What Matters Most

 Quotes

We all love quotes because they sum up in a few well chosen words and idea or concept that makes sense.   Sometimes you might even catch yourself saying something, or hear someone else say something that makes you stop and say, “I better write that down.” 

In fact, posting my thoughts on Facebook and elsewhere causes me to say this so much that I do stop and write down those short little phrases and comments that seem to sum up my thoughts.  My list of quotes is growing, maybe if I get famous other people will quoting me.  But until then I’ll just keep reading the quotes of others.

And that’s just what I do every morning.  I always have from eight to ten different books that I read from each morning during the time between 5 a.m. and about 8:30 when I need to begin my work day.  And I always have a book of quotes in the stack.  In fact, right now I have two.

One is the Calendar of Wisdom compiled by Leo Tolstoy.  Each day of the year he has quotes from others and his own thoughts listed.  The day’s quotes usually follow a theme for the day, although he does not announce the theme.  Tolstoy considered this the most important book that he wrote, and he wrote it late in his life. 

I’m reading it through for the third year in a row.  Yes, it’s that good.  I make notes in the margin if I agree with the quote, and sometimes just cross it out if I don’t agree. Some really well known people have had their quotes crossed off by me.  It is interesting to open the book each day and see what I was thinking about the same quote a year ago.

Recently I finished a huge book of quotes called Divine Sparks compiled by Karen Speerstra.  She spent a life time collecting quotes and cataloging them by topic.  Then she selected 500 words that represented the topics and published a book with multiple quotes on each topic from over 1,800 different people.  The book is nearly 600 pages and must have close to 5,000 quotes.  It took me 500 days to read it through the book reading all the quotes for each word.  She subtitled the book, “Collected Wisdom of the Heart” and it is a good course in wisdom.  I’ll probably start reading it again beginning in January of 2013.

My other current quote book is Change Your Life – A Little Book of Big Ideas compiled by Allen Klein.  His big idea quotes are centered on thoughts that follow the letters of the alphabet though he leaves out a few letters.  Speerstra did not however, her first word with quotes was “Abundance” and the last word with quotes was “Zoroastrianism.”

What Matters Most……..why the quotes themselves, of course.  Here is a brief sampling.

“Everything depends on the use to which it is put.”  --Reinhold Niebuhr

“What is moral is what you feel good after; what is immoral is what you feel bad after.”  --Ernest Hemingway

‘The price of anything is the amount of life you pay for it.”  --Henry David Thoreau

“All happy families are like one another; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”  --Leo Tolstoy

“Personally, I have never liked folks who didn't speak plainly.  Communication is meant to be understood, not figured out.”  ---Jim High

© 2012 #16  Jim High can be reached at P. O. Box 467, Tupelo, MS 38802-0467

Fantasies or Reality

What Matters Most…….Commentary by Jim High 

Are you worried about the Mayan Calendar that is supposed to say the end of the world is going to be December 21, 2012?  Do you believe Big Foot lives in the woods of the Northwest?  What about flying saucers?  These are all fantasies. 

Let's take flying saucers as an example. You’ve seen lots of photos claiming to be objects that look like flying saucers. We read lots of reports of sightings in the sky, some even by pilots and others who are not idiots, but intelligent responsible people.  We humans have even done some limited space travel ourselves by going to the moon.  

But, there are three kinds of people when it comes to this fantasy.  First are people who say flying saucers are just not real, period.  Second are the people who are flying saucer nuts and believe it all, so much so that some think they have been abducted and taken somewhere.  And third are those who, like me, think there might be something to it, but we have no proof and the evidence does not point to any type of valid logical reasonable explanation of why other worlds would be flying around just looking at us without contacting us directly.  So for now we just say when the evidence shows they are real, we will agree that they are real. 

Which are you as it relates to flying saucers?  And more importantly, which are you about all those other fantasies that exist out there.  It’s always best to live in reality instead of fantasy.  It’s better to rely on facts and hard evidence, not fantasies or wishful thinking. 

“We know our life as it exists only here, in this world; therefore, if our life is to have any meaning, it should be here in this world.” ---Leo Tolstoy

“Do not wish for death just because your life is hard.  All the burdens on your shoulders will help you fulfill your destiny.  The only way to get rid of your burdens is to live your life in such a way that you fulfill your destiny.” ---Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Life is neither suffering nor pleasure, but the business which we have to do, and which we have to finish honestly, up to our life’s end.” ---Alexis De Tocqueville

What Matters Most………………Live in the reality that is before you and don’t let fantasy about anything get in the way of understanding the reality of your life.  Don’t give fantasies a second thought.

