Isn't it incredible how the arrangements of a few well chosen words can make an almighty difference to things?
I'm always in awe, often speechless, when I come across a stonking new quotation or axiom. I can feel physically moved. For me it is the precision with which the meaning it wishes to convey is built. A set of 'mere' words - their juxtaposition and meaning so carefully studied, then distilled so as to be at their most potent. To make my point I could simply say – "Less is more."
Those of you who know me well will have seen me Facebook thousands of quotes and ideas in words that I gather from around the place. I always try to credit them if they are from others but I haven't here for simplicity and flow. They most certainly keep me going.
And so it began. Now it is possible to sum the important phases of my life up in a few short phrases.
Well the first one that stuck with me, and I don't know why it is so relevant, was - "Marry in haste, repent at leisure." I will work out one day why that one was so memorable.
Then I grew up and became more committed to actually doing something of value in the world. I started reading and practicing the art of creativity and real change. I merged these two forces together and realised that creativity and change comes down to us. It is our own energy and consciousness that will ever make anything happen.
The following quotation literally shocked me into action.
"In the future there are three kinds of people. Those who let it happen, those who make it happen and those who wonder what happened."
This wonderful epithet has been a friend to me for years. In the pantheon of incredibly powerful written ideas it sits at the very summit right along with one other told to me by a dear friend who reminded me at a pivotal point -
"Life is not a dress rehearsal!"
These six words moved me so much that they forced me to change literally everything in my life at the time. I sure pissed a lot of people off. My career, my family and my entire attitude to life. Changed forever. I will never forget him telling me that and I can picture the very place. I became rooted to the spot with the profundity of it. He asked me if I was alright as he smiled knowing the power he had sent in my direction.
Along with a thousand others I could pick to get us up to date – the following duo set my sails more firmly in the direction I am now in.
"If you don't know where you are going, every road will take you there." - inextricably coupled with a subtle but vital variation on the one above - "It is the learners who will inherit the future. The learned find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists."
I'm sure you have your own and I would love to hear them!
I will leave you with one I created to live my current era on and one that sums up the huge optimism and frustration I have that drives me every day. "Let's avoid solving the wrong problem really well…" As I look around the world and at virtually every system and also sitting, as I am now 39,000 feet in the air, experiencing the crazy conditions we now live our lives within, this works for me at every level.
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