....



Excerpts from President Barack Obama's statement:[147]
Steve was among the greatest of American innovators - brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it. By building one of the planet’s most successful companies from his garage, he exemplified the spirit of American ingenuity. By making computers personal and putting the interne...t in our pockets, he made the information revolution not only accessible, but intuitive and fun. And by turning his talents to storytelling, he has brought joy to millions of children and grownups alike. Steve was fond of saying that he lived every day like it was his last. Because he did, he transformed our lives, redefined entire industries, and achieved one of the rarest feats in human history: he changed the way each of us sees the world.





This is the "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish" address delivered by Steve Jobs in 2005 at Stanford University:

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky - I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me - I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

Dedicating To My Teachers



Teachers open up young minds,
showing them the wonders of the intellect
and the miracle
of being able to think for themselves.
A teacher exercises
the mental muscles of students,
stretching and strengthening,
so they can make challenging decisions,
find their way in the world,
and become independent.
The best teachers care enough
To gently push and prod students
to do their best
and fulfill their potential.

I May Never See Tomorrow

I may never see tomorrow,
There are no written guarantees;
And the things that happened yesterday,
Now belong to history.

I have just this present moment,
I must treat it as my last;
I must use this moment wisely,
For it soon shall pass away.
It will be lost to me forever,
And be a part of yesterday.

I must exercise compassion,
Help the fallen to their feet;
I must be a friend to the friendless,
And help make empty lives complete.

I must make this moment precious,
For it will never come again;
I must never be content,
With things that should or might have been.

Kind words I fail to say this day,
Can never be unsaid,
For I know not how short the path may be,
That before me lies ahead.

The unkind things I do today,
May never be undone;
And friendships that I fail to win,
May never more be won.

I may not have another chance,
On bended knee to pray;
And thank my God with a humble heart,
For giving me this day.

I may never see tomorrow,
But this moment is my own;
It's mine to use or cast aside,
The choice is mine alone.

I have just this precious moment,
In the sunlight of today;
Where the sunlight of tomorrow,
Meets the dusk of my yesterdays...

~~Shawnee Kellie~~

Be Thankful

Today before you think of saying an unkind word–
think of someone who can’t speak.

Before you complain about the taste of your food–
think of someone who has nothing to eat.

Before you complain about your husband or wife–
think of someone who is crying out to God for a companion.

Today before you complain about life–
think of someone who went too early to heaven.

Before you complain about your children–
think of someone who desires children but they’re barren.

Before you argue about your dirty house, someone didn’t clean or sweep–
think of the people who are living in the streets.

Before whining about the distance you drive–
think of someone who walks the same distance with their feet.

And when you are tired and complain about your job–
think of the unemployed, the disabled and those who wished they had your job.

But before you think of pointing the finger or condemning another–
remember that not one of us are without sin and we all answer to one maker.

And when depressing thoughts seem to get you down–
put a smile on your face and thank God you’re alive and still around. 

Life is a gift – Live it, Enjoy it, Celebrate it, and Fulfill it.

Butterfly

A man found a cocoon of a butterfly.
One day a small opening appeared.
He sat and watched the butterfly for several hours
as it struggled to squeeze its body through the tiny hole.
Then it stopped, as if it couldn't go further.
So the man decided to help the butterfly.
He took a pair of scissors and
snipped off the remaining bits of cocoon.
The butterfly emerged easily but
it had a swollen body and shriveled wings.

The man continued to watch it,
expecting that any minute the wings would enlarge
and expand enough to support the body,
Neither happened!
In fact the butterfly spent the rest of its life
crawling around.
It was never able to fly.

What the man in his kindness
and haste did not understand:
The restricting cocoon and the struggle
required by the butterfly to get through the opening
was a way of forcing the fluid from the body
into the wings so that it would be ready
for flight once that was achieved.

Sometimes struggles are exactly
what we need in our lives.
Going through life with no obstacles would cripple us.
We will not be as strong as we could have been
and we would never fly.