Life’s Lessons
Is every generation doomed to learn life’s lessons the hard way or is there anything of worth that we can take from those who came before us?
The lessons of life throughout the ages seem the same regardless of the time. It is the senior members of society who have a life’s worth of experience that can help our youth but the youth of each generation never seem to listen until they are themselves older and wiser.
Fig. 1 Albert Einstein Image Source: Albert Einstein
Happiness
Happiness is a state of mind. Don’t look for happiness in material possessions. If things don’t go your way, learn to accept them. Life’s just too short to stay miserable.
Friends and Acquaintances
Know the difference between a friend and an acquaintance. The world is full of truly amazing people for you to meet and maybe even build relationships with. We may know many people in passing but our friends don’t pass us by.
Popularity
Not everyone is always going to like you, and that’s fine. If other people want to spend time talking about you then that is their affair. To you, you are perfect as you are. You shouldn’t need everyone to like you to have some form of self-esteem. Having over 2,000 Facebook friends does not necessarily make you popular. It only means you clicked a lot of buttons.
Fig. 2 Image Source: Facebook
Materialistic Unreality
Just because someone has “more of whatever” does not imply that they are happy. Read the biography of any celebrity and they will tell you that it is the “process” of earning the money, rather than what money can do for them that makes them happy. Bill Gates spent many years amassing a huge fortune. Now he works even harder giving it away responsibly.
Fig. 3 Bill Gates Image Source: Bill Gates
Independence
Do things for yourself and learn to stand on your own two feet. Death comes to us all so the people you currently rely upon won’t be around forever. Build your own independence before those you currently depend upon as crutches are taken away. Fail to do so and your whole world will come crashing down when your crutches are taken away.
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Post CommentC Jordan
On March 3, 2009 at 10:04 am
Wise words.
Chris Stonecipher
On June 10, 2009 at 11:21 pm
Gives up good things to contemplate. I enjoyed reading your article.
Anonymous
On July 1, 2009 at 9:46 pm
Great article, but I must object to the pattern used as a background — it makes the LCD on my laptop go INSANE and prevents me from reading anything on the site.
Brian
On July 31, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Delightful article to read.
One complaint though. The moon landings are used as an illustration/suggestion that one should dream big. To some degree I disagree.
In my opinion the moon landings were a real failure. Nothing much came out of it. They (NASA) have even lost the original video tapes of the landings AND the blue prints for the Saturn V rocket – the one pictured taking off. (Hard to believe but true). Now the Shuttle’s life is about to end and the US will have no way to get to the space station except to hire the Russian’s very old Sputnik technology. (I guess they saved the blue prints.)
OK, this was only meant as an illustrative example. I know. But I mean it in the same way. The guys I grew up with (I am 54 now) who had the biggest dream all fell on their faces really hard and now have nothing, not even a reasonable job. There has been NO exceptions. NASA is, in fact, a good example of this.
I would have said, dare to dream BUT also keep your foot on the ground. And I wouldn’t use the dead end moon landings as any kind of an example.
My life has taught me that the most important thing is being realistic.
PS. I was 14 when Apollo 11 happened. I was enamoured and glued to the TV set for the 28 hours of the broadcast of the landing. I have not bones to pick with NASA. I wrote what I wrote because I consider it to be a good example of the necessity of being realistic. Brian.
Brian
On July 31, 2009 at 12:39 pm
I meant Russia’s old Soyutz technology, not Sputnik. Sorry about that.