Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. It turns problems into gifts, failures into successes, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. It can turn an existence into a real life, and disconnected situations into important and beneficial lessons. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.
"The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well."
Editor’s Comment: As you may guess, the book is profane and Manson seems to be the classic millennial male. But not even that could distract me from gaining momentum as I went from chapter to chapter through his entire book. I’ve long despised the positivity bend of most self-help advice. By the mid-90s I had given up such trash in favor of insight meditation to learn “seeing things as they are”. Manson takes it another step by saying such things as “embrace death” and that everything worthwhile in life comes from surmounting negative experience. He’s a good story teller and uproariously funny at times.
Editor’s Comment: The news seems no longer the news, it’s seems more like mud-slinging. I’m weary of it. So when this old song came up on my ITunes, I played it over five times.
Editor’s Comment: My dear friend, Bob Miller, sends me his self-reflections and I learn. Bob is one of the widest and deepest thinkers I know, particularly in matters of the soul. His success as a marketer, philanthropist and musician are of local legend. This recent passage centers on the age old character of the Fool, then probes more deeply in search of the fool within each of us. One of the key points which I find alluring is that being the fool requires we take ourselves less seriously which can in turn help us and others through the worst of times. As Bob and I age, and certainly within the limits of social grace and empathy we are choosing to be more The Fool. Mill
