By Fareeha Qay­oom

 

don’t know why – but I kept remem­ber­ing this story (like a line from a for­got­ten song) that I thought I had read in the book called “Chicken Soup for the Soul” by Jack Can­field and Mark Hansen  ages ago. It goes some­thing like this – there’s this guy relax­ing and fish­ing qui­etly by this quiet beach – a guy comes up to him and gives him this grandiose sce­nario where he would have to work very hard and long, achieve much, become rich, blah, blah, blah – so this guy goes, well, what comes after that? Well, you could relax on some beach and fish – this guy is hardly impressed. “What do you think I am doing right now?  I don’t have to go through all that has­sle to get to this point. I am already on some beach fish­ing!”  Any­way, I went look­ing for this story in my copy of Chicken Soup (the orig­i­nal one) on my com­puter – for some weird rea­son I didn’t find the one I was look­ing for but I found a few that I didn’t mind read­ing again….Here they are:

 

Excerpts from Chicken Soup for the Soul -

 

All I Ever Really Needed To Know I Learned In Kinder­garten

Most of what I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be, I learned in kinder­garten. Wis­dom was not at the top of the grad­u­ate moun­tain, but there in the sand­box at nurs­ery school.

 

These are the things I learned: Share every­thing. Play fair. Don’t hit peo­ple. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don’t take things that aren’t yours. Say you’re sorry when you hurt some­body. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush. Warm cook­ies and cold milk are good for you. Live a bal­anced life. Learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.

 

Take a nap every after­noon. When you go out into the world, watch for traf­fic, hold hands and stick together. Be aware of won­der. Remem­ber the lit­tle seed in the plas­tic cup. The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.

 

Gold­fish and ham­sters and white mice and even the lit­tle seed in the plas­tic cup — they all die. So do we.

And then remem­ber the book about Dick and Jane and the first word you learned, the biggest word of all: LOOK. Every­thing you need to know is in there some­where. The Golden Rule and love and basic san­i­ta­tion. Ecol­ogy and pol­i­tics and sane liv­ing.

 

Think of what a bet­ter world it would be if we all — the whole world — had cook­ies and milk about 3 o’clock every after­noon and then lay down with our blan­kets for a nap. Or if we had a basic pol­icy in our nations to always put things back where we found them and clean up our own messes. And it is still true, no mat­ter how old you are, when you go out into the world, it is bet­ter to hold hands and stick together.

 

Robert Ful­ghum

 

***

Photo by cog­dog­blog

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chil­dren Learn What They Live

If chil­dren live with crit­i­cism, they learn to con­demn.

If chil­dren live with hos­til­ity, they learn to fight.

If chil­dren live with fear, they learn to be appre­hen­sive.

If chil­dren live with pity, they learn to feel sorry for them­selves.

If chil­dren live with ridicule, they learn to be shy.

If chil­dren live with jeal­ousy, they learn what envy is.

If chil­dren live with shame, they learn to feel guilty.

If chil­dren live with tol­er­ance, they learn to be patient.

If chil­dren live with encour­age­ment, they learn to be con­fi­dent.

If chil­dren live with praise, they learn to appre­ci­ate.

If chil­dren live with approval, they learn to like them­selves.

If chil­dren live with accep­tance, they learn to find love in the world.

If chil­dren live with recog­ni­tion, they learn to have a goal.

If chil­dren live with shar­ing, they learn to be gen­er­ous.

If chil­dren live with hon­esty and fair­ness, they learn what truth and jus­tice are.

If chil­dren live with secu­rity, they learn to have faith in them­selves and in those around them.

If chil­dren live with friend­li­ness, they learn that the world is a nice place in which to live.

If chil­dren live with seren­ity, they learn to have peace of mind.

With what are your chil­dren liv­ing?

 

Dorothy L Nolte

 

***

 

Obsta­cles

 

We who lived in the con­cen­tra­tion camps can remem­ber the men who walked through the huts com­fort­ing oth­ers, giv­ing away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in num­ber, but they offer suf­fi­cient proof that every­thing can be taken from a man but one thing: The last of his free­doms — to choose one’s atti­tude in any given set of cir­cum­stances, to choose one’s own way.

 

Vik­tor E. Frankl Man’s Search for Mean­ing

 

***

 
Photo by john­williamsphd

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And finally my real favorite – on the sub­tle art of pro­cras­ti­na­tion!

