LIFE

I wish I could take credit for the following, but I cannot. It came over the Internet and I cannot give credit where credit is due. But I think the message is one we all need to hear as we begin a new year.

           

"Life isn't about keeping score. It’s not about how many friends you have. It's not about if you have plans for the weekend or if you're alone. It isn't about who you're dating, who you used to date, how many people you've dated, or if you haven't been with anyone at all. It isn't about who you have kissed; it's not about sex. It isn't about who your family is or how much money they have, or what kind of car you drive, or where you went to school. It's not about how beautiful or ugly you are, or what clothes you wear, what shoes you have on, or what kind of music you enjoy. It's not about if your hair is blond, red, black, or brown; or if your skin is too light or too dark.

           

"It has nothing to do with what grades you get, how smart you are, how smart everybody else thinks you are, or how smart standardized tests say you are. It's not about what clubs you're in or how good you are in sports. It's not about representing your whole being on a piece of paper and seeing who will accept your application.

           

"But life is about who you love and who you hurt. It's about who you make happy or unhappy purposefully. It's about keeping or betraying trust. It's about friendship used as a sanctity or a weapon. It's about what you say and mean, maybe hurtful, maybe heartening; about starting rumors and contributing to petty gossip. It's about what judgments you pass and why. It's about who you've ignored with full control and intention. It's about jealousy, fear, ignorance and revenge. It's about carrying inner hate and love, letting either grow to fruition. But most of all it is about using your life to touch or poison other people's hearts in such a way that could never have occurred alone. Only you choose the way those hearts are affected; and those choices are what life is all about."

           

We will make thousands of choices this year, each of them deliberate. Each choice we make has a consequence, an outcome, a result that affects not just ourself but everyone around us – everyone else. Those consequences are permanent. They never go away.

           

Father Theodore Hesburgh, the former President of Notre Dame University, said this: "My basic principle is that you don't make decisions because they are easy; you don't make them because they are cheap; you don't make them because they're popular. You make them because they're right."

           

Making the right decision, the right choice takes time and effort; it takes prayer and thought; it takes the grace of God and the willingness to be informed and led by that grace. It is often difficult. Yet no matter how difficult, we will never regret making the right choice.

May 2014 be a year of life filled with right choices for each one of us, a year of grace and love.