“If thou follow thy star, thou canst not fail of glorious heaven” (Dante Alighieri).

EACH OF US HAS A “DESTINY” IN THIS WORLD — MAYBE YOU’D LIKE TO CALL IT A “DESTINATION” — THAT IS UNIQUE TO US. Although as human beings we have a good many things in common, we also have some things that set us apart, and among the most important of these are our dreams and goals: the things we want to accomplish while we live. Leaving aside for the moment the question of our eternal destiny, let’s consider the value of seeing that we have (or at least that we can have) a destiny to move toward in this world.

To begin with, destiny doesn’t mean determinism. It doesn’t mean that what’s going to happen in our lives is inevitable or that any specific path is the only one we’re meant or allowed to take. No, in any realistic view of destiny, we see that both our destination and our path are matters of choice. Almost always, the abilities and opportunities that have been granted to a particular person can be used honorably in more than one way, and out of all the possible scenarios that would be right from a moral and ethical standpoint, we’re free to choose. Unfortunately, many people don’t choose. They just drift.

Let me put it this way: your destiny is the thing that will result if you use your life in the way that is best suited to the unique person that you are. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what our goals should be in that regard, and I agree with Jean de La Fontaine, who said, “A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.” But when a person finally does lock in on whatever is the best possible thing they can do to contribute to the world, the motivation that results from that is so powerful it feels like the force of an irresistible fate.

Our destiny, therefore, is determined by the ways in which we choose to think, day by day. Orison Swett Marden said it pointedly: “Our destiny changes with our thought; we shall become what we wish to become, do what we wish to do, when our habitual thought corresponds with our desire.” We can’t think one way and then somehow arrive at a completely different destination. So you need to be careful about your thinking, don’t you? If you keep on thinking as you have today, what kind of destiny is that going to lead you to?

“Destiny is simply the relentless logic of each day” (Jean Giraudoux).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

“Men, generally, going with the stream, seldom judge for themselves, and purity of taste is almost as rare as talent” (François Voltaire).

MENTION THE WORD “TASTE,” AND YOU’RE LIKELY TO GET AN ARGUMENT GOING. Some folks believe that “there’s no accounting for taste,” and that one person’s tastes are as valid as anyone else’s. Others go to the opposite extreme and assume their own tastes are the infallible standard by which everybody else’s ought to be judged. Extremes and confused notions aside, however, there is something to be said for the idea of “good taste.” There really is such a thing, and most of us would do well to learn a bit more about it.

“Taste” is the ability to discern what is excellent or appropriate and what is not. The fact that judgment has to be exercised doesn’t mean the process is meaningless, nor is the process nullified simply because people sometimes use poor judgment. Some things are important to attempt even though our attempts may be imperfect, and acquiring the habit of tastefulness is one of them. Distinguishing between the excellent and the inferior is a virtuous thing to try to do.

We owe it to ourselves to sharpen our taste and live life as tastefully as possible. Not many days go by that we don’t face some choices between the tasteful and the not-so-tasteful. Having a good conscience requires, in part, that we pursue what good taste would say is best.

But we also owe it to those around us to act tastefully. One part of taste is knowing what is seemly or least likely to give offense in social situations. Isn’t that a good thing to know? And if we avoided acting in bad taste around others, wouldn’t that be a good gift to give them?

While there is obviously a subjective element in the enjoyment of many things, concepts like “beauty” and “joy” aren’t totally subjective. We miss the best part of life when we fail to acquire a taste for that which is enduringly beautiful and everlastingly joyful. It’s one of life’s great challenges to learn to approve the things that are excellent, but when we rise to meet that challenge, we find that life has a depth and a richness we never knew before. And not only that, but when we live tastefully, our friends will enjoy being around us more too.

“Beautiful things, when taste is formed, are obviously and unaccountably beautiful” (George Santayana).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

“Each day provides its own gifts” (Martial).

LIVING WITH A SENSE OF “IMMEDIACY” MEANS THAT WE DEAL RIGHTLY WITH WHAT IS DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF US. If something is “immediate,” that means there is nothing between us and it. The present moment is immediate: there are no intervening moments that we have to live through to get to it. It is “right here, right now.” Consider the wisdom of gaining a measure of immediacy in our lives.

The value of immediacy. Doing right now the thing that is best suited to our immediate situation is the only way to taste the goodness of life in its fullness. As Martial reminds us, “Each day provides its own gifts.” Whatever tomorrow’s gifts may be, there is a span of time between us and those gifts. Today’s gifts have already arrived, however. They are immediate, and their goodness shouldn’t be despised.

The importance of immediacy. If we don’t use a particular moment to its best advantage, then we lose that moment, and it can never be gotten back. The present is a precious commodity; it’s all we have. And so to default, procrastinate, or otherwise throw away the immediate point in time is to throw away the only thing that truly belongs to us in life. “Remember,” wrote Marcus Aurelius, “that the sole life which a man can lose is that which he is living at the moment.”

