Happy Friday, Friends!
I hope and trust this post finds you all having a great day on this glorious first day of 2021 in my Sweet Home Alabama! Additionally, I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and that you have been able to enjoy quality time with family and/or friends! :)
Earlier this week I came across the commencement address that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, Jr. gave at his sons 9th grade graduation. The speech was given on June 3, 2017 at Cardigan Mountain School - a New Hampshire boarding school for boys. While the entire speech was very good - and can easily be found with a Google search - there was one part in particular that leapt out at me. I want to share this brief excerpt with all of you.
"...commencement speakers will typically also wish you good luck and extend good wishes to you. I will not do that, and I’ll tell you why. From time to time in the years to come, I hope you will be treated unfairly, so that you will come to know the value of justice. I hope that you will suffer betrayal because that will teach you the importance of loyalty. Sorry to say, but I hope you will be lonely from time to time so that you don’t take friends for granted. I wish you bad luck, again, from time to time so that you will be conscious of the role of chance in life and understand that your success is not completely deserved and that the failure of others is not completely deserved either. And when you lose, as you will from time to time, I hope every now and then, your opponent will gloat over your failure. It is a way for you to understand the importance of sportsmanship. I hope you’ll be ignored so you know the importance of listening to others, and I hope you will have just enough pain to learn compassion. Whether I wish these things or not, they’re going to happen. And whether you benefit from them or not will depend upon your ability to see the message in your misfortunes."
As we say goodbye to 2020 and embrace the 1st of 365 opportunities, 2021, the excerpt struck me as profound and really got me thinking. I absolutely love when Justice Roberts says, "Whether I wish these things or not, they’re going to happen. And whether you benefit from them or not will depend upon your ability to see the message in your misfortunes." I would respectfully recommend we say it this say: "Good and bad things are going to happen to all of us. Whether we benefit from them or not will depend upon our ability to see the message in our journey."
This is my hope for all of us, that we would seek the messages in both our fortunes and misfortunes. That we would have a heart to continue to learn and grow as we strive to become all we were created to become. That we would remember that this life is about neither perfection nor complacency but rather about constant transformation. That we would not become overwhelmed by our situations or circumstances, be they good or bad, but rather we would look at each new day, each new opportunity, as a chance to become a little bit better than we were the day before.
And another spin on Justice Roberts eloquent words, whether we choose to learn and grow each day, God willing the day will come and go. Each of us will then be left with what we chose to do with that day. Today, as I type this message, each one of us has 365 opportunities to get better or worse. I hope and pray each one of us will seize each opportunity.
Please don't hesitate to contact me if there is ever anything I can do for you or your precious family. I will always help you any way I can. You can reach me at kevin@whatwillyourinfluencebe.com.
Happy New Year, Friends! Have a great day, a wonderful weekend, please cherish your precious families and please stay well!
Kev
No comments:
Post a Comment