Tuesday 16 February 2021

Originally broadcast on CHED radio - January 9, 1960

I met a man last week whose life has been and still is filled with heart ache and trouble. Some of it is his own making, but most of it is not. He has lived with sickness and possible death for the past three years. His situation has cost him thousands of dollars. Yet he has learned the meaning of the old Chinese proverb, "you can't stop the bird of trouble from flying over your house, but you can prevent him from making a nest in your hair". Trouble will come to all of us. Sickness and death will touch us and there will be many periods when life will seem all uphill. But there is still joy here… there is still love and contentment… there is still goodness and order, if we but reach out and take it. This friend of mine, who has known all the misery, thinks of each day as a dollar. He says regardless of his personal circumstances, he tries to spend that dollars worth of life every day… not just a quarter, or half a dollar… but the entire 100 cents. Today you are young, tomorrow you are old. Today you can,,, tomorrow, it is too late. So many philosophers have said it in so many ways. "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on. Nor all the piety or wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line,  nor all the tears wash out a word of it". How about you? Are you letting the bird of trouble build a nest in your hair? Are you getting one hundred cents return on your dollars worth of life? For one week, why don’t you give it a try. Do what you want to do… live life to the full.  You will no doubt find a great deal of happiness coming in those many doors you didn't even know you left open.

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