A Soulful Journey

  A doctor who goes into his patient’s hospital room. The doctor says, “Do you want the bad news or the good news first?” The patient says, “Gimme the good news.” The doctor says, “The good news is that you’re going to die in twenty-four hours.” The patient sits up alarmed and says, “If that’s the good news, then what on Earth is the bad news?” The doctor says, “I forgot to call you yesterday.” Life is always an admixture of good news and bad.  We make the  decision  about how we label what happens to us.

At the Boulder Dam, eighty-nine men died building that structure.  There, an inscription reads: "For those who died that the desert might bloom."   May it be said of us when we have passed from the world that it is a brighter place because we worked to make it so.

"The tyrant dies and his rule ends, the martyr dies and his rule begins."  - Soren Kierkegaard It is better live than die. It is better to work for a cause that is noble that to hide from it for fear of ridicule.

A politician awoke after an operation and found the curtains in his hospital room drawn. ”Why are the curtains closed? Is it night already?” ”No,” the nurse replied. “But there's a fire across the street and we did not want you to wake and think the operation was unsuccessful.”   -Rotary Down Under  

As Machiavelli lay dying, his face drawn, his limbs loose, his wife sent for the Catholic priest for a lats confession.  No great believer, Machiavelli had no control over his wife's actions. The priest arrived and said: "Your time has come to meet your Maker.  Confess and renounce the devil." There was no response. Thinking Machiavelli could not hear him, he bent down and yelled into Machiavelli's ear, "Your time to meet your Maker is near.  Confess and renounce the devil." Machiavelli stirred and then opened hi mouth.  "I heard you the first time.  You know this is no time to be making enemies."   -General Al Haig

An old man wished for his best friend, "You should live to 120 and a few weeks."  When the friend asked why the few extra weeks, the well-wisher replied, "God forbid, you should drop dead on your birthday. " - Alan Dershowitz

Nixon, Brezhnev and Golda Meir were sitting together on a plane when God announced to them that a worldwide flood would begin in three days to punish mankind for its sinfulness.   He advised the three leaders to return to their respective countries immediately. Nixon rushed to Washington and made a nationwide television broadcast in which he announced that the world would end in three days.   F or the next three days, he ordered, America’s capitalists would not have to contend with any government controls; they were permitted to make all the money that they wanted. Brezhnev, on the other hand, told the people that inasmuch as there were only three days left, they would assume the final stage of Communism had been reached, and they were given permission to drink unlimited vodka. Golda Meir optimistically went before the Knesset to advise the parliamentarians that there were only three days left for government leaders to come up with a feasible plan to make...

Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai was gravely ill.   His students came to visit him and when the master saw his acolytes he began to weep. “Why are you crying?” they asked. “If I were going before the king, I know where I stand.   After all, he will die too.   If he is angry at me I can appease him.   If he kills me I die only once. “But of God, I do not know this.   I cannot appease Him.   I can die forever.   I do not know which direction I am headed.”   -Berachot 28b

A child of one or two can get around By crawling like a snake on the ground. A ten-year old frolics in glee amid His elders, as among the goats the kid. At twenty years a man’s on pleasure bent; To captivate the girls his whole intent. A man on thirty years is at his height; His looks, black hair, and strength are his delight. When forty comes upon a man he tend To spend his time among his aging friends. He puts his youthful daydreams out of sight, When fifty turns his hair and beard to white. A man becomes obsessed with mortal fears On finding himself arrived at sixty years. From sixty to seventy, groaning with age and gout, He sits among the elderly devout. The eighty-years old man is scarce aware that Time Has caught him in its mighty snare. At ninety years a man lives in a daze; He can’t tell plowing times from harvest days. A hundred-year old man is but a freak; They come to stare at such a queer antique. A corpse is s...