Let Your Light Shine

I watched the movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button for the first time the other night.

Then I read the short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

In both versions, Benjamin Button is born an old man who gets younger as he ages.

When he looks old, he’s actually young and when he’s older, he has the body of a child.

He had a few short years in between where he looked and felt the same age.

Isn’t this the case with us all? When we’re young we have the energy to take action, but we lack the knowledge. After a lifetime of gaining knowledge, we end our lives without the energy to take advantage of our wisdom.

We make mistakes, we live and love, we learn, and we press on.

I interned at a retirement home and met a lot of very elderly people coming to grips with the fact that they never will figure out life. New opportunities and new situations give us the opportunity to make the same mistakes, because so many of us fail to learn from our mistakes.

And when we finally do learn, unfortunately, like Benjamin Button, we’re unable to do anything with the wisdom of our lives.

Henry David Thoreau said that most of us lead lives of quiet desperation.

Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote,

“Alas for those that never sing,
But die with all their music in them.”

Don’t go to your grave with your wisdom still in you. Share your knowledge while you still can. Tell others what you know. Sing your song. Let your light shine.

There’s only one of you. Be the best you can be, today, and be quick to tell others what you know. Because the day will come when you can’t.

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Jim Meisner, Jr. is the author of Soar to Success the Wright Way, a motivational history book about the Wright brothers and the novel Faith, Hope, and Baseball.

Follow this link for more information about both books: https://faithonthefringe.com/faith-hope-and-baseball-a-novel/