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A Purposeful Life
Every person, at some point in their lives, needs to ask themselves this simple question: " What is my true purpose in life?”
A purposeful life will help you find something more
meaningful -- in the things you do for yourself and others. It can also
help you achieve what you most want in life - true happiness. People
throughout the world have the same deep desire -- to be happy.
For me, happiness is not something that is given to me with
each passing day. It is something I try to bring to each passing day. In
other words, happiness is not found in the things we want to get from
life. It is found in the things we give to life.
There is an old Buddhist saying, “Thousands of candles can be
lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be
shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.”
I liked telling my students in China that there will be times
when the burdens of life make us feel as if we are carrying them on our
shoulders, but without life’s pressures, diamonds will never appear.
Helen Keller once said, “When one door of happiness closes,
another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do
not see the one which has been opened for us.” On our life Journey,
things may not always go as planned, but that does not mean there are
not greater opportunities before us.
I liked reminding my students that the most precious things
in life cannot be built by hand, bought, or sold by man. They can only
be experienced through a wondrous soul and shared from one heart to the
other. Happiness can only be experienced once it is shared with those
around us.
There is also an old Chinese proverb: “Fools seek happiness
in the distance, the wise grow it under their feet.” We all want happier
lives, and the material things we seek and desire may, in fact, make
our lives a little more comfortable. But the material things we acquire
in life will never provide us with a meaningful and purposeful life.
There are also things in life that we can give away and keep,
such as our word, a happy smile, and a grateful heart. There is an old
saying, “It’s not happiness, that leads to gratitude, it’s gratitude
that leads to happiness.”
Our greatest achievements in life will not consist in fame or
glory but in the unremembered, unrecognized, and undetected acts of
loving kindness bestowed on others. That is where our true purpose and
the meaning of life reside.
I am a firm believer in the universal law—what we give to
others is returned to us a thousandfold. I also liked reminding my
students that kindness and love are the greatest forms of wisdom, and
love itself is the afterglow of life.
Always with love,
Thomas F O'Neill
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