"What is life without a dream?" (Rostand)

.....Life is not life unless you live it.  Do what your heart and mind tell you to do.  Risking to achieve what you really want is scary, sure, adventurous, at times it's even romantic, but it helps you to grow.  Accept risk. Accept responsibility. Put a lawyer out of business.  However, remember--whatever you decide to do because you want to do it, be it to write a poem, quit your boring job, or run a marathon--do it with ruthless personal standards of excellence.  Challenge yourself, or if you delay, someone else will do it to you.  Amateurs built the ark. Professionals built the Titanic.

 

.....Socrates said "The unexamined life is not worth living."  I finally learned that truth when I went to college, so I have always stopped to examine me. When I graduated from high school, I was an unexamined idiot who worked as a bank teller counting money that wasn't my own.  And then came the war, and I yearned to kill Germans for causing my father to become a triple amputee.  Here was an opportunity to do what I always wanted to do; a romantic idea, it was.  So, I joined the Navy to kill Germans because I didn't like the thought of slogging through mud in the Army and getting my boots all dirty. 

 

.....Trading the money-counting occupation for the Navy boot camp was like the difference between boiled chicken for dinner and a two pound lobster.  The challenge was there and I succeeded. But when boot camp was finished, I found myself forced into a new occupation--scrubbing pots and pans in the kitchen.  I went from heaven to the deep blue sea.  But not for long.  I begged the Chief to send me to a school that would help me get into combat and kill some Germans.  By this time I decided one or two Germans would do.  The rest is history and stories to tell the great grandchildren. Following the war's end when I heard anyone say, "Life is hard" I was tempted to ask "Compared to what?"