© 2012#10  Jim High can be reached at P. O. Box 467, Tupelo, MS 38802-0467

Humans, Facebook and the Universe

What Matters Most…………………..Commentary by Jim High

The Internet is the most amazing phenomenon to come on the scene in my life time and Facebook is by far the most interesting result.  Google and Wikipedia are probably the most useful, but Facebook is now approaching one billion users worldwide.  Think about that for just a minute and you realize the power it has to connect people, get the word out about anything that’s going on, and to effect real change in our global society.  Never before in the history of humans have we had something as powerful as Facebook, and it’s only just getting started.

As of this week I have just over 900 friends on Facebook.  Some are what we call “FacebookFriends” - meaning we know them only on Facebook and nowhere else.  I have both friends and “Facebook Friends” in foreign countries, and we communicate and message one another from time to time.  People post all kinds of things on Facebook making it the world’s largest conversation.  Some of those conversations turn into debates, and folks seem to be more likely to say things on Facebook that they wouldn’tsay in a regular face to face conversation.

If you pay attention to the posts from others you can learn a lot.  Recently a “Facebook Friend” who likes to post photos from deep space taken by the Hubble telescope posted a color photo of Centaurus A, a galaxy that’s being wracked from within by a massive Black Hole.  On a galactic scale distances are almost irrelevant with galaxies being from 150,000 to 1 million light years across and so far away that it boggles our human perception.  Centaurus A is only 12 million light years away which is practically next door in our observable universe.

But looking at this photo on Facebook got me to thinking, so I posted this comment.  “And we humans think we know everything?  But scientists tell us that 96% of everything in the entire universe is unknown to us.  We can’t see it, but their math says it must be present although they have no idea what it is.  So we know, can see and measure only 4% of the known universe, the rest of it is called Dark Energy and Dark Matter, dark meaning unknown.  But the really big question is that self-conscious human life has evolved only over the last 3 to 6 million years out of the 4 billion years since the formation of planet earth.  And evolution never stops, so we humans are not the end result that most people think we are.  The question then becomes where is evolution taking us, or will the Life Force of the Universe just cast us aside and move on without us?”

Well as you might imagine that comment got the conversation started.  Some thought that we humans didn’t matter at all.  One  person compared our importance in the grand scheme of things to mushrooms that grow on the forest floor.  Someone said we’re just another dust bunny under the sofa that is the universe.  But some felt that we did matter, if only to our world and to our immediate surroundings, friends and loved ones.

To keep the conversation going, I asked, “Is mankind a distraction or an improvement in the process of evolution?”  And I answered my own question by saying that only we humans have the power to decide if we are a distraction or an improvement.  The real question is what will we decide?  Will we destroy our world with nuclear war, or ruin our environment by using up all its resources, or cause global warming that will make earth uninhabitable in another 500 years,or so?

Ancient man wondered what the lights in the night sky were.  Modern man knows what they are, how big other stars and galaxies are, and how far away, but today we wonder why they are there and what it all means.  And in our short lifetimes that average much less than 100 years, does it matter at all why the universe is out there?  I wonder.

What Matters Most……..is that I only know one thing for sure.  The universe does not seem to care about us here on the third rock from the Sun, but at the same time the Laws of the Universe are such that we all get the same treatment and have the same potential.  What we do with that treatment whether it’s good or bad, and with our potential as humans is entirely up to us.  That’s why our individual lives are so important.

© 2012 #6  JimHigh can be reached at P. O. Box 467, Tupelo, MS 38802-0467

Uncertainty and Risk

What Matters Most……..Commentary by Jim High

Uncertainty and risk are two things most people try to eliminate from their lives, but I hope to explain why in order to really live you must accept some level of uncertainty and risk in your life.  I spent 35 years in the insurance business dealing with uncertainty and risk, but that is not what I’m talking about.  Insurance after all is just a way, with the payment of a monetary premium, to arrange to transfer your uncertainty and risk to some large insurance company.  And the only way they have of taking care of you is with money.  Does any amount of money replace a life, or a home? 

