18 things I want

I wrote this list several years ago, on my eighteenth birthday. That is why there are eighteen points. (A friend once told me to write one of these every year, when my birthday comes around.) Several authors have had great influence on my thinking; next to each point is listed each author who said it or inspired it.

I am posting it because, as I’ve gotten older, it comes increasingly easier to me to regard idealism with bitter realism; when I read things like this, the amnesia dissipates and I remember that I am a romantic at heart; dreams are the stuff that my existence is made of. Like Peter Pan, I must not allow myself to forget how to fly. There is still a time for flying, just as there is a time for walking, running, and dancing. We must always remember where we came from; this is all you need to know about me as an adolescent, to understand me now as a young adult.

18 things I want:

1. to not be immature, but rather to have a child's honesty and sincerity with the tact and intuition of an executive

2. to never lie to others or to myself (-Russell Kirk)

3. to love the person, even if I hate their actions (-Book of Luke)

4. to have a vision for my life and for the world (what it could be), but not an obsession to make myself and it what we should never be (-John Perkins)

5. to work to fulfill a dream, but not to create a nightmare (-Russell Kirk)

6. to have self-respect and pride, but not vanity or egotism (-St. Augustine)

7. if it is appropriate - to be a leader, but not a dictator - to move others, but not to manipulate them

8. to have influence with people, but not power over them

9. to live by the realization that anything is possible, but not through any ability of my own (-Mother Theresa)

10. to believe that trust is essential to life - that the alternative - being alone - makes it easier to exist without pain, but also impossible to really live

11. to remember that forgiveness must be given a person always, even without their request and even with their contempt (Book of Mark)

12. to remember that "turning the other cheek" does not mean inviting or provoking injury - but rather, that it means doing everything in your power to invite peace, though accepting what is beyond your means to affect (-C.S. Lewis)

13. to wish to rather be deceived than to deceive another - to not fight fire with fire, but with water (-Pres. J.F. Kennedy)

14. to be tolerant of others, but not submissive to them (-St. Augustine)

15. to be able to wait for the appropriate time to act, but not become passive (St. John Chrysostom)

16. to allow my human aspect - emotions and intuition - to rule my self, and not mind's cold logic (-G. K. Chesterton)

17. to want far more to love others than to be loved myself (-St. Francis of Assisi)

18. to live by the realization that our lives depend upon our actions - that life is a series of meaningful and significant coincidences, each of which we must respond to. It is our responses - not the coincidences themselves - that shape our lives and our selves. (-John Perkins, G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis)

-Sarah

Power cannot be controlled - it can only control.

8/16/2009 2:54 AM