"Every promise of the soul has innumerable fulfillments:
each of its joys ripens into a new want." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Our heart aches for more; more knowledge, more wisdom, more success. Life is not a zero sum game. There's no limit on what we can learn, discover, be or do. Within us are "slumbering powers" and a yearning to be the best version of ourselves. But we get distracted in our race to be better, do more and have more than someone else, when it's us we should really be working on.
Questions that help us work on us:
What can I do today? What can I learn today? Who can I be today? Who can I help today? What can I be grateful for today? How can I improve my life today?
The beauty of it is, when you do it for yourself, you do it for others.
It's like the story of the father and son... His son was restless and irritating. So his father gave him a task. He pulled a page from his newspaper on which there was a picture of the world. He tore it into many pieces and said to his son, "Let's see if you can put the world back together." Within a few minutes the young boy came back to his father with all the pieces of the world accurately taped together. Stunned, the boy's father asked how he accomplished this task so quickly. "Easy," said the boy. "On the other side of the page was a picture of a man. When I got the man right, I got the world right."
If you hope to make the world a better place, be a better version of you.
"To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty,
To find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson