I think about how best to live my grandmother's twin mantras that 'Life is not a dress rehearsal' and 'Life is not about what happens to you, but what you do with what happens to you.'
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
My grandmother, who passed away at the beginning of November, had a core adage in her life that 'life is not about what happens to you but about what you do with what happens to you.' She recently had been cajoling me and challenging me to do more with my life. To lead more of a purposefully public life.
I remember a specific moment, watching my grandmother hang the clothes on the line, and her saying to me, 'you are going to have to learn to do this,' and me being in that space of awareness and knowing that my life would not be the same as my grandmother's life.
I always say I lived my life with my grandmother. She was emotionally stable, and she was very encouraging to me.
In raising children, life brings forth those things where you do what you should never have done and what I taught you never to do. And when my kids have done those things, I just kind of look at them and say, 'Now you know life.'
For me, life is about experience and being a good person.
Life is a wonderful thing to talk about, or to read about in history books - but it is terrible when one has to live it.
Life has a practice of living you, if you don't live it.
I hope telling stories though 'Making a Difference' - as in my academic work and nonprofit work - will help me to live my grandmother's adage of 'Life is not about what happens to you, but about what you do with what happens to you.'
I always try to avoid anything that has to do with my life.
My mother always told me that as you go through life, no matter what you do, or how you do it, you leave a little footprint, and that's your legacy.