"What a wonderful day to meet the most beautiful person in the world; yourself! True happiness arises in the first instance from the enjoyment and respect of oneself. When we love self, everything else falls into line and our heart remains open to others. When we are at home with ourselves, there is nobody we are more suited to step out into the world with. When we are happy with what we have and are excited about what we want, we forget the chains of character we willingly wear throughout life. We learn that while forgiveness doesn't necessarily change the past, it does most definitely enlarge the future. Our home life, social life; even our work becomes a place we enjoy to be. Being happy with oneself enables one to be defiant in the face of danger and bold with one's expectations of daily contentment.
Since leaving school, I have held a number of different jobs and there has never been a time when I was unhappy with my job or dissatisfied with my output. I liked all the jobs I held for different reasons. I loved working in the mill as a young lad for its comradeship and the daily fun the workers had as they performed their tasks. I loved being a singer for a brief few months in Canada because it gave me a stage of my own to perform on. I enjoyed being a hotel receptionist in Toronto because of the numerous people it allowed me to meet from different countries and the stories they had to tell. Being a mill manager gave me the experience of exercising responsibility over one hundred men every night of the week and dealing with their problems. My most satisfying job of all was as a probation officer. This work enabled me to get as close to the raw feelings and emotions of a stranger needing practical help, mental clarity or emotional stability. And while I consider myself to have been pretty good at all of these positions, I am sure I was always happy performing my work because I was happy within myself!
In particular, I recall as a young Probation Officer realising that whenever I was happy within myself, I would always be happy with my home life and my work performance. Despite the sometimes heartbreak of my job, I quickly grew to love my daily work and would have even done it for no wages had someone fed and housed me and my family. I discovered that once you do something you love, you never have to labour again. Contentment follows when it dawns on you that you already have that which you seek." William Forde : September 9th, 2017.