Life Lessons – Do you record what you learn?

American lawyer/prosecutor and Atomic Energy Commission chairman Gordon Dean’s life ended in an airline crash near Nantucket in 1958. His effects included nine life lessons scribbled on the back of an envelope. Here’s one third:

• Never lose your capacity for enthusiasm.
• The greatest builder of confidence is the ability to do something -- almost anything – well.
• The greatest tragedies in the world and personal events stem from misunderstandings. So communicate.

Author of Beware the Naked Man Who Offers You His Shirt, Harvey Mackay summing succinct wisdom primed my pump today: http://www.harveymackay.com/columns/column_this_week.cfm

• Pale ink is better than the most retentive memory.
• If you don't learn from your mistakes, there's no sense in making them.
• There is a place in the world for anyone who says, "I'll take care of it" [with follow through].
• Failure is no more fatal than success is permanent.

While these teach, they encourage me to record my own life lessons.

Here’s one I wrote in the early 80’s:

• Real satisfaction is the direct result of doing things of eternal consequence. Things of temporal value betray my investment unless they are linked with things of ageless impact.

Let’s learn from our mistakes, follow through, using pale ink if necessary and link our actions with eternity!

– Chaplain Robin