Forty Years On-Mitt Romney

 

Forty years on, when afar and asunder,

Parted are those who are singing today,

When you look back, and forgetfully wonder,

What you were like in your work and your play,

Then, it may be, there will often come o'er you,

Glimpses of notes like the catch of a song-

Visions of boyhood shall float them before you,

Echoes of dreamland shall bear them along...

Routes and discomfitures, rushes, and rallies,

Bases attempted, and rescued, and won,

Strife without anger, and art without malice-

How will it seem to you, forty years on?...

God give us bases to guard or beleaguer,

Games to play out, whether earnest or fun;

Fights for the fearless, and goals for the eager,

Twenty, and thirty, and forty years on!

"How will it seem to you 20 and 30 and 40 years on? What bases will you have chosen to conquer? What games will you have played? Will your life have been a success?

"If you judge your life's success by the world's standards, you may be elated or you may be gravely disappointed.  That, of course, is the secret to predictably successful living: the choice of standards by which you will judge your life's success." 

What will you live for?  What bases will you attempt to win?

"If we live our lives in conflict with our core values, we will experience stress, ill health, and deep regret."

How can we know what our core values are?
Think of five or six people you most admire and respect.  Write down their names and next to their names the five or six attributes that come to mind when we think of that person. 
The attributes that you have listed most frequently represent your core values. 

"Simply, if we live in concert with those values, we live with integrity.  We will be happy and fulfilled.  In contrast, if we live in a way that is not consistent with those core values, we will ultimately be unfulfilled and unhappy."

"The ability to live with integrity with the core of our values of love, family, service, and devotion is entirely up to us.  Fundamentally, this is the business of successful living."

"If you are listening to me today, you are nodding your head in agreement, it's only fair that I warn you that it will not be easy for you to focus your life on achieving your core values.  Unfortunately, virtually the entire world around you will ridicule those values and a life based on them." 

"In airtime and public adulation, vengeance will rise above forgiveness, wealth above charity, power above loyalty, ease above work, luck above preparation.  A relentless campaign will be waged for you to substitute the world's values for your values, to cause you to abandon integrity, to subject your measurement of success to uncontrollable chance."

"IT IS EMPLOYERING, INVIGORATING, AND EMANCIPATING TO LIVE FOR THE SUCCESS YOU CAN CONTROL YOURSELF, TO LIVE FOR YOUR MOST DEEPLY SEATED VALUES AND CONVICTIONS."

"I aspired, and though I achieved not, I was satisfied." - Anonymous

"WHEN LIVING IN INTEGRITY WITH YOUR CORE VALUES, YOUR SUCCESS AND FULFILLMENT ARE NOT SUBJECT TO VOTES, TO OTHERS' OPINIONS, OR TO CHANCE."

"You may agree with me now, but unless you purposefully hold fast to living first by our innermost values, you will not succeed."

"You will read too much into your worldly successes and, perhaps just as dangerously, read too much into your worldly setbacks.  They do not measure your worth nor define your success unless you choose for them to do so."

"Tomorrow is a new game for almost all of you.  You will choose the bases to be won.  Bold, beautiful billboards will beckon you to worldly success. But those bases may unpredictably elude you.  Ultimately, even if you attain them, they will not satisfy."

"A decision to live with integrity will make all the difference."

-W. Mitt Romney