Choose...........................

 Remember Alfred Nobel, later of Nobel Prize fame, who – reportedly – read his own obituary that was mistakenly printed when his brother died and a newspaper got mixed up. He was horrified at what he read and realized he should change his behavior.

Don’t count on a newsroom mix-up: Decide what you would like your obituary to say and live the life to deserve it.

Greatness does not come about through accumulating great amounts of money, great amounts of publicity or great power in government. When you help someone in any of thousands of ways, you help the world. Kindness is costless but also priceless. Whether you are religious or not, it’s hard to beat The Golden Rule as a guide to behavior.

I write this as one who has been thoughtless countless times and made many mistakes but also became very lucky in learning from some wonderful friends how to behave better (still a long way from perfect, however). Keep in mind that the cleaning lady is as much a human being as the Chairman.

 I wish all who read this a very happy Thanksgiving. Yes, even the jerks; it’s never too late to change. Remember to thank America for maximizing your opportunities. But it is – inevitably – capricious and sometimes venal in distributing its rewards.

Choose your heroes very carefully and then emulate them. You will never be perfect, but you can always be better.

Warren Buffett, from his last annual letter

thanks Chris

A worthy aim......................

 

    Try this:  Write down what you want your obituary to say, then figure out how to live up to it.

-Morgan Housel

Haven't read too many...................

 ...................obituaries like this one.  Zesty.

via

Fifty years ago........................

From the obituaries...........a way-to-young Frankie Lymon dies

 

Only in America.......................................

      There was no incentive, then, to move higher.  And perhaps the office of governor of New York was high enough for one lifetime.  It already marked an extraordinary rise for a boy born in Queens, behind a shop, to immigrants from Italy who spoke no English;  for the son of a grocer in a stained overall who saved crusts for those even needier than he was.  The boy Mario had soared through baseball, law and politics, but to them he was still the lucky scamp, and he would test out his policy ideas on Momma later to get her earthy, tart reaction.  His ideal America was just this, a bickering, diverse family in which each member nonetheless worked for the enterprise and all were in it together;  and where almost no one, certainly not he, so indulged the sin of pride as to think themselves worthy of the very highest place.

-excerpted from this The Economist obituary for Mario Cuomo

Knives........................

Knives mattered.  No man should be without a pocket-knife, preferably gold-handled.  How else would you peel and orange, or cut a sprig of privet blossom for your second-youngest daughter?  A blunt knife was not just a bad way to hurt an onion, but sacrilege, and insult to God's creation, its beauty and its excellence.
-as excerpted from this obituary of Robert Capon