Still much to learn

— Among the several lessons I’ve learned after 63 years of breathing: All the difference exists in thinking about doing something as opposed to putting forth the effort to do it.

My perspective on life is far different today than when I was young and knew it all.

My attitude toward any task, whether it is personal or professional, always has represented about 90 percent of the likelihood for a successful outcome.

Every physical action I ever have taken began as a thought from a realm I cannot detect with my physical senses.

Laughter diffuses potential conflicts like nothing else can, especially when laughing at yourself.

There’s nothing more significant or important than the quality and depth of your relationships.

Most folks will treat you with precisely the same respect and kindness that you show them.

I will harvest whatever I choose to plant in my life.

Trust, much like respect, is a quality that can only be earned. Yet both are easily shattered by a single misstep.

I always expect to be surprised and feel foolish, especially after I’ve assumed something.

The truth, once buried from public view, has a mystical way of digging its way back to daylight.

The most muscle-bound human male specimen is only as strong as his weakest point, usually at the knees or slightly higher.

The most significant threats to the well-being of humankind are so incredibly tiny as to literally be invisible to the naked eye.

We strive to make our brief lives convenient and lazy, ironically knowing all the while that existence is made most fulfilling by overcoming that which challenges our capacities. Needless, senseless fear of things that seldom come to pass is our greatest debilitator.

Those who believe they are making a positive impression with expensive material possessions are actually achieving the opposite effect by fostering resentment.

Many folks’ insecurities are quickly inflamed by the successes of those around them.

Unconditional love is only predictable between mothers and their children and humans and their pet dogs.

Patience is, indeed, a virtue that I know will pay great dividends if I can only learn to practice it.

An angry reaction to anything short of self-preservation is counterproductive and usually prompts those on the receiving end to respond in a childish tit-for-tat chain reaction.

It pays great personal dividends whenever I choose to forgive all perceived and actual transgressions against me.

I really can learn something valuable from everyone I meet if I will just zip my yammering and listen.

Whining and playing the “poor me” game to gain sympathy and instill guilt only irks others.

Many folks are going to form uninformed opinions of you and me even when they don’t know us. (Even my view of myself is warped by my own gross imperfections and misperceptions.) Virtually every decision you and I make is formed from either limited or mistaken information supplied by bits and pieces of what some other equally uninformed human being has told us is true.

Evil flourishes in direct correlation to the extent truth is violated.

You impress others by expressing a genuine interest in them.

On a related note, the most significant person to others is not you, it’s them.

Anyone who places his faith in any person or thing other than his creator is wasting the most significant opportunity of his fragile and temporary life.

Now you can see just how much I still don’t know.

Mike Masterson is opinion editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s Northwest edition. The original version of today’s column appeared on Dec. 29, 2007.

Editorial, Pages 59 on 12/27/2009

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