The power of immediacy. Learning to live in the immediate moment is a powerful thing to do. If you’ve never tried it, you’d probably be amazed at the good momentum it can set in motion in your life. But not only that, it also increases our influence on others. The folks who have a positive impact on other people aren’t usually guilty of procrastination; they know that the time to act is now.

There are few resolutions we can make that will make any greater difference for good than resolving to live with a sense of immediacy. Enjoying each moment as it passes, doing each moment’s duty as it confronts us, and gaining the influence that comes from living immediately — these are things that we’d be foolish not to do. It’s worth the effort to deal promptly and thankfully with what is immediate, even when it’s difficult — and especially when it’s difficult.

“The difficult we do immediately. The impossible takes a little longer” (United States Army).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

“Countless times each day a mother does what no one else can do quite as well. She wipes away a tear, whispers a word of hope, eases a child’s fear. She teaches, ministers, loves, and nurtures the next generation of citizens” (James C. Dobson).

WHEN SOMEONE ENGAGES IN AN ACT THAT HAS A NURTURING EFFECT ON ANOTHER PERSON, ONE OF THE MOST WONDERFUL THINGS IN THE WORLD TAKES PLACE. Nurturing is wonderful both in its beauty and its benefit. It’s beautiful because it’s an act of grace, and it’s beneficial because it makes the difference between life and death. Nurturing is among the highest of human acts.

Although women often have a more natural aptitude for nurturing than men, nurturing is not just a female responsibility. Just as with other responsibilities, the responsibility to nurture is not limited to those who find it naturally easy. Whether we’re male or female, or young or old, we all have some duty in the matter of nurturing others.

“Nurture” comes from the same root as the words “nutrition” and “nourish.” In its most basic sense, it means to provide that which is needed for another person to survive and thrive. None of us is so independent that we can do without sustenance from anyone else. People need to be nurtured — and they need to nurture one another.

But like people, relationships also need to be nurtured. You can’t nurture a relationship, of course, without nurturing the people who are in it, but it’s helpful to think of relationships themselves as “persons” who need to be taken care of and given the proper nutrition.

Too much of the time, we’re interested in whether others are nurturing us and not in whether we’re nurturing them. The quality of our lives would be improved if we reversed this emphasis and started being more concerned about nurturing those around us. Being a nurturer — or at least being a good one — requires work. To provide the things that others need, we have to grow. We have to equip ourselves with the abilities that are necessary to nurture and to nourish. But if this work is important, it’s also satisfying. Indeed, there aren’t many things in this world more nourishing than to nourish someone else.

“Just as we are learning to value and conserve the air we breathe, the water we drink, the energy we use, we must learn to value and conserve our capacity for nurture. Otherwise, in the name of human potential we will slowly but surely erode the source of our humanity” (Elaine Heffner).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

“It is your concern when your neighbor’s wall is on fire” (Horace).

OFTEN, WE HAVE A DANGEROUSLY NAIVE CONCEPT OF WHAT IT IS THAT WE NEED TO BE CONCERNED ABOUT. When it comes to the truly big issues of life, we can be shockingly unconcerned, and at the same time, we can be enormously concerned about things that are little more than trivia. In general, of course, we tend to be too self-centered in our concerns, but even there, we can be naive. We often fail to see how we hurt ourselves in the long run by being so unconcerned about our fellow human beings in the short run. As Horace said, “It is your concern when your neighbor’s wall is on fire.”

What would be a fair measure of how concerned we are about a particular thing? Well, many people judge the level of their concern by their thoughts. That is, they believe they are concerned about a thing if they think about it a lot, or even if they intend to think about it a lot at some point in the future. But the genuineness and greatness of our concerns aren’t measured by emotional intensity alone, although that’s a part of it. It’s measured also by action. The things we’re concerned about are the things we’re doing something about.

So, in a sense, we need to give more consideration to our actions than to our thoughts. It is true that our actions grow out of our thoughts, and in that sense, we need to be primarily concerned with our ideas and principles. But having striven to have right thoughts, we must then be even more concerned to carry out those thoughts in right actions. Planning is crucially important, as all wise people know, but for every person who fails for lack of planning, many more fail for lack of execution. For that reason, then, we need to give a greater share of our concern to the actual, day-to-day conduct of life. “Conduct is three-fourths of our life and its largest concern” (Matthew Arnold).

We rarely, if ever, honor our friends and family any more than when we show concern for them. And although concern is a gift of great value, it’s a gift that all of us can give, whether we’re rich or poor. It would be good if we gave it more often — with less worry about what we have to do and more interest in what is good to do.

