One Sentence of Wisdom To Live By

All The Wisdom of The World in One Single Sentence

There’s an old story that my hero folk singer/activist Pete Seeger used to tell.

Once upon a time there was a king who had a bunch of wise men hanging about. He wanted to keep them busy and out of trouble as well as educate his sons so he set the wise men to the task of gathering all the world’s knowledge into a single book.

So off they went. It took them an entire year.

And they came back with this beautifully written leather bound book and the king had his boys read it.

But pretty soon he realized that a big heavy book like that was kind of cumbersome so he called all his wise men in and gave them their next challenge.

“I want you to take all of the world’s knowledge and boil it down into a single sentence. Now go do it!”

So off the wise men went.

It took them FIVE long years. And when they came back their beards were getting pretty long.

“Your majesty,” said the head wise man, “we have distilled all of the world’s knowledge down into a single sentence and the sentence is….”

The king and the princes leaned in a little bit in anticipation…

“This Too Shall Pass.”

“hmmmmm” thought the king. “very nice. But I wonder can you do any better than that? I think I would prefer just a single word.”

Well the advisors must have just shuddered at the new task…

But off they went…

It took them TEN LONG YEARS….

When they came back they were hunched over and their beards were pure white…

The king looked up “oh, hello fellows. What’s up?” (it had been so long he’d kind of forgotten what he’d sent them off to do). “Oh yes the one single word to sum up all the world’s knowledge…well?”

The head wise man shuffled forward. “your majesty the one word containing all of the world’s wisdom and knowledge is….” Again the king and the princes and all the courtiers, lords and ladies leaned in to hear the magical word of knowledge, wisdom and insight…

“The word is… MAYBE”.

So today, I want you to remember the sentence that just might actually change your life for the better.

This Too Shall Pass.

We are temporary. We don’t have time to waste being miserable. I met a guy at the conference I was at last week who had this tattooed on his arm:

“This is your life and it’s ending one minute at a time”
– Tyler Durden “Fight Club”

I come back to this point frequently because it motivates the hell out of me. Living with purpose and passion is made possible by a generous grant from “Death”.

We are racing a deadline that we do not actually know. It could be today, tomorrow, next year, 10 years 30 years or more from now.

So my suggestion today is that you live every minute TODAY. Fully breathe it in. Taste it. Swirl it around in  your awareness. Appreciate it. Love it. But most importantly LIVE IT!

• Do something you love to do today.
• Spend some time with someone you love today. (even if it’s YOU :o)
• Do one single simple thing that you truly want to do and that you would INSIST on doing no matter what if you knew today was your last day on this planet.

Here’s a song to support your transformation today:
Song # 285 “Best Day of Your Life”

– Mark

p.s. and if we live until tomorrow, let’s do it all over again every single day we have left. Live! Fully. Love! Fully. Express your deepest dreams, purpose and passions in your ACTIONS.