 

For Me To Be More Cre­ative, I Am Wait­ing For…

 

1. Inspi­ra­tion

2. Per­mis­sion

3. Reas­sur­ance

4. The cof­fee to be ready

5. My turn

6. Some­one to smooth the way

7. The rest of the rules

8. Some­one to change

9. Wider fair­ways

10. Revenge

11. The stakes to be lower

12. More time

13. A sig­nif­i­cant rela­tion­ship to:

(i) Improve

(ii) Ter­mi­nate

(iii) Hap­pen

14. The right per­son

15. A dis­as­ter

16. Time to almost run out

17. An obvi­ous scape­goat

18. The kids to leave home

19. A Dow-Jones of 1500

20. The Lion to lie down with the Lamb

21. Mutual con­sent

22. A bet­ter time

23. A more favor­able horo­scope

24. My youth to return

25. The two-minute warn­ing

26. The legal pro­fes­sion to reform

27. Richard Nixon to be re-elected

28. Age to grant me the right of eccen­tric­ity

29. Tomor­row

30. Jacks or bet­ter

31. My annual checkup

32. A bet­ter cir­cle of friends

33. The stakes to be higher

34. The semes­ter to start

35. My way to be clear

36. The cat to stop claw­ing the sofa

37. An absence of risk

38. The bark­ing dog next door to leave town

39. My uncle to come home from the ser­vice

40. Some­one to dis­cover me

41. More ade­quate safe­guards

42. A lower cap­i­tal gains rate

43. The statute of lim­i­ta­tions to run out

44. My par­ents to die (Joke!)

45. A cure for herpes/AIDS

46. The things that I do not under­stand or approve of to go away

47. Wars to end

48. My love to rekin­dle

49. Some­one to be watch­ing

50. A clearly writ­ten set of instruc­tions

51. Bet­ter birth con­trol

52. The ERA to pass

53. An end to poverty, injus­tice, cru­elty, deceit, incom­pe­tence, pesti­lence, crime and offen­sive sug­ges­tions

54. A com­pet­ing patent to expire

55. Chicken Lit­tle to return

56. My sub­or­di­nates to mature

57. My ego to improve

58. The pot to boil

59. My new credit card

60. The piano tuner

61. This meet­ing to be over

62. My receiv­ables to clear

63. The unem­ploy­ment checks to run out

64. Spring

65. My suit to come back from the clean­ers

66. My self-esteem to be restored

67. A sig­nal from Heaven

68. The alimony pay­ments to stop

69. The gems of bril­liance buried within my first bum­bling efforts to be rec­og­nized, applauded and sub­stan­tially rewarded so that I can work on the sec­ond draft in com­fort

70. A rein­ter­pre­ta­tion of Robert’s Rules of Order

71. Var­i­ous aches and pains to sub­side

72. Shorter lines at the bank

73. The wind to freshen

74. My chil­dren to be thought­ful, neat, obe­di­ent and self-supporting

75. Next sea­son

76. Some­one else to screw up

77. My cur­rent life to be declared a dress rehearsal with some script changes per­mit­ted before open­ing night

78. Logic to pre­vail

79. The next time around

80. You to stand out of my light

81. My ship to come in

82. A bet­ter deodor­ant

83. My dis­ser­ta­tion to be fin­ished

84. A sharp pen­cil

85. The check to clear

86. My wife, film or boomerang to come back

87. My doctor’s approval, my father’s per­mis­sion, my minister’s bless­ing or my lawyer’s okay

88. Morn­ing

89. Cal­i­for­nia to fall into the ocean

90. A less tur­bu­lent time

91. The Ice­man to Cometh

92. An oppor­tu­nity to call col­lect

93. A bet­ter write-off

94. My smok­ing urges to sub­side

95. The rates to go down

96. The rates to go up

97. The rates to sta­bi­lize

98. My grandfather’s estate to be set­tled

99. Week­end rates

100. A cue card

101. You to go first

 

David B. Camp­bell

 

***

 

As for the story, not sure where I read it, maybe, it was “Heart at work,” by Jack Can­field and Jacque­line Miller or maybe it was the “Chicken soup for the soul at work” by Jack Can­field et al. Any­way, that’s a project for another weekend…in the mean­time, I have bunch of stuff to do and all I really want to do is curl up some­where and just nap…know what I mean?

 

 

 

Books: Chicken Soup for the Soul revis­ited, 9.0 out of 10 based on 1 rat­ing