“Grace refuses to put a ceiling or a floor on concern for the neighbor” (Joseph Fletcher).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

“No virtue can be great if it is not constant” (Alfonso Milagro).

IN A WORLD WHERE THE PACE OF CULTURAL CHANGE IS QUICKENING, WE SHOULD MAKE SURE THAT OUR CHARACTER AND OUR COMMITMENTS DON’T CHANGE AS OFTEN AS OUR OUTWARD CONDITIONS DO. Whatever virtues we may possess today, these will be of little value in the long run if they don’t remain constant.

Constancy is a truly amazing gift when it’s given to others. Until you try it, you may not believe the difference it will make when you let those around you know that, from now on, they can count on you. No matter what the relationships may be, when those who have to deal with you find out they no longer have to guess what you’re going to do, there will quickly be a change for the better in those relationships. When (a) your character is constant, (b) your commitments are kept, and (c) your actions are “count-on-able,” you will start getting thank-yous from people who appreciate what you’ve given them.

John Calvin said, “The word ‘hope’ I take for faith; and indeed hope is nothing else but the constancy of faith.” It may be that this statement sums up the major challenge before us these days: to maintain the constancy of faith, that is, to hold on to the things that we believe in, based on trustworthy evidence, when the momentary appearance of things seems to call our confidence into question.

There is one kind of constancy that may seem to be inconstant, and that is the constancy of growth. If we’re true to our principles, constancy may sometimes require changes that have the appearance of inconsistency. But there is no better constancy than holding fast to conscience — making whatever changes are necessary as our conscience gets a better grip on the reality of right and wrong.

Perhaps above all, though, we need the constancy of love. Most of us are at least a bit moody, and even if we’re not moody, we’re subject to the pressures of our changing circumstances. Can’t we make it a point of honor to be constant in our love for those who have a right to expect love from us? Try giving that gift and see what happens!

“There are two sorts of constancy in love: the one comes from the constant discovery in our beloved of new grounds for love, and the other comes from making it a point of honor to be constant” (François de la Rochefoucauld).

Gary Henry – WordPoint.com

     

“The great gift of family life is to be intimately acquainted with people you might never even introduce yourself to, had life not done it for you” (Kendall Hailey).

INTIMACY IS THE ACT OF TWO PEOPLE MAKING THEMSELVES KNOWN TO ONE ANOTHER IN A VERY DEEP WAY. Sexual intimacy immediately comes to mind, of course, and there is certainly a sense in which that kind of intimacy involves the deepest knowing that is possible between two human beings. But there are other kinds of intimacy that are hardly less important. As Kendall Hailey humorously suggests, there is even an intimacy among extended family members that we should learn to be thankful for.

It’s sad to contemplate the fact that some people never allow themselves to be known intimately by anybody. Even those who are married sometimes fail to make themselves known — genuinely, honestly, and deeply — to their spouses. Rollo May said, “Intimacy requires courage because risk is inescapable. We cannot know at the outset how the relationship will affect us.” Yet if it is fear that keeps us from the generous joys of intimacy, we need to overcome that fear.

Perhaps it should go without saying, but we’ll say it anyway: we should not be intimate with just anybody and everybody. Historically, the major codes of morality in the world have always indicated that our sexual intimacy should be limited to one person. But even with the intimacy of close friendship, we shouldn’t give that private gift to any but a few, and those few should be chosen with great wisdom.

A healthy human life requires some intimacy and also some aloneness. Depending on our personalities, some of us need more of one than the other, but to some extent we all need a balance between making our personal selves known to others and keeping some distance between ourselves and others. On some other day, you may need a reminder of the healthfulness of independence, but today, let’s be reminded of the goodness of intimacy. Though it requires a courage that sometimes seems beyond us, intimacy — with a few individuals, carefully chosen — is one of life’s great privileges. Don’t miss it.

“Our daily existence requires both closeness and distance, the wholeness of self, the wholeness of intimacy” (Judith Viorst).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

“The fundamental idea of good is thus: that it consists in preserving life, in favoring it, in wanting to bring it to its highest value; and evil consists in destroying life, doing it injury, hindering its development” (Albert Schweitzer).

AS WE LIVE AND WORK FROM DAY TO DAY, THE RESULT OF OUR ACTIVITY OUGHT TO BE THE PRESERVATION, OR SAVING, OF SOME THINGS WORTHY OF BEING SAVED. We don’t always think clearly about what is worth preserving, and our efforts at preservation aren’t always successful, but it would be sad if none of us could say, at the end of our lives, that there was any good thing that we had preserved.

Few of the good things in the world can remain unless somebody expends some effort to preserve them, so when we lend our energies to the work of preservation, we’re doing worthy work. “To preserve and renew is almost as noble as to create,” said Voltaire.

