Inspirational Thoughts from James
James D. Milton
"The Home Run"
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On June 18th, I went to my little brother's baseball game as I always
did. Cory was 12 years old at the time and had been playing baseball for
a couple of years. When I saw that he was warming up to be next at bat, I
decided to head over to the dugout to give him a few pointers. But when I
got there, I simply said, "I love you."
In return, he asked, "Does this mean you want me to hit a home run?"
I smiled and said, "Do your best."
As he walked up to the plate, there was a certain aura about him. He
looked so confident and so sure about what he was going to do. One swing
was all he took and, wouldn't you know, he hit his first home run! He ran
around those bases with such pride -- his eyes sparkled and his face was
lit up. But what touched my heart the most was when he walked back over
to the dugout. He looked over at me with the biggest smile I've ever seen
and said, "I love you too, Ter."
I don't remember if his team won or lost that game. On that special
summer day in June, it simply didn't matter.
By Terri Vandermark from "Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul" by Jack
Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, and Kimberly Kirberger, 1997
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"The Beauty Remains; the Pain Passes"
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Although Henri Matisse was nearly 28 years younger than Auguste Renoir,
the two great artists were dear friends and frequent companions. When
Renoir was confined to his home during the last decade of his life,
Matisse visited him daily. Renoir, almost paralyzed by arthritis,
continued to paint in spite of his infirmities.
One day as Matisse watched the elder painter working in his studio,
fighting torturous pain with each brush stroke, he blurted out:
"Auguste, why do you continue to paint when you are in such agony?"
Renoir answered simply: "The beauty remains; the pain passes." And so,
almost to his dying day, Renoir put paint to canvas. One of his most
famous paintings, The Bathers, was completed just two years before his
passing, 14 years after he was stricken by this disabling disease.
"The Best of Bits & Pieces" from "A 3rd Serving of Chicken Soup for the
Soul" by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, 1966
<I can sure relate to this story -- at least the pain part.>
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"I Don't Despair About Kids Today"
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Sometimes when I'm flying from one speaking engagement to another, I find
myself sitting next to someone who's quite talkative. This is often a
pleasant experience for me because I'm an inveterate people-watcher.
I've heard stories of sadness, delight, fear and joy, and some that would
rival those of Oprah and Geraldo.
Sad to say, there are times when I'm sitting next to someone who just
wants to vent his spleen on a captive audience for 600 miles. It was one
of those days. I settled in, resignedly, as my seatmate began his
disquisition on the terrible state of the world with, "You know, kids
today are..." He went on and on, sharing vague notions of the terrible
state of teens and young adults, based on watching the six o'clock news
rather selectively.
I gratefully disembarked the plane and bought a local paper on the way to
the hotel. There, on an inside page, was an article that I believe ought
to have been the front-page headline news.
In a little Indiana town, there was a 15-year-old boy with a brain tumor.
He was undergoing radiation and chemotherapy treatments. As a result of
those treatments, he had lost all of his hair. I remember how I would
have felt about that at his age -- I would have been mortified!
This young man's classmates spontaneously came to the rescue: all the
boys in his grade asked their mothers if they could shave their heads so
that Brian wouldn't be the only bald boy in the high school. There, on
that page, was a photograph of a mother shaving off all of her son's
hair, with the family looking on approvingly.
No, I don't despair about kids today.
By Hanoch McCarty, Ed.D. from "Condensed Chicken Soup for the Soul" by
Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, and Patty Hansen, 1996
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"The Trouble Tree"
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The carpenter I hired to help me restore an old farmhouse had just
finished a rough first day on the job. A flat tire made him lose an hour
of work, his electric saw quit and now his ancient pickup truck refused
to start. While I drove him home, he sat in stony silence. On arriving,
he invited me in to meet his family. As we walked toward the front door,
he paused briefly at a small tree, touching the tips of the branches with
both hands.
When opening the door, he underwent an amazing transformation. His tanned
face was wreathed in smiles and he hugged his two small children and gave
his wife a kiss.
Afterward he walked me to the car. We passed the tree and my curiosity
got the better of me. I asked him about what I had seen him do earlier.
"Oh, that's my trouble tree," he replied. "I know I can't help having
troubles on the job, but one thing for sure, troubles don't belong in the
house with my wife and the children. So I just hang them up on the tree
every night when I come home. Then in the morning I pick them up again.
"Funny thing is," he smiled, "when I come out in the morning to pick 'em
up, there ain't nearly as many as I remember hanging up the night
before."
By Author Unknown from "A 4th Course of Chicken Soup for the Soul" by
Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Hanoch McCarty, and Meladee McCarty,
1997
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"A Lesson from My Father"
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We come by business naturally in our family. Each of the seven children
in our family worked in our father's store, "Our Own Hardware-Furniture
Store," in Mott, North Dakota, a small town on the prairies. We started
working by doing odd jobs like dusting, arranging shelves and wrapping,
and later graduated to serving customers. As we worked and watched, we
learned that work was about more than survival and making a sale.
