Yesterday I was given the opportunity to address High School Juniors, their parents, and teachers at an event organized by four Masonic Lodges here in Washington.
I was warned to keep it short, lest we keep these young people out to midnight, as there were so many awards to be presented.
I thought about what I wanted to say to these young people quite a lot. Something short, in keeping with the timeline of the event, but something that might actually help them, be of service to them, as they enter their adult lives.
The message I came up with is something that I have found true in my own life. That lesson is:
When we are on our deathbed, reflecting back up on our life, we will only regret those experiences we missed. We won’t care about how much money we made, or didn’t make, how much status we had or didn’t have. We will find that we value those experiences we had, and regret those experiences that we missed out on.
We will value those opportunities that we reached for. We will regret those opportunities that we let float away. We will realize that what kept us from seizing the opportunities that presented themselves to us was nothing more than fear. A fear of failure, a fear that we aren’t somehow good enough, a fear that we are imposters.
That over a long course of life, we will realize that even when we did fail, we improved ourselves through that failure. That what seems to be, and indeed is failure in the short term, brought improvement to our life over the long term. Because we grow, and learn, and change.
So we must grab the opportunities that present themselves to us. We must seize the day, live our lives, not let them be taken over by uncertainty and fear. In that way, we will be able to look back upon our lives without regret, knowing that we lived in the fullest way possible.
Your Guarantee Of Quality
I was reading a little something by an author today, words about how more and more ‘writers’ are actually scammers just using artificial intelligence to pump out strings of words. Lifeless words, not based on a life lived, but cobbled together by computers interacting with a large language database.
I know that this is extremely prevalent in music now, and it is growing ever more prevalent in written spaces.
And it is sad, because all Ai can do is repackage and regurgitate that which was written before. It can’t write anything new.
Please know that every word here on Emeth is a real word, from my mind to yours, no Ai at all.
You’re tongue and cheek Guarantee Of Quality are my typos and my bad grammar! Computers don’t make mistakes like that!
Well said. I had the same conversation only minutes ago.
Outstanding