Life is full of change, of course, and never more so than nowadays. There are times when things need to be replaced, removed, or gotten rid of. But the purpose of these changes is not merely negative. Ideally, we set aside some things in order to have better things which can be preserved. Thomas Babington was correct when he said, “Reform, that you may preserve.” Reformation and preservation don’t have to be enemies; they can be allies.

Specifically what it is that we preserve depends, of course, on our values, so there is much to be said for refining and improving our values. Most of us know what it’s like to look back and contemplate things we discarded in the past that should have been preserved. So we’re wise if we work on improving our powers of judgment and discrimination. We should want to be, in the well-known words of Abraham Lincoln, “honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve.”

Are you a “preservationist”? Are there any good things that, by your help, are being saved from destruction? If not, there may be some little deeds you could start doing right now that would help preserve the most important thing of all: the hearts of your fellow human beings. You have it in your power to help hold back the ruinous forces that your friends and family members are struggling against. So do it.

“Life is made up, not of great sacrifices or duties, but of little things, in which smiles and kindness and small obligations win and preserve the heart” (Humphry Davy).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

“I know what I like” (Henry James).

OUR “FAVORITES” ARE THE THINGS, THE OCCASIONS, AND THE PEOPLE WHOM WE REGARD WITH SPECIAL FAVOR. Like Henry James, most of us know what we like, and our favorites are the things we like especially well. To have favorites is simply to have, as Henry David Thoreau put it, “a sincere love for some things.”

The amazing variety that characterizes the human race is due, in part, to the fact that we each have a unique set of favorites. “There are,” as Horace wrote, “as many preferences as there are men.” Our likes and dislikes may overlap with those of our closest friends to some extent, but no two of us have exactly the same set of favorites. And that’s good. It would be a much less interesting world if we all regarded everything in life with exactly the same degree of favor.

It seems to me that we should take the time to consciously appreciate our favorite things more often. If there is something that delights me in a special way, I ought to relish that thing and savor its enjoyment intentionally. And if there is something that uniquely pleases you, you ought to drink its enjoyment down to the last drop. It does us a down-home kind of good to have familiar, favorite things — and it does us even more good to appreciate them mindfully.

Nowadays, we hear a lot about “equality,” and that may cause us to feel a little uncomfortable with the concept of favoritism. But having favorites is not unjust, and it’s no infringement on equality. It’s naive to think that we can like everybody and everything without showing any partiality at all. In fact, if we tried to do that, it would take much of the value out of bestowing favor on anything. As Moliére wrote, “Esteem must be founded on some sort of preference. Bestow it on everybody and it ceases to have any meaning at all.”

What would be wrong, of course, would be to limit ourselves to our favorites. Having favorites is fine, but we need to deal rightly with things (and especially people) that we don’t like as well. And not only that, we need to be willing to experiment. Who knows? There may be some really good things out there that could become favorites if we ever got outside of our preferences and gave them a chance.

“Let us prefer, let us not exclude” (Joseph Roux).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

“One of the final challenges for human beings is to get old with as much verve and gumption as possible. Old parents who keep on being interested in life give a subtle kind of sustenance to their children; they are givers of hope and affirmers of life” (Alison Judson Ryerson).

VERVE AND GUMPTION. How much of these are you going to have left by the time you get old, if you haven’t already gotten there? Do you have any verve and gumption right now? These may not be life’s most important character qualities, but they’re valuable in their proper place and we should appreciate them for what they are.

Verve is a colorful word. Its sound almost gives away its meaning: the expression of one’s ideas with energy and enthusiasm. Think of old Red Skelton, for example. He never said anything profoundly new or radically unique, but whatever he said, he said with verve. And as a result, people listened — with engagement, interest, and delight.

If you and I don’t have much verve anymore (as we naturally did when we were children), it’s worth wondering why. We might blame it on circumstances that have beaten us down and sapped our energy. But real verve doesn’t come from being surrounded by fortunate circumstances; it comes from giving ourselves enthusiastically to the tasks that are ours to take care of. “Satisfaction,” wrote Nikolai Berdyaev, “is felt not by those who take and make demands but by those who give and make sacrifices. In them alone the energy of life does not fail.”

People who live their lives and do their work with verve tend to have a more powerful impact for good on the lives of others. So we’d probably give our friends and family a gift worth giving if we started expressing ourselves with a bit more energy and enthusiasm.

On the other hand, few things in life are sadder than to see someone who no longer has any verve left. “The worst bankrupt in the world is the man who has lost his enthusiasm” (H. W. Arnold).

Some of the things we need to do in life aren’t very effective if they’re not done with verve (such as saying “thank you” or “I love you”). Too many of us fall below the level of effectiveness because our words and deeds are little more than lukewarm. Wouldn’t it be better, really, if we decided to do life’s good things with a little more zip?

“It don’t mean a thing, if it ain’t got that swing” (Ella Fitzgerald).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com