found at: http://www.wiseoldsayings.com/maturity-quotes/
“Maturity is the ability to think, speak and act your feelings within the bounds of dignity. The measure of your maturity is how spiritual you become during the midst of your frustrations.” ~ Samuel Ullman
“Maturity: Be able to stick with a job until it is finished.
Be able to bear an injustice without having to get even.
Be able to carry money without spending it.
(To) Do your duty without being supervised.” ~ Ann Landers
found on: https://awakenthegreatnesswithin.com/40-inspirational-chinese-proverbs-on-life-success/
“We count our miseries carefully, and accept our blessings without much thought.” Chinese Proverb
“Be not afraid of growing slowly; Be afraid only of standing still.” Chinese Proverb
found at: http://wisdomquotes.com/marcus-aurelius-quotes/
“Is any man afraid of change? What can take place without change? What then is more pleasing or more suitable to the universal nature? And can you take a hot bath unless the wood for the fire undergoes a change? And can you be nourished unless the food undergoes a change? And can anything else that is useful be accomplished without change? Do you not see then that for yourself also to change is just the same, and equally necessary for the universal nature?”
As we commence to ring in the New Year of 2020 let the new year resolutions… be resolute.
We say, “I’m gonna do this… and I’m gonna do that… but then the novelty wears off, the shine dims, and “the gold loses its luster.”
Resolutions start around the time you turn eighteen, you know… when you are all grown up, an adult. (Heehe:))
Since 2016 I have been implementing and applying tactics to my life, learned from ‘Success’ books, that inform you how you may create a new… happy, healthy, positive, successful HABIT… for your life’s journey.
Towards the end of the 2019 Christmas season, the 26th actually, I re-engaged my exercise routine… getting ahead of the New Year and resolving not to make any exercise resolutions, as I believe I have resolved the issue of maintaining good health resolutely!
If you study, research… or are just more adept than I am… you start to make ‘discoveries’ that ‘link’ ‘successful habits’ to Gods natural laws, principles and commandments. (nobody ever accused me of being too quick on the uptake, I meditate, ruminate, contemplate, and ponder… a lot… it aggravates people sometimes)
My studies on mental health, mental fortitude, perseverance, and being res – ilient, (thought I was gonna use resolute again… didn’t ya?) keep bringing me back to feudal Japan, and the Samurai. And here I thought all roads led to Rome.
My 2019 Christmas included me receiving a book. From my oldest son.
Titled: ‘The Book of Five Rings’ by Miyamoto Musashi
Who happens to be Thee SAMURAI. One of antiquity. One of legend and lore. And one who is chronicled by real history as a master swordsman, who never lost a duel… ever… from the age of thirteen to about twenty-eight or twenty-nine, sixty individual contests, some to the death, others using wooden ‘bokken’ (practice equipment, thing is… he still killed a few with those) according to his own recollection, and also recorded by a few contemporary historians.
I mention this because receiving this was “out of the blue” but was on the list as the next book to get. In it he talks about ‘a flowers bloom’ and how styles, systems or techniques can ‘force the flower to bloom.’
I am fully expecting 2020 to be a blooming year for me… without any ‘forcing,’ relying instead on Gods principles, natural laws, commandments… and timing.
Gods natural law of “reaping and sowing” requires us to do some plowing, grading, planting, hoeing, weeding, watering, mulching and in the case of roses… some manure handling… if you want really nice ones… and… a lot of waiting in between all the work, because you don’t do it all at once.
It takes time for anything to mature. But once it does it can produce… flowers and fruit… a bountiful harvest.
Going into 2020 I would like to share with you a mature flower I found recently. It isn’t readily recognizable in the United States, even though it was developed in Alabama. BUT… guess where it is readily recognizable and appreciated for the perennial beauty it sustains?
That is correct… it is found in the Land of the Chrysanthemum… Japan.
Our first quote today was supplied by Mr. Samuel Ullman, of Alabama, 1840 – 1924. He also wrote a poem. For more on Mr. Ullman visit https://www.uab.edu/ullmanmuseum/
The poem is titled: Youth
As we admire the newness of the new year we can look into this poem and see not only youth, not only aging, but by what Spirit we can remain ‘young at heart’ while being appreciative of our own current level of maturity.
Samuel Ullman
Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity of the appetite, for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of sixty more than a boy of twenty. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals.
Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust.
Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human being’s heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing child-like appetite of what’s next, and the joy of the game of living. In the center of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and power from men and from the infinite, so long are you young.
When the aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown old, even at twenty, but as long as your aerials are up, to catch the waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at eighty.”
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