Positive ideas
This “Positive Ideas” news letter goes out once a week or so
to about 750 friends and colleagues around the USA and in various locations overseas.
Tom O’Connor
The Tom O’Connor Group, LLC
Economic and Management Consultants
A Veteran-Owned Company
Tom
571 332 2349
781 626 6667 international
www.TomOConnorGroup.com
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Security does not exist in nature nor do the children of man as a whole experience it.
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure to danger.
Life is either a daring adventure, or it is nothing.
~Helen Keller …with a few edits
“When you’re in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it.
That factor is attitude.”
~ Timothy Bentley
An excerpt from
To a Child, Love is Spelled T-I-M-E
by Mac Anderson
In the faint light of the attic, an old man, tall and stooped, bent his great frame and made his way to a stack of boxes that sat near one of the little half-windows. Brushing aside a wisp of cobwebs, he tilted the top box toward the light and began to carefully lift out one old photograph album after another. Eyes once bright but now dim searched longingly for the source that had drawn him here.
It began with the fond recollection of the love of his life, long gone, and somewhere in these albums was a photo of her he hoped to rediscover. Silent as a mouse, he patiently opened the long buried treasures and soon was lost in a sea of memories. Although his world had not stopped spinning when his wife left it, the past was more alive in his heart than his present aloneness.
Setting aside one of the dusty albums, he pulled from the box what appeared to be a journal from his grown son’s childhood. He could not recall ever having seen it before, or that his son had ever kept a journal. Why did Elizabeth always save the children’s old junk? he wondered, shaking his white head.
Opening the yellowed pages, he glanced over a short reading, and his lips curved in an unconscious smile. Even his eyes brightened as he read the words that spoke clear and sweet to his soul. It was the voice of the little boy who had grown up far too fast in this very house, and whose voice had grown fainter and fainter over the years. In the utter silence of the attic, the words of a guileless six-year-old worked their magic and carried the old man back to a time almost totally forgotten.
Entry after entry stirred a sentimental hunger in his heart like the longing a gardener feels in the winter for the fragrance of spring flowers. But it was accompanied by the painful memory that his son’s simple recollections of those days were far different from his own. But how different?
Reminded that he had kept a daily journal of his business activities over the years, he closed his son’s journal and turned to leave, having forgotten the cherished photo that originally triggered his search. Hunched over to keep from bumping his head on the rafters, the old man stepped to the wooden stairway and made his descent, then headed down a carpeted stairway that led to the den.
Opening a glass cabinet door, he reached in and pulled out an old business journal. Turning, he sat down at his desk and placed the two journals beside each other. His was leather-bound and engraved neatly with his name in gold, while his son’s was tattered and the name Jimmy had been nearly scuffed from its surface. He ran his finger over the letters, as though he could restore what had been worn away with time and use.
As he opened his journal, the old man’s eyes fell upon an inscription that stood out because it was so brief in comparison to other days. In his own neat handwriting were these words:
Spent the whole day fishing with Jimmy. Didn’t catch a thing.
With a deep sigh and a shaking hand, he took Jimmy’s journal and found the boy’s entry for the same day, June 4. Large scrawling letters, pressed deeply into the paper, read:
Went fishing with my Dad. Best day ever.
…with a few edits
I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.”
– Abraham Lincoln
“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”
– Wayne Gretzky
“Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike.”
– Theodore Roosevelt
“I studied the lives of great men and famous women, and I found that the men and women who got to the top were those who did the jobs they had in hand, with everything they had of energy and enthusiasm.” – Harry Truman
“Nothing can stop the person with the right mental attitude from achieving the goal; nothing on earth can help the person with the wrong mental attitude.” – Thomas Jefferson
“A Dictionary is the only place where success comes before work. Hard work is the price we must pay for success. I think you can accomplish anything if you’re willing to pay that price.”
– Vince Lombardi
____________________________________________________________________
Thanks for the good you are doing today
and the prayers you are saying today,
Particularly the prayers for those
Going in harm’s way on your behalf.
Move forward …resolute and confident.
Tom O’Connor
At a Rain forest in Costa Rica
Thanks, Tom O’Connor
The Tom O’Connor Group
Economic and Management Consultants
A Veteran-Owned Company
Tom
571 332 2349
781 626 6667 international
www.TomOConnorGroup.com
Tom O’Connor
skmoltom1@aol.com
- Posted in: General