When humility delivers you from attachment to your own works and reputation, you discover that perfect joy is possible  when you have completely forgotten yourself.

And it is when you pay no more attention to your own deeds and your own reputation that you are completely free.

Thomas Merton

“It’s supposed to be hard.

If it wasn’t hard, everybody would do it.

The hard is what makes it great.”

Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks), A League of Their Own

The transition from tenseness, self-responsibility, and worry, to equanimity, receptivity, and peace, is the most wonderful of all those shiftings of inner  equilibrium, those changes of the personal centre of energy … and the chief wonder of it is that it so often comes about not by doing but simply by relaxing and throwing the burden  down.

William James, The  Varieties of Religious Experience

In the summer of 1922 a Paris newspaper asked its readers to comment on the following hypothetical:

An American scientist announces the world will soon end. What do you think will be the effect on people when they hear the news.

First Celebrity: “The masses will be driven into church or into the bedroom.”

Second Celebrity: “People will shed all inhibitions as their actions will cease to carry long term consequences.”

Marcel Proust:

Life will suddenly seem wonderful to us if we are threatened to die. Just think how many projects, travels, love affairs, and  studies our life hides from us because they are made invisible by our laziness which, certain of a future, delays them unnecessary.

But if all this threatened to become impossible forever, how beautiful life will become again.

In our normal life negligence deadens desire. Yet we should not need a cataclysm to live life today.

Alan De Bottoms, How Proust Can Change Your Life.

Ask not what your country can do for you-

Ask what you can do for your country.

John F. Kennedy  

A way of life that keeps saying, around the next corner, above the next step, works against the natural order of things and makes it difficult to be happy.

If you want to be happy, begin by being appreciative of who you are and what you’ve got.

In life we should strive for balance.

By balance I don’t mean the kind of stability we associate with movement.

The kind of balance we need to develop is a balance of mind, body and emotion.

It is impossible to rise to our highest level if we are out of balance in any area.

George Knutson, The Natural Golf Swing

It is not often that we succeed in life when we let our feelings get the best of us: anger, irritation, disgust, or any uncontrolled emotion, leads to a blindness. The more we yield to it the more we are at the mercy of the situation. If we cannot control ourself we will not properly respond to the situation.

Life in this sense is a test of character, and beyond doubt good and bad in our character will be revealed. But there is always opportunity to improve. Our conduct in life should be our first consideration when we sum up our life.

Some associate success in life with material accomplishment and see success without considering what really matters. Our friends do not judge us by material accomplishment. To our friends and family the most important aspect of our life is the spirit that prevails throughout our life.

From James Zug, History of Squash, discussing philosophy of Harry Cowles Harvard Squash Coach in 1920s (edited by PAT)

Benjamin Hoff in his excellent book “The Tao Of Pooh” reminds us of the story of the Ugly Duckling. The Ugly Duckling stopped feeling ugly when he released who he is-a swan. Hofff says:

Each of us has something Special…hidden inside somewhere.

But until we recognize that it’s there, what can we do but splash around, treading water?

The Wise are Who They Are.

They work with what they’ve got and what they can do.

The first thing we need to do is recognize our own Inner Nature, and not lose sight of it.

In each of us is something Special, and that we need to keep.

Id. at 64-65.

Recently, I saw the following quote in the sports page of the LA Times discussing Daniel Guerrero UCLA Athletic Director : “If you coach for Guerrero, statistics won’t save you. Cheers won’t help you. It’s all about fitting into his carefully constructed culture of competitiveness. Do you play hard? Do you play smart? Do you play clean? Do you play to the end?”

This quote demonstrates why the means is what matters and the end takes care of itself. Each moment if we dedicate all of our energy to our present endeavor, mentally focused on our task, taking no shortcuts, and continuing to completion, we pursue excellence.

The end we do not control. The means we do control.