But, while I’m on the topic of insurance, and I do think you should buy it, let me also mention that Risk Management is actually more valuable than insurance, because by analyzing what your risks actually are, and making changes to prevent accidents and problems from developing in the first place, you can keep a lot of the uncertainties from happening.  That’s way better than just getting paid money if they do.

It’s the personal uncertainties and risks of life that I want to talk about.  Most people as I said just try to eliminate any uncertainty and risk from their personal lives, but that can lead to a very dull existence. 

The days of our lives are all we really have in this world, and we ought to make as many of them between birth and death as memorable as we can.  The ones we remember most vividly are the days that were full of uncertainty and risk, and what we did to overcome it with success in spite of anything and everything.  Let me illustrated with a few examples of how uncertainty and risk are actually good for you.

I think of the time when I learned to fly an airplane, and especially my first solo flight.  Talk about risk and uncertainty that was it.  You know it’s coming, but you don’t know when.  Then one day the instructor calmly gets out of the airplane and tells you to take it up for three circles around the airport and three landings all by yourself.  That’s not the time to be afraid, to back out, or to say you are not ready yet, so you do it.  You overcome your uncertainty and you don’t think about the risk, and in return you gain a skill and the feeling deep inside your soul that you can do anything you set your mind to accomplish. And that is one of life’s most valuable lessons.

Another great example is the two month trip I took to Europe with a friend back in 1979.  We bought a VW Diesel Rabbit and took delivery at the airport in Brussels, Belgium, the day we arrived on our flight from Atlanta.  We signed the papers in the airport’s parking garage, loaded our bags and headed out without any reservations for hotels, or even a fixed itinerary for where we would spend the next 60 days. The result of that uncertainty and risk was the most wonderful trip of my life.  Experiences I will never forget as we did things that tourist never get to do.  We never had a reservation, but always found a delightful and interesting place to sleep each night.

Our cheapest hotel room was at the Hotel Iran in Madrid, Spain, just a block from Plaza Mayor for only $7.50 per night.  That’s only $3.75 each.  It was in Madrid that I saw my first and only bullfight.  Our last night in Monte Carlo we gambled at the casino with the last of our French Francs and almost didn’t have enough to pay our bill to the nice French lady at the B & B before heading off to Italy.  In Rome we wanted to find a place near the Spanish Steps area, but have you ever driven yourself into Rome?  We hadn’t either, but we made it, and found a parking garage just a block away where we stored our car while we toured Rome for five days on foot.

When everything in your life is certain it shuts down your thinking and creativity.  And it is thinking new thoughts, asking new questions, and meeting new people, that allow you to create the new experiences that add to the richness of the days of your life.

These two quotes explain why you also need some risk in your life.  From Anais Nin, “And the day comes when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to bloom.”  And from Eudora Welty, “How can you go out on a limb if you don’t know your own tree?”

What Matters Most…….Never fear uncertainty and risk in your life.  Learn to deal with it and in the doing you will discover a most wonderful adventure.

© 2012 #2  Jim High can be reached at P. O. Box 467, Tupelo, MS 38802-0467

THINK / What's Next

What Matters Most…Commentary by Jim High

Right after I graduated from Mississippi State University several of my college fraternity buddies were hired by IBM.  I went home to take over the operation of our family’s insurance agency due to my Father’s illness.  But my friends and I shared one thing in common, IBM’s famous one word slogan – THINK.

I truly thought it was the best slogan I had ever heard, and in those early days of television everyone heard, or rather saw, the single word, THINK, at the end of every IBM commercial.  Only one word, but it said volumes about what IBM as a company was all about.  And for me it helped me to stay on track to accomplish the enormous task in front of me.  Twenty two years old, my Father with cancer and unable to get out of bed, trying to learn, operate, manage and maintain a customer base that included the City of Tupelo, both the city and county school systems, the largest bank in town at that time, as well as the insurance program for the North Mississippi Medical Center.

After the death of my Father, I also became the provider for my family that consisted of my Mother, Grandmother, brother and sister, as well as the two ladies, and several sub-agents that worked for the agency, so you can understand how important that word –THINK – became to me.  I even cut it out of magazine ads and taped it up in my office.

You see most every problem or challenge you have in life can be handled if you allow yourself to THINK, because it is acting without thinking that causes all the problems.  It worked.  The agency grew and prospered, and so did IBM.  I always wondered why they dropped that slogan.  I’ve never dropped thinking about solutions.

