Young man, right about now, you may be thinking that life is not very fair, that you did not deserve what has happened in your life, and that you don’t know what the point is for all the effort necessary just to live each day as a productive citizen.
At the end of the day, when there is nobody else around, all you have to lean on is the knowledge of your efforts. Learn this lesson well: When you lay down to sleep each night, ask yourself a single question:
“Did I do my best, and all that I could do?”
If you can answer that question in the affirmative every single night, than you have nothing to be ashamed of, nothing that anyone can ever use to hold you back or bring you down. Life is all about challenges, trials and struggles, until one day, we wake up and realize that there is nothing so important as the character you display when you are all by yourself.
Blaming others is the new cultural habit these days, and a recipe for disaster. Nobody but you will ever know just how hard you worked, how much you strived, and what you sacrificed in pursuit of your goals. As long as you live on this earth, the person looking back at you in the mirror knows whether you did all you can do.
I don’t know you, but I know many who used a situation similar to yours to abandon ambition in favor of comfort and acceptance of ‘good-enough’ as a personal mantra after an initial failure. I know quite well, that the rest of your life will be determined solely by how well you please the man in the mirror.
Stay true to your goals, accept maximum effort as the only kind, whether you are trying to cure cancer or rake leaves off your driveway. Personal excellence is the cure for what ails you. Seek to please no man. Accept no compromise in the achievement of whatever you desire, with the knowledge that nobody but you will ever know what you did to get what you got.
You can be a rich man owning nothing, or a poor soul with wealth beyond measure. All that matters, is whether when you look in the mirror, the face you see is smiling back at you.
Dog,
Is all that fishin’ and gardenin’ mellowing you out?
Seriously that was a great response to the young man. Many more folks should subscribe to that take on life.
Condolences to the Blues and the family of the aviator that was lost.
Have a great day.