Okay, so this is a totally random collection of thoughts, however wanted to start it off right, in true random style. :)
I was looking at some quotes, and I think these are completely applicable to most people - and continuously overlooked by all.
"The key to life is accepting challenges. Once someone stops doing this, he's dead." - Bette Davis
"That old law about 'an eye for an eye' leaves everybody blind." -Martin Luther King, Jr.
"All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward." - Ellen Glasgow
"Good judgement comes from experience. Sometimes, experience comes from bad judgement." - Christian Slater
"Ignorance is no excuse, it's the real thing." - Irene Peter
"In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years." - Abraham Lincoln
"If you have never been hated by your children, you have never been a parent." - Bette Davis
"A dream doesn't become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work." - Colin Powell
Now, personally, those all speak to me, but I really like the Irene Peter one... I'm sure we ALL know people that fit into that particular quote. I'm sure we've all be guilty of it as well, like or not. And we've all worked with people like that as well at some point in our lives. I think there is a point to having ignorance blatantly demonstrated for us - if for nothing else than to show us we need to grow and expand beyond whatever was the demonstration.
And Bette Davis' quote about parenting, I just had to put in there because I think society is by and large forgetting what the definition of "parent" is, according to Mr. Webster: "a: one that begets or brings forth offspring. b: a person who brings up and cares for another". Nowhere in that definition is the word "friend" nor the phrase "well-liked" mentioned. One of my bigger irks are parents that are more concerned with how their children and children's peers view them as "cool" versus actually stepping up to the plate, BEING a parent, and making the tough calls - not because you're being mean, but because it is your job and right to make those decisions for your family, and your children. Kudos to all parents who ARE parents. :-)
Similar to the parenting, I think we are also getting away from the mentality of "try", "do", "succeed" or "fail" as options to life choices and actions. We are getting too hooked into the "do" then "succeed" path. Life in general I don't think was intended to be perfect - if we don't fail, how do we know how to grow, or how to actually work towards something, improving ourselves and the issue/operation that we failed upon. No one likes to fail, but part of that is the driving force behind so many wonderful accomplishments and advancements - the knowledge of what failure entails, and the drive & desire to avoid and overcome such an end. Or so I believe. I'm sure others disagree with me. But that is the beauty of an opinion - we can have it, and it's not a "right" or "wrong" so much as it is a standing of having an opinion - showing thought process and the ability to care enough to take a stand one way or another. True, some things are a matter of right or wrong, but so many opinions are not in that mono-chromatic scheme - they are in glorious technicolor, and wonderfully entertaining to wade through.... usually... ;-)
Okay, that is my first random gathering of thoughts. Hopefully this was entertaining if nothing else, for all it's ramblings and directional off-shoots.
Final thought for the day courtesy of Robert Frost:
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."