Not too long ago one of the top rated TV shows was West Wing staring Martin Sheen as President Bartlett.  It was on for several years and I watched every episode.  President Bartlett was a President we could all rally around and he must have followed the slogan – THINK – because he always did the right thing, which I’ll admit is easy if you are just following a script, but at least the script writer was thinking.

President Bartlett had a famous phrase he said at least once every episode – “What’s Next.”   I always thought it was a great way to live your life, to accomplish your goals, to get things done.  “What’s Next” – says I’m finished with that, let’s move on.  It was the moving on to “What’s Next” that made the show exciting.  They solved the problems of the country and then moved on.  They never sat and rest on their laurels.  They never worried over the past, or worse lived there.  “What’s Next” says let’s go forward.  So I would suggest that you think about what’s next in your life, your business, your religious beliefs, your family, your health, and every other area of your life. 

Let me apply some of this philosophy to some of Tupelo’s most pressing problems at the current moment realizing that if we – THINK – about them, we can solve them all, and then asking “What’s Next” moves our city forward.

Let’s be realistic and honest when we think about how the Tupelo Public School System lost its excellence.  Let’s fix the problems where ever they are, inside or outside of the school system, and then ask what’s next, so we can continue to improve because nothing is ever perfect.

Does the Major Thoroughfare Program have its eyes set on what’s next?

As wonderful as it is, the new Toyota plant at Blue Springs is almost at full employment of 2,000, and will soon be making 600 Corollas a day.  CDF, What’s Next?

We have, after six years, gotten the results of the railroad study.  We still have the problem, and it is getting worse.  What’s Next?

Soon Tupelo will have a new up-to-date modern Aquatic Center.  What’s Next?

What Matters Most…..….you get the idea!  If we just THINK, all problems are solvable, and if we always ask, “What’s Next,” we will always be moving forward and not backwards.  You might want to write these two ideas down as words to live by and post them on your refrigerator or bathroom mirror, or where ever you post things you never want to forget.

THINK / What’s Next

© 2012 #1  Jim High can be reached at P. O. Box 467, Tupelo, MS 38802-0467

Endings and Beginnings

What Matters Most……….Commentary by Jim High

Saturday will be the end of 2011.  But every ending is followed by a new beginning, and Sunday will be the beginning of 2012.  This, of course, happens every year as we celebrate New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.  Parties, champagne, food, football, and for most of us, resolutions will mark this day.  But actually these two days are just two points on the calendar of time.  Sometimes I think we make way too much of the passage of time, and way too little of the present moment in which we actually live.

Whether it’s today or tomorrow, this week or next week, or May turning into June, every ending is always followed by a new beginning.  There is really nothing special about New Year’s Day that we can’t have every day of our lives. 

And this also applies to our New Year’s Resolutions.  During the past few months I’ve lost just over 30 pounds.  If I had waited to make a New Year’s Resolution to lose some weight, I’d still be the same weight I was months ago, and actually I’d be putting off doing anything about it by turning my desire to lose weight into a New Year’s Resolution instead of into action in the present moment.

How many times have you made a New Year’s Resolution, waited until New Year’s Day or the day after to put it into action, and a week or a month later lapsed back into your old habits whatever they were?  Yes, we have all done that.  So when you decide to do something don’t put it off.  There is no magic in New Year’s Resolutions, in fact in my opinion, they are harmful.  The best time to do anything, change anything, start something new, or stop something is the instant you decide to do it. 

And don’t worry about all that planning you think is necessary before you start in the direction of your goal.  You can make adjustments as you go along.  Planning can and does get in the way of action a lot of the time.  You just have to know what you want as the end result, not every step of the way planned out before you start.  In fact, keeping the end result in mind, not your plan, is the most helpful way to actually attain your end result.  Starting is what works, and planning to start is not starting.

Think of it this way.  Nothing is happening in the past, whether that past was just yesterday, last month, or years ago.  The past has already happened and we can never change it, but we can improve ourselves and our surroundings for today only in this present moment.  And nothing is happening tomorrow either, because tomorrow is not here yet.  What we have is today, and even today is divided up into a lot of small present moments.

