An Irish prayer

Quote

May  the  road  rise  up  to   meet  you,

and  the  wind  be  always  at  your  back.

May  the  sun  shine  warm  upon  your  face,

and  the  rain  fall  soft  upon  your  field,

and  until  we  meet  again,

may  the  Lord  hold  you  in  the  palm  of  his  hand.

A. Lawrence Lowell

Quote

Any­one who sees in his own occu­pa­tion mere­ly a means of mak­ing mon­ey degrades it, but he that sees in it a ser­vice to mankind enno­bles both his labor and him­self.                                            ~ A. Lawrence  Lowell

Imprints

What you leave behind, is not what is engraved in stone mon­u­ments , but what is woven into the lives of others.

Per­i­cles

The Station

by Robert J. Hast­ings                                                                                                    Tucked away in our sub­con­scious is an idyl­lic vision. We see our­selves on a long trip that spans the con­ti­nent. We are trav­el­ling by train. Out the win­dows we drink in the pass­ing scene of cars on near­by highways.

But upper in our minds is the final des­ti­na­tion. On a cer­tain day at a cer­tain hour we will pull into the sta­tion. Bands will be play­ing and flags wav­ing. Once we get there so many won­der­ful dreams will come true and the pieces of our lives will fit togeth­er like a com­plet­ed jig­saw puz­zle. How rest­less­ly we pace the aisles, damn­ing the min­utes for loi­ter­ing — wait­ing, wait­ing, wait­ing for the station.

“When we reach the sta­tion that will be it!” we cry. “When I’m 18”. When I buy a new 450 SL Mer­cedes Benz!”. “When I put the last kid through col­lege”. When I have paid off the mort­gage!” “When I get a pro­mo­tion” . When I reach the age of retire­ment, I shall live hap­pi­ly ever after!”.

Soon­er or lat­er we must real­ize there is no sta­tion, no one place to arrive at once for all. The true joy of life is the trip. The sta­tion is only a dream. It con­stant­ly out­dis­tances us.

So, stop pac­ing the aisles and count­ing the miles. Instead, climb more moun­tains, eat more ice cream, go bare­foot more often, swim more rivers, watch more sun­sets, laugh more, cry less. Life must be lived as we go along. THE STATION WILL COME SOON ENOUGH !

Bobo the monkey.

I once heard a sto­ry about a rail­road crew that befriend­ed a mon­key named Bobo.

The rail­road­ers would play with Bobo and feed him and real­ly treat him nice. In fact, they taught the mon­key to give hand sig­nals and run the engine and to even read a switch list and switch out the cars.

Soon Bobo got to be so good at it that the guys would let the mon­key do their work while they went fish­ing. One day the Train­mas­ter caught the guys fish­ing while Bobo was doing the work. All of the rail­road­ers got fired on the spot.

A cou­ple of months lat­er the rail­road­ers got a let­ter from the com­pa­ny. It was a great flow­ery piece and rein­stat­ed all of the rail­road­ers to their for­mer posi­tions with all back pay. It was signed by Train­mas­ter Bobo.