Thought for today:
'Whatever our abilities, whatever our experiences, the very best that any of us can achieve in this life can be summed up thus: 'start where you are, use what you have and do what you can!'
For our start in life, we have our God and parents for bringing us into this beautiful world. Hence our mainspring for the development of our character comes from our values and our earliest experiences. When we are a happy person, it is not unusual for either God or our parents to remain cornerstones to anything we build in our lives. They are repeatedly erected in all we think, feel and do throughout our day. They speak to us again and again in our daily tasks, through the way we do them, the motive behind our efforts and our degree of satisfaction in their accomplishment. Never a day or night goes by when neither whispers in my ear to guide me. Believe me when I tell you that not only is every person's dream valid; they are the touchstone of one's character. In the immortal words of William Shakespeare, 'We are such stuff that dreams are made of.'
As we grow from childhood to adolescence, through to adulthood and old age, our dreams become buckets of hope in our list of earthly aspirations; to do well at school, get a good job, find an ideal marriage partner who becomes our lifelong soul mate, and for some of us, to parent children. Chief among such aspirations for most of us will invariably be to find an ideal partner and lifelong soul mate. I would like to say that such a lucky prize will fall into our laps through fate alone, but I suspect that destiny finds its way to one's door with some guidance and a push along its journey!
As a child, I would have the most vivid of dreams in technicolour. My dreams were adventurous in my early childhood, mischievous by the time I'd reached twelve years of age and increasingly romantic throughout my mid-teens. By the age of twenty-one, nothing less than wicked could accurately describe them!
My mother used to tell me, 'Billy, your dreams are only thoughts you didn't have time to think about during the day. They are things you might have wanted to do but didn't. Always follow your dream.'
In a way, I always followed my mother's advice, whether knowingly or unknowingly. I have always believed that dreams are made to be lived. I have always believed that the future belongs to those who possess the courage to pursue their dreams. As I age and see more and more unhappy people occupy human space on our planet, I can see that the unhappy person is often the person who allowed regret to take the place of their dreams. I do genuinely believe that when we remain true to the dreams of our youth, we grow old gracefully and gladly.
My sincere advice, therefore, is to always to follow your dream, for your dreams can show you the way to achieving your inner desires. They can enable you to live in a world where future and dreams meet to form the reality of precious moments.
Returning to our greatest dream of meeting true love and accompanying it into our old age, it is wise to remember that a dream alone often remains but a dream, whereas a dream you dream together with your soul mate becomes reality.
Love is our one true destiny and our one eternal pleasure. It is greatly lessened when it is not shared, was never shared or can no longer be shared with a soul mate. I long ago learned that we do not discover the meaning to life alone: we need others to relate to, to bounce off, with whom to communicate and share, a significant other half who is there to add sense and purpose to our very existence.
Just as life and God, life and Nature, life with family and friends, and life and other human contact are indivisible, so is life and close love with a significant other. Once we find our soul mate, once we find love in each other's arms, there is no further need to dream as you are the very dream you live." William Forde: November 7th, 2017.
'Whatever our abilities, whatever our experiences, the very best that any of us can achieve in this life can be summed up thus: 'start where you are, use what you have and do what you can!'
For our start in life, we have our God and parents for bringing us into this beautiful world. Hence our mainspring for the development of our character comes from our values and our earliest experiences. When we are a happy person, it is not unusual for either God or our parents to remain cornerstones to anything we build in our lives. They are repeatedly erected in all we think, feel and do throughout our day. They speak to us again and again in our daily tasks, through the way we do them, the motive behind our efforts and our degree of satisfaction in their accomplishment. Never a day or night goes by when neither whispers in my ear to guide me. Believe me when I tell you that not only is every person's dream valid; they are the touchstone of one's character. In the immortal words of William Shakespeare, 'We are such stuff that dreams are made of.'
As we grow from childhood to adolescence, through to adulthood and old age, our dreams become buckets of hope in our list of earthly aspirations; to do well at school, get a good job, find an ideal marriage partner who becomes our lifelong soul mate, and for some of us, to parent children. Chief among such aspirations for most of us will invariably be to find an ideal partner and lifelong soul mate. I would like to say that such a lucky prize will fall into our laps through fate alone, but I suspect that destiny finds its way to one's door with some guidance and a push along its journey!
As a child, I would have the most vivid of dreams in technicolour. My dreams were adventurous in my early childhood, mischievous by the time I'd reached twelve years of age and increasingly romantic throughout my mid-teens. By the age of twenty-one, nothing less than wicked could accurately describe them!
My mother used to tell me, 'Billy, your dreams are only thoughts you didn't have time to think about during the day. They are things you might have wanted to do but didn't. Always follow your dream.'
In a way, I always followed my mother's advice, whether knowingly or unknowingly. I have always believed that dreams are made to be lived. I have always believed that the future belongs to those who possess the courage to pursue their dreams. As I age and see more and more unhappy people occupy human space on our planet, I can see that the unhappy person is often the person who allowed regret to take the place of their dreams. I do genuinely believe that when we remain true to the dreams of our youth, we grow old gracefully and gladly.
My sincere advice, therefore, is to always to follow your dream, for your dreams can show you the way to achieving your inner desires. They can enable you to live in a world where future and dreams meet to form the reality of precious moments.
Returning to our greatest dream of meeting true love and accompanying it into our old age, it is wise to remember that a dream alone often remains but a dream, whereas a dream you dream together with your soul mate becomes reality.
Love is our one true destiny and our one eternal pleasure. It is greatly lessened when it is not shared, was never shared or can no longer be shared with a soul mate. I long ago learned that we do not discover the meaning to life alone: we need others to relate to, to bounce off, with whom to communicate and share, a significant other half who is there to add sense and purpose to our very existence.
Just as life and God, life and Nature, life with family and friends, and life and other human contact are indivisible, so is life and close love with a significant other. Once we find our soul mate, once we find love in each other's arms, there is no further need to dream as you are the very dream you live." William Forde: November 7th, 2017.
