"My most favourite lines in Shakespeare are spoken by Polonius to his son, Laertes, in Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3, Lines 78-82:
'This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell, my blessing season this in thee!'
There is a greeting in the land of my birth which every Irish person knows from childhood and practises on home ground until the day they die. Upon passing someone in the street who any Irish person knows, they are greeted with the words, 'Good morning, it's yourself!' When I first heard this greeting as a child, at first I thought, 'Of course it is!' before it eventually dawned on me many years later, that it served a dual purpose. I learned that it was a way of daily greeting as well as paying the other person the finest of compliments.
Ask any person what it is they like most about their best friend and as they reel off their better qualities, high on their list will be that of 'genuineness' and 'authenticity.' It is no great surprise therefore, that one of our most common sayings is, 'I am what you see and what you see is what you get.' Indeed, one of the most popular television advertisements of the past ten years is the one with greatest appeal that says, 'It does what it says on the tin!'
Likewise, some special places are no different. There is a natural rock formation in Iceland, which upon seeing for the first time, a child could accurately guess its name and a person suffering from dementia could easily remember what it's called. It is called 'Elephant Rock.' Once seen, like its namesake, it is never forgotten!
So why not try to be an 'Elephant Rock' in the lives of all your family, neighbours and friends, just by being the good person you naturally are? It's one sure way of being remembered years after you have occupied the other side of the green sod; one certain way of becoming an everlasting landmark in the lives and recall of others, never to be forgotten." William Forde: August 20th, 2016.