I'm clearing out my work e-mails and came across this old "Monday Morning" e-mail. I send Monday e-mails to my team every week to get the week started and keep important deadlines/events top of mind. This particular e-mail was unusually chatty - covering a range of activities including the poor quality of riding at last year's Buckaroo in Baker. Before I list the week's events I give an inspiring quote. Here was last year's July 20 inspiring message...
I found a William Faulkner quote that echoed a conversation my sister, Jason and I had with Dad and his coworker yesterday. The coworker had asked which one of us was the perfect child (it was me) and Dad insisted that we were all perfect, we just all did things completely different from one another (obviously he didn’t want to hurt Jill’s feelings and Bobby wasn’t there to defend himself). Basically, the conversation became one of the secret to succeeding in life is to identify the weakest link and be better than “that guy.” William Faulkner puts it a little more elegantly:
Don’t bother to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.
William Faulkner either didn’t have siblings or was the perfect child and knew it. ;-)
1 comment:
Sounds like your dad could have been a professional diplomat. :)
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