This post was written a couple of years ago. I felt the need to share it again. The original post was called Make it Count.
I attended a dinner recently. It was a dinner in which alumnae were honored and inducted for feats preformed since the glory days of old. My sister-in-law was one of the honorees. I walked away from that dinner feeling satisfied from time well-spent with family and friends; and inspired by the stories I heard.
I left with a thing or two to ponder.
One of the women who was honored had a very touching story. She was the mother of two children. Her son was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer at a very early age. He spent a lot of his 13 years in the hospital. He wanted to make a difference in the lives of other terminally ill kids.
He made his life count.
This family whose story was such an inspiration, started my pondering as to why some people take devastating life-situations and turn them into opportunities of hope and a chance to make a difference in the life of someone else.
What makes someone decide to climb outside of their own despair and involve themselves in the pain of others? How do you decide, in the midst of your own tragedy, to reach out and make whatever is happening in your own life, worth something good on behalf of someone else?
Most don’t. It is usually all they can do just to struggle through, much less emerge with such grace, peace, and a spirit of giving.
How do you make it count?
Though I’m not sure I have an answer to those questions, or even if there is one particular answer, I suspect it has something to do with attitude, gratitude and an ability to look beyond the temporary situations and see the bigger picture.
Jim Rohn’s words have never rang truer as I muse along these lines. “It’s not what happens that determines your future”. It’s what you do about what happens. We are all in life’s sailboat. It’s not the blowing of the wind that determines your destination, it’s the set of the sail. The same wind blows on us all. The difference of arrival is not the blowing of the wind, but the set of the sail”.
I may never quite reach the mark in regards to making lemonade out of the lemons life hands me, but I commit that I will live my life to make it count.
How do you make it count?