LOVING YOUR JOB IS THE PREREQUISITE FOR A JOB WELL DONE

Many years ago when I was in my first job, I would often sit by myself wracking my brains dry trying to figure out the what-and-how of doing a great job. One day Mom, having noticed my bewilderment and anxiety, came to me, sat down, and said............. 'The only way to do a great job is to love it and give it your best shot. Even the geniuses of men with all their brilliance won't make it if what they do is simply out of the exercise of competition and rivalry. That would simply be a display of lame motivation. Because the truly motivated person knows that only by genuinely loving your work..... being passionate about it..... by learning something everyday..... and sincerely caring enough to put out the very best can performance be said to be truly outstanding. So whether you are a simple janitor, street-cleaner, salesperson, the office clerk or the president of your company, loving your job is the prerequisite for a job well done. The rest will follow.'
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I still miss her today as I did that year she left me and my brother. Life would have been so much lighter and grand with her by my side and with her bottomless stack of wisdom and care. She always had the right words, encouragement, strength, hope, faith, and positivity when my own failed. I remember best what she would always say to me............ 'Press on, Honey, got you covered with prayers.'   That made a great deal of difference in my life back then. But I have with me all those wonderful memories she left behind. I can say that with those golden memories inside my backpack, my life journey would be a breeze.
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"Older and wiser voices can always help you find the right path, if you are only willing to listen." -- Jimmy Buffett

EVEN THE SMALLEST ACT OF CARING CAN TURN A LIFE AROUND

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Somebody said this....  'The opposite of love is not hate;  it's indifference.'

Let's not fool ourselves with the thought that we know much about that word... indifference. Well, maybe or maybe not. Because in truth we don't or else we won't be doing these freaking habits of uncaring. Somewhere there in our day to day lives we do teeny weeny habits of having our noses up in the air or looking the other way or telling ourselves to simply just 'ignore'.

You know what, that isn't achieving anything at all except perhaps keep us safe or more entrenched in our perceived respective comfort zones. A friend asked me.... 'why bother with other stuff, it's our lives we should be worrying about..'  Why bother?  Oh my, that's the stuff wars, misunderstandings, cruelty, misery, division, isolation are made of.... and that too is a very good reason why civilizations stagnate or may disintegrate one day soon.

You know what else, life is such that we work at it yes BUT it doesn't stop there. Life also includes that obnoxious human being standing next to you, or an old man walking out on the streets in tattered clothes, or emaciated children looking up to your eyes with outstretched hands, or that woman on TV sobbing as she heartrendingly pleads for justice for her child raped and murdered, or recurring holdups - bag snatchings - senseless killings, or the death of a poor puppy in the hands of bad bad VERY bad humans, and even so much more. Include too our Mother Nature who cries every time we irresponsibly cut down her trees, dirty her rivers and streams with garbage, kill her animals for profit, or bulldoze down her majestic mountains to build buildings in the name of progress. We see them all and then look the other way. That's a lot of indifference going around, don't you think?

What can we do? Somebody said that evil thrives in a society when, to quote -- 'good people do nothing about it.'  Unquote. We're good people, right? So whoever wrote those lines must be referring to us.

So what can we do?? Simple. BEGIN TO CARE. Act on saving people, the community, the children and the elderly, the poor, the four-legged creatures in our midst. Act against injustice, thieves and murderers, crooked men and women in government and even those in our small day-to-day lives, act against the senseless destruction of our dear Mother Earth, act to protect our environment, and more. Act to save our world and its people ........  and in the process we are saving ourselves too.

Another friend asked ... 'I'd like to do something but WHAT?'  Here's a few I know.....  concertedly and vigorously talk about it, write about it, sing about it, work on it, network with it ...... be seen, be heard, be read. Be passionate about caring for all of creation, living and non-living.

If I may boldly say, I believe that God didn't create us just to stay in our respective comfortable tiny corners of the world separate from the rest. I think His intent was to create a humanity of men and women with big hearts of gold reaching out to one another with the power and love of God. We are created in His image, right?  Sadly, it got derailed somewhere there, not His fault but mainly ours. BUT we can get ourselves back on track again. And how? If we once again learn to put back CARING into our lives.

Indifference is an ugly word. Don't you think that it's time to cut it down to pieces, strike it off our vocabulary, end its rule over our lives??  That sure is going to put a tremendous smile on our Heavenly Father's face! We are His children.... therefore, like Father - like children.

Blessings, everyone.