Saturday, November 17, 2007

To Win Every Battle, Win This One

"People talk much of my battles in life!... The hardest battle I have had to fight, however, is one that no one knows about. It was a battle to control my own temper. That battle I never won until recent years. I now have won that fight and I consider it to be the hardest struggle -- it certainly was the longest -- of my career." -- Teddy Roosevelt

I think I'm not alone in that with Teddy. The journey to lasting happiness is littered with pet peeves. When we train ourselves to step past them -- or better yet, to sweep them away altogether -- the trip's gratefully shorter!

It's a fact that we're sometimes committed to be places we'd rather not, and sometimes regarded (by a word or just a look) as flawed. There are remedies for the first, such as to use the time to quietly reflect or to learn something useful for later conversation. As to the second, that's simply fact! As long as I remind myself that successes and failures are pretty insignificant and temporary in a universe this vast, then even the hardest times pass more enjoyably.

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