In 1968, a young executive at a small insurance company wrote a book to help motivate and inspire his sales team. He told the fictional story of an extremely successful merchant in the age of the Roman Empire. The key to his success was living by ten habits written on ten secret leather scrolls that had been entrusted to him in his youth.
The book is “The Greatest Salesman in the World” by Og Mandino. The author once talked about the abundance of mail he received from people who had their lives improved by this book, regardless of whether they were in sales. He said that according to his fan mail, “The Scroll Marked VII” is the one that had the greatest impact.
A few lines from this chapter read:
I will laugh at the world…
I will smile and my digestion will improve; I will chuckle and my burdens will be lightened; I will laugh and my life will be lengthened for this is the great secret of long life and now it is mine.
I will laugh at the world. And most of all, I will laugh at myself for man is most comical when he takes himself too seriously. Never will I fall into this trap of the mind.…
I will laugh at the world. And with my laughter all things will be reduced to their proper size. I will laugh at my failures and they will vanish in clouds of new dreams; I will laugh at my successes and they will shrink to their true value. I will laugh at evil and it will die untasted; I will laugh at goodness and it will thrive and abound….
Never will I allow myself to become so important, so wise, so dignified, so powerful, that I forget how to laugh at myself and my world. In this matter I will always remain as a child, for only as a child am I given the ability to look up to others; and so long as I look up to another I will never grow too long for my cot.”
Same here. He is an essential element in maintaining my ability to digest some of the roughage one encounters on this board.
Maksutov:
That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
Mayan Elephant:
Not only have I denounced the Big Lie, I have denounced the Big lie big lie.
Over the last 15 years, I've seen the poster known as Moksha post on various boards across the Bloggernacle. His satirical posts are generally filled with humor, bite, and insight. Admittedly, I often have to go try to figure out what the hell they are saying, but one thing I've not seen from him is thoughtlessness. Maybe his "list" comment fell flat, but it certainly didn't deserve the blow back it got. Some people are sensitive souls, at their core. Others are perpetual assholes. Moksha strikes me as the former. His primary detractor in that thread? Definitely the latter.
Here's hoping there is always a Penguin in (Spirit) Paradise.
The great problem of any civilization is how to rejuvenate itself without rebarbarization.
- Will Durant "Of what meaning is the world without mind? The question cannot exist."
- Edwin Land
Here's hoping there is always a Penguin in (Spirit) Paradise.
I share that sentiment.
No precept or claim is more suspect or more likely to be false than one that can only be supported by invoking the claim of Divine authority for it--no matter who or what claims such authority.