[nukkad] A lesson for LIFE

[Ameer Ali <>]

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  When spiders unite, they can tie down a lion
- Ethiopian Proverb
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Extracts from: 

Graduation Speech to the graduates 
at Villanova By Anna Quindlen

" I'm a novelist.

My work is human nature.  Real life is 
all I know.  Don't ever confuse the two, 
your life and your work.  The second is 
only part of the first.

Don't ever forget the words my father 
sent me  on a postcard last year: 
"If you win the rat race, you're still a 
rat."

You will walk out of here 
this afternoon with only one thing 
that no one else has.  
There will be hundreds of 
people out there with your same -degree;
there will be thousands of people 
doing what you want to do for a living.

But you will be the only person alive 
who has sole custody of your life.  
Your particular life.  Your entire life.  
Not just your life at a desk, 
or your life on a bus, or in a car, 
or at the computer.  Not just the life 
of your mind, but the life of your heart.  
Not just your bank account 
but your soul.

People don't talk about the soul very 
much anymore.  It's so much easier to
write a resume than to craft a spirit.  
But a resume is a cold comfort on a
winter night, or when you're sad, or 
broke, or lonely, or when you've 
gotten back the test results 
and they're not so good.

Here is my resume:

I am a good mother to three children.  
I have tried never to let my
profession stand in the way of being 
a good parent.  I no longer consider
myself the center of the universe.  I 
show up.  I listen.  I try to laugh.

I am a good friend to my husband.  I 
have tried to make marriage vows 
mean what they say.  
I am a good friend to 
my friends, and they to me.  
Without them, there would be nothing 
to say to you today, because 
I would be acardboard cutout.  
But I call them on the phone, 
and I meet them for lunch.

I would be rotten, or at best mediocre 
at my job, if those other things were
not true.  You cannot be really first 
rate at your work if your work is all
you are.

So here's what I wanted to tell you 
today:

Get a life.  A real life, not a manic 
pursuit of the next promotion, the
bigger paycheck, the larger house.  
Do you think you'd care so very much
about those things if you blew an 
aneurysm one afternoon, or 
found a lump in your breast?

Get a life in which you notice the smell 
of salt water pushing itself on a
breeze over Seaside Heights, a life in 
which you stop and watch how a red
tailed hawk circles over the water or 
the way a baby scowls with 
concentration when she tries to pick 
up a Cheerio with her thumb and first
finger.

Get a life in which you are not alone.  
Find people you love, and who love
you.  And remember that love is not 
leisure, it is work.  Pick up the phone.

Send an e-mail.  Write a letter.

Get a life in which you are generous.  
And realize that life is the best
thing ever, and that you have no 
business taking it for granted.  
Care so deeply about its goodness that 
you want to spread it around.  
Take money you would have spent 
on beers and give it to charity.  
Work in a soup kitchen.
Be a big brother or sister.  All of you 
want to do well.  But if you do not
do good too, then doing well will never 
be enough.

It is so easy to waste our lives, our 
days, our hours, our minutes.  It is
so easy to take for granted the color 
of our kids' eyes, the way the melody
in a symphony rises and falls and 
disappears and rises again.  It is so 
easy to exist instead of to live.

I learned to live many years ago.  
Something really, really bad 
happened to me, something that 
changed my life in ways that, 
if I had my druthers, it
would never have been changed at 
all.  And what I learned from it is what,
today, seems to be the hardest 
lesson of all: I learned to love the 
journey, not the destination.  
I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, 
and that today is the only guarantee you get.  
I learned to look at all the good in
the world and try to give some of it 
back because I believed in it,
completely and utterly.  And I tried to 
do that, in part, by telling others
what I had learned.

By telling them this: Consider the 
lilies of the field.  Look at the fuzz on
a baby's ear.  Read in the backyard 
with the sun on your face.  
Learn to be happy.  
And ... live it with joy and passion as it 
ought to be lived."

________________________________________________________________
GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO!
Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less!
Join Juno today!  For your FREE software, visit:
http://dl.www.juno.com/get/web/.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, use the form at: http://www.mumbai-central.com/nukkad/#options
This list is archived at: http://www.mumbai-central.com/nukkad/archive.html