Unit 5 Keep your Dreams Alive
A Famous Quote
You are never dream.
too old to set another goal to dream a new
-- C. S. Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963), Irish-born an
theologian.
He was
established literary figure
whose impact is increasingly
recognized by scholars and teachers.
Text A Life Is Difficult
Pre-reading Questions:
1. Do you believe that life is difficult? What are some of the difficulties that you have
encountered in your life?
2. What suggestions did you get from your parents or friends when you met with difficulties
in your life?
Life is difficult.
This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult –once we truly understand and accept it –then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, that fact that life is difficult no longer matters.
Most people do not fully see this truth that life is difficult.
Instead they moan more or less incessantly, noisily or subtly, about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if life should be easy. They voice their belief, noisily or subtly, that their difficulties represent a unique kind of affliction that should not be and
that has somehow been especially visited upon them, or else upon their families, their tribe, their class, their nation, their race, or even their species, and not upon others. I know about this moaning because I have done my share.
Life is a series of problems. Do we want to moan about them or solve them? Do we want to teach our children to solve them?
Discipline is the basic set of tools we require to solve life ’problems. Without discipline we can solve nothing. With only some discipline we can solve only some problems. With total discipline we can solve all problems.
What makes life difficult is that the process of confronting and solving problems is a painful one. Problems, depending upon their nature, evoke in us frustration of grief, sadness, loneliness, guilt, regret, anger, fear, anxiety, anguish, or despair. These are uncomfortable feelings, often very uncomfortable, often as painful as any kind of physical pain, sometimes equaling the very worst kind of physical pain. Indeed, it is because of the pain that events or conflicts engender in us all that we can call them problems. And since life poses and endless of problems, life is always difficult and is full of pain as well as joy.
Yet it is in this whole process of meeting and solving problems that life has its meaning. Problems are the cutting edge that distinguishes between success and failure. Problems call forth our courage and our wisdom; indeed, they create our courage and our wisdom. It is only because of problems that we grow mentally and spiritually. When we desire to encourage the growth of the human spirit, we challenge and encourage the human capacity to resolve
problems, just as in school we deliberately set problems for our children to solve. It is through the pain of confronting and resolving that we learn. As Benjamin Franklin said, “ Those things that hurt, instruct. ” It is for this reason that wise people learn no to dread but actually to welcome problems and actually to welcome the pain of problems.
Text B Begin Again
Pre-reading Question:
1. If your friends turn to you for advice when they face life
’ s challenges, what will you
say to them?
2. What advice do you expect the author will give to people in difficulties?
To begin again means that you won
ive’ tupg.
To begin again means you
’ re trying.
You can either start over and live your life. Or spend the rest of your life slowly dying.
It is never the falling that makes us fail.
It is never the pain or the crying.
You can never fail in life, my friend,
Unless you give up trying.
–Bob Perks
It seems lately that more and more of my friends are facing some seemingly insurmountable challenges in their lives. A few have lost their jobs
and some have failed marriages. All too many have failed marriages. All too many have health issues or are battling cancer.
I don ’ t know if it is desperation that causes them to turn to me for advice or whether they have come to value our friendship. But it is difficult, to say the least, to offer words of hope when all they feel is hopelessness. They expect answers, some magic waving of a wand, or a roadmap to get them back on their feet again.
I have often struggled with what to say. Mostly because I have faced many of the same challenges in my own life, I remember how empty I felt after someone cheerfully offered words like, “ Keepyour chin up! ” “ Thingswill get
better! ” “ Hang in there! ” “ It ’ s always darkest ? , ” etc. Yes, even those were
quick to quote the Bible to me found me quite
unreceptive at the time.
Now, as an inspiration writer, being thought of as a resource of hope or a good (or bad) example of what to do in life, I have even more people contacting me.
So, what do I say?
“ What can I do, Bob?
” I ’ ve lost my job. What do you suggest? “ Begin again. ”
“ He walked out on me. My whole world just ended. What should I do?
“ Begin again. ”
“ Bob, I know both your on and your wife have cancer. I found out my wife does, too. What did you tell them? ”
“ Begin again.
”
It almost sounds too simple. I imagine in the darkest hours of one ife,
those works would seem useless or uncaring. But it is indeed the answer.
All life challenges bring about and ending – and the chance beginning. for a A job prevents and opportunity to start over somewhere else and maybe even in another career.
A failed marriage does not mean you are through loving or being loved. It means there are others just like you needing to be loved. Find them.
”
’ s l
”
A life-threatening disease does not mean giving up. It means starting a new path to recovery and discovering within yourself the ability to fight back and win.
And if you are a person of faith, even death does not mean it ’ s overIt. means, “ to begin again. ”
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