Well, it took way longer than I hoped, but I'm finally embarking on finishing This I Believe. I haven't had any involvement with it, voluntary or through Peer Mentor yet this year, but what better to do on a beautiful Thursday morning than to read outside and get some closure on a book. So, without further ado, here we go - the final excerpt post from This I Believe.
(Allison, Jay, and Dan Gediman. This I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women. New York: This I Believe, 2006. Print.)
- "I considered some of the awful things my grandparents and great-grandparents had seen in their lifetimes: two world wars, killer flu, segregation, a nuclear bomb. But they saw other things, too, better things: the end of two world wars, the polio vaccine, passage of the civil rights laws. They even saw the Red Sox win the World Series - twice."
Okay, maybe 30% of the reason this is here is because of the Red Sox, but the other 70% I do find worthy in and of itself. This essay was written by a 16-year-old boy, talking about his grandparents' lives, the life of his father, and his own life, and how tomorrow will be a better day. And sure, maybe we can't really conceive of it right now that we can cure AIDS and cancer and make peace in the Middle East, but no one could conceive polio vaccines, civil rights, suffrage, or the end of the Curse of the Bambino.
- "But as long as you did the very best that you were able to do, then that was what you were put here to do, and that was what you were accomplishing by being here. And so I have tried to follow that out - and not to worry about the future or what was going to happen...you have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best you have to give."
Eleanor Roosevelt put in words what I've been trying to for a while now, and whatever I could saw in reflection upon her quote would still pale in comparison to what she says...so, I'll let this be.
- "Sounds simple - when someone dies, get in your car and go to calling hours or the funeral...'Always go to the funeral' means that I have to do the right thing when I really, really don't feel like it. I have to remind myself of it when I could make some small gesture, but I don't really have to and I definitely don't want to. I'm talking about those things that represent only inconvenience to me, but the world to the other guy."
This is a really cool concept. True, too - everyone should do these things, because they absolutely do mean a lot to the other person. Which in turn should mean a lot to you, too. Think about professional athletes who get paid millions of dollars to play a game. To them, a little kid screaming and waving a baseball and Sharpie at them is just another little kid. But to that little kid...that athlete means the world to them. That athlete is their role model, and having an autographed baseball will complete that child's life. So go to the funerals. Sign the baseballs. It will mean more to someone else than to you. But the beauty of that sentence is that you get to end it three words early.
So there it is. The last essay isn't in this post, because it didn't really hold any value comparable to the three above. But I'm okay with that - the end shouldn't be your assessment of how something was - you should take the whole culmination into consideration, which is why I definitely loved this book. Some essays meant essentially nothing to me, and I even skimmed over some, but others, at least the ones you've read on my blog, do speak to me. Enough that when I find another inspirational time, and am in a ready state of reflection, I'll begin work on my own This I Believe statement. As far as any preview is concerned, I have no idea what I'll write about. Literally, zero idea. But I guess that's what makes it thought-provoking.
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