A Soulful Journey

An angry reader once stormed into a newspaper office waving the day’s paper, asking to see the editor of the obituary column. He showed him his name in the obituary listing. “You see,” he said, “I am very much alive. I demand a retraction!” The editor replied, “I never retract a story. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do; I’ll put you in the birth column and give you a fresh start!” Now that we are nearing the end of one year and the beginning of another, can we start again?

George Bernard Shaw said: “ This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one … the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”

The Nobel Prize was established by Alfred Nobel, a Swedish chemist, engineer and philanthropist who died in 1896.  But it was erroneously reported that he had died earlier, and when he read his obituary, this man who held 355 different patents, saw that the one most written about and which he would be most remembered by, and which would always identify him, was that he was the inventor of gunpowder.  He didn’t want to be remembered as a man who caused destruction, so he established the Nobel Prizes for creativity. How will I be remembered?  For creating or destroying?