8 1/2 x 11

Take an 8½” x 11” sheet of paper. What will you write on it? Or scribble, or draw, or sketch? Or will you reproduce a Jan Van Eck, or fold it into a paper airplane or a work of origami? Or maybe crumple it into a ball for some rainy-day in-house fútbol.

If this 8½ x 11 sheet of paper symbolized your life what would you do with it? Not that life is all that two dimensional; it certainly is not. But if that sheet of paper could represent your life, what would you do with it? Many people let others write the paper of their life, giving up control, often capriciously. Some allow others to crumple them up into a little ball and kick them around for their entire life. What a tragic waste. More tragic are those who choose to write nothing…, absolutely nothing. They merely accept whatever comes their way.

Fortunately, there are enough of us who strive to make something of our life; to plan, create, design, and make a difference while we still have breath. Some of us are successful in business and accumulate mass fortunes. Their ability to make a difference on this planet is truly on a global scale. Their fortunes have helped the less fortunate rise to greater expectations for centuries. They deserve our thanks & praises. Others choose to serve humanity among unknown communities in the most neglected, war ravaged, impoverished places on earth. Their wealth is of a different nature. They will write the paper of their life to make just as much a difference as those who accumulate wealth; but their 8½ x 11 sheet will carry the names of those who our world will never notice…, except for the one person who came to them and cared. God, too, might notice.

As you continue to fill in the lines of your 8½ x 11 sheet of life (or paint & sculpt it) what will you write? If there are some lines already written you wish you could erase…, they cannot be. We have all written life-lines we pray no one else will ever read.

But we can choose to change the plot; to begin a new storyline, to start a new chapter that shifts the direction of our life away from ourselves and onto making a difference.

Allow me to leave you with a quote from George Bernard Shaw (Irish playwright, 1856-1950).

This is the joy of life:
Being used up for a purpose
recognized by yourself as a mighty one;
being a force of nature
instead of a feverish little clot of
ailments and grievances,
complaining that the world will not devote itself
to making you happy.

Now, back to writing,

Gary