One lesson stands out in my mind. It was shortly before Christmas. I was
in the eighth grade and was working evenings, straightening the toy
section. A little boy, five or six years old, came in. He was wearing a
brown tattered coat with dirty worn cuffs. His hair was straggly, except
for a cowlick that stood straight up from the crown of his head. His
shoes were scuffed and his one shoelace was torn.
The little boy looked poor to me -- too poor to afford to buy anything.
He looked around the toy section, picked up this item and that, and
carefully put them back in their place.
Dad came down the stairs and walked over to the boy. His steel blue eyes
smiled and the dimple in his cheek stood out as he asked the boy what he
could do for him. The boy said he was looking for a Christmas present to
buy his brother. I was impressed that Dad treated him with the same
respect as any adult. Dad told him to take his time and look around. He
did.
After about 20 minutes, the little boy carefully picked up a toy plane,
walked up to my dad and said, "How much for this, Mister?"
"How much you got?" Dad asked.
The little boy held out his hand and opened it. His hand was creased with
wet lines of dirt from clutching his money. In his hand lay two dimes, a
nickel and two pennies -- 27 cents. The price on the toy plane he'd
picked out was $3.98.
"That'll just about do it," Dad said as he closed the sale. Dad's reply
still rings in my ears. I thought about what I'd seen as I wrapped the
present. When the little boy walked out of the store, I didn't notice the
dirty, worn coat, the straggly hair, or the single torn shoelace. What I
saw was a radiant child with a treasure.
By LaVonn Steiner from "Chicken Soup for the Soul at Work" by Jack
Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Maida Rogerson, Martin Rutte and Tim
Clauss, 1996
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"Run, Patti, Run"
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At a young and tender age, Patti Wilson was told by her doctor that she
was an epileptic. Her father, Jim Wilson, is a morning jogger. One day
she smiled through her teenage braces and said, “Daddy what I’d really
love to do is run with you every day, but I’m afraid I’ll have a
seizure.”
Her father told her, “If you do, I know how to handle it so let’s start
running!”
That’s just what they did every day. It was a wonderful experience for
them to share and there were no seizures at all while she was running.
After a few weeks, she told her father, “Daddy, what I’d really love to
do is break the world’s long-distance running record for women.”
Her father checked the Guinness Book of World Records and found that the
farthest any woman had run was 80 miles. As a freshman in high school,
Patti announced, “I’m going to run from Orange County up to San
Francisco.” (A distance of 400 miles.) “As a sophomore,” she went on,
“I’m going to run to Portland, Oregon.” (Over 1,500 miles.) “As a junior
I’ll run to St. Louis. (About 2,000 miles.) “As a senior I’ll run to the
White House.” (More than 3,000 miles away.)
In view of her handicap, Patti was as ambitious as she was enthusiastic,
but she said she looked at the handicap of being an epileptic as simply
“an inconvenience.” She focused not on what she had lost, but on what she
had left.
That year she completed her run to San Francisco wearing a T-shirt that
read, “I love Epileptics.” Her dad ran every mile at her side, and her
mom, a nurse, followed in a motor home behind them in case anything went
wrong.
In her sophomore year Patti’s classmates got behind her. They built a
giant poster that read, “Run, Patti, Run!” (This has since become her
motto and the title of a book she has written.) On her second marathon,
en route to Portland, she fractured a bone in her foot. A doctor told
her she had to stop her run. He said, “I’ve got to put a cast on your
ankle so that you don’t sustain permanent damage.”
“Doc, you don’t understand,” she said. “This isn’t just a whim of mine,
it’s a magnificent obsession! I’m not just doing it for me, I’m doing it
to break the chains on the brains that limit so many others. Isn’t there
a way I can keep running?” He gave her one option. He could wrap it in
adhesive instead of putting it in a cast. He warned her that it would be
incredibly painful, and told her, “It will blister.” She told the doctor
to wrap it up.
She finished the run to Portland, completing her last mile with the
governor of Oregon. You may have seen the headlines: “Super Runner, Patti
Wilson Ends Marathon For Epilepsy On Her 17th Birthday.”
After four months of almost continuous running from West Coast to the
East Coast, Patti arrived in Washington and shook the hand of the
President of the United States.
<I hope that was all she shook!>
She told him, “I wanted people to know that epileptics are normal human
beings with normal lives.”
I told this story at one of my seminars not long ago, and afterward a big
teary-eyed man came up to me, stuck out his big meaty hand and said,
“Mark, my name is Jim Wilson. You were talking about my daughter, Patti.”
Because of her noble efforts, he told me enough money had been raised to
open up 19 multi-million-dollar epileptic centers around the country.
If Patti Wilson can do so much with so little, what can you do to
outperform yourself in a state of total wellness?
By Mark V. Hansen from "Chicken Soup for the Soul" by Jack Canfield and
Mark Victor Hansen, 1993
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Goodbye from,
James