I’m not saying forget the past or don’t plan for the future.  Both of those things are important.  But much more important is to learn how to live in the present moment.  So how do we do this?  We need to be aware of what is.  Sounds simple, maybe even a little confusing until you give it some thought.  Understanding reality is what I mean by the term “what is,” and that requires some thinking on your part.  Deal with reality, with what is happening now, with what is, and you will begin to live in awareness of the present moment.  And the present moment, when you really think about it, is the only time and place you can actually do anything.

So right now, this present moment, as you are reading this column is the time to decide to act.  You can start whatever it is that you need to start.  Use your New Year’s Resolutions to make adjustments in the actions that you have already started.  And remember that every day can be a new beginning.  Just as there is no magic in New Year’s Day, there is no magic in Monday, or next week, or tomorrow.  The magic is right now in the present moment.

What Matters Most……..Everything in your life – the state of your body, your health, your livelihood, your home, the present condition of every phase of your life – is conditioned by what you have done in the past.  But the condition of all these things can be improved tomorrow, next week or next year by the thoughts, feeling and actions you decide to make in this present moment.  In other words, you choose your life.

© 2011 #26  Jim High can be reached at P. O. Box 467, Tupelo, MS 38802-0467

Love

What Matters Most……..Commentary by Jim High

One of the books that is a part of my early morning ritual is Divine Sparks by Karen Speerstra.  She calls it the collected wisdom of the heart.  Actually it is a book of thousands of quotes about various words, ideas and concepts from almost 1,800 different people arranged in alphabetical order.  The first word is “Abundance” with seven quotes, and the book ends with the word “Zoroastrianism,” where five quotes are displayed.

So how does one use and make sense of such a book?  I decided to read it straight through by reading all the quotes for each word starting with the word abundance and reading only the quotes for one word each day.  I started at the first of the year, and since there are just over 500 words, I won’t finish reading this book until about the middle of next year. I also try to determine the best quote for each word and highlight it.  Sometimes there are several best quotes, after all these are all quotes from people famous enough to have their quotes remembered.

Last week I had made it to the word love.  Love has more quotes listed than any of the words so far, fifty nine in all.  I’ll probably not find another word in this wonderful book with more than fifty nine quotes, which is understandable because to quote someone we’ve all heard that “Love makes the world go round.”

But reading those fifty nine quotes on love got me to thinking more deeply about love.  Where does love come from?  Does love exist apart from our lives?  Why do we humans love?  My answer is that love comes from within us, love therefore doesn’t exist apart from our lives, and humans love because it is the easiest and fastest way to receive love from another person.  And the love of another person is what humans want most in this world.  Unconditional love from another person, I submit, is the greatest feeling in all the world.

The more love we have in our lives the better lives we have.  The only way to get love is to give it away.  Love over comes hate just as light over comes darkness.  Love solves all problems.  Love is the essence of life.  As babies and small children, we are loved and cared for by our parents and others, and the measure of the love we experience then determines the love we have that can later by freely and unconditionally given away to others.  Love is learned early in life by being loved.

My brother and sister and I have often remarked how lucky we were to have grown up in a home full of love and stability.  Even with four generations under one roof, my Great Grandmother didn’t die until I was eight years old, there was never an argument, disagreement or even a slammed door that any of the three of us can remember.  One of my favorite pictures is of my Great Grandmother and me sitting on the living room couch.  I’m about three years old and she is reading to me.

Love is such a complicated and powerful emotion that the Greeks had four words for love.  Eros is used to describe passionate love, with sensual desire and longing.  Storge means affection in Greek and described the natural affection like that felt by parents for their children.  Philia means friendship or brotherly love.  Agape means unconditional love.  Agape is used in the biblical passage known as the "love chapter", 1 Corinthians 13, and is described there and throughout the New Testament as sacrificial love.

What Matters Most…….I’ve picked three of those fifty nine quotes to help answer that question.

“Everything wants to be loved….You ever notice that trees do everything to get attention we do, except walk.” –Alice Walker – The Color Purple

“Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves, without any insistence that they satisfy you.”  --Wayne Dyer

“You know I’m really convinced that if you were to define love, the only word big enough to engulf it all would be life.  Love is life in all of its aspects.  And if you miss love, you miss life.  Please Don’t.”  --Leo Buscaglia – Living, Loving and Learning

© 2011 #20  Jim High can be reached at P. O. Box 467, Tupelo, MS 38802-0467