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Today's
Quotation:
You cannot
build a better world without improving the
individuals.
To that end each of us must work for his or
her own improvement,
and at the same time show a
general responsibility for
all humanity, our particular duty being
to aid those to
whom we think we can be most useful.
Marie Curie
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Today's
Meditation:
It
sometimes seems a bit cruel that improving ourselves should
be considered as "work." But when you define
work as anything that takes effort to reach a desired end,
then self-improvement definitely fits in there. And we
all know from our jobs that if we don't do the work
necessary, our jobs just don't get done. It's the same
way with working on ourselves--if we don't put forth any
effort to improve ourselves, we simply won't improve.
Our knowledge, our skills, our talents, our unique
abilities--all will stay at their same levels basically
forever until we decide to work to improve them.
The
work doesn't have to be difficult or unpleasant, of
course. There are plenty of good books to read to
improve our knowledge, and there are many programs we can
watch and classes we can take to improve our skills and
talents. And we can practice, while not being too hard
on ourselves if we don't improve as quickly as we might
think we should.
It's
important that we see, though, that our improvement in just
about anything will make us much more able to help others,
much more able to be useful to someone else who may need our
help in a way that only we can give it. A mediocre
softball player, for example, really can't help another
mediocre softball player to improve. The softball
player who has worked hard to become a very good one can
help almost anyone improve.
The
world will not improve until we improve ourselves. Our
improvement doesn't have to be an obsession, and it doesn't
have to be our only goal in life, but it sure is an
honorable and respectful goal, isn't it?
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