A 92-year-old, well-poised and proud man, who is always fully dressed each morning by eight o'clock with his hair fashionably coifed and  shaved perfectly, even though he is legally blind, moved to a nursing home today.

His wife of 70 years recently passed away, making the move necessary.

After many hours of waiting patiently in the lobby of the nursing home, he smiled sweetly when told his room was ready.

As he maneuvered his walker to the elevator, the attendant provided a visual description of his tiny room, including the eyelet curtains that had  been hung on his window.

"I love it," he stated with the enthusiasm of an eight-year-old  having just been presented with a new puppy.

"Mr. Jones, you haven't seen the room; just wait."

"That doesn't have anything to do with it," he replied.

"Happiness is something you decide on ahead of time. Whether I like my room or not doesn't depend on how the furniture is arranged ... it's  how I arrange my mind. I already decided to love it. It's a decision I make every morning when I wake up. I have a choice;

I can spend the day in bed recounting the difficulty I have with the
parts  of my body that no longer work, or get out of bed and be thankful for the ones
that do!

Each day is a gift, and as long as my eyes open, I'll focus on the new day and all the happy memories I've stored away just for this time in my life. Old age is like a bank account. You withdraw from it what you've put in.

So, my advice to you would be to deposit a lot of happiness in the bank
account of memories!

Thank you for your part in filling my memory bank. You see, I am still depositing."

Remember the five simple rules to be happy:

1. Free your heart from hatred and jealousy.
2. Free your mind from worries, particularly about things you can't change.
3. Live simply.
4. Give more.
5. Expect less
6. Have gratitude
Inspired by my Aunt Pearl Hirsh

"I cried because I had had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet." - Abraham Lincoln
Note: Sent by my nephew Benjamin Mahr

"Everyone wants to understand painting.  Why don't they try to
understand the song of the birds?  Why do they love a night, a flower,
everything which surrounds man, without attempting to understand them? 
Whereas where painting is concerned, they want to understand."
Pablo Picasso

"Outside show is a poor substitute for inner worth."
Aesop

Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength
Arnold Schwarzenegger

"Nothing succeeds like success
Alexandre Dumas

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time
Abraham Lincoln

"I don't believe in accidents. There are only encounters in history. There are no accidents."-- Elie Wiesel

"There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book
and the tired man who wants a book to read." G.K. Chesterton

"He can run. But he can’t hide"
JOE LOUIS, remark to a reporter prior to the Joe Louis—Billy Conn boxing match, June 19, 1946

"Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes you get rained out, all times though you get to play again ."
Satchel Paige

Thought for The Day - Response from Another on the Distribution list

“Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.”

– Shel Silverstein

 

From: Donna Dickinson Schneider

Thoughts for The Day as Sent by others in response to request

From the distribution list these 7 responded they are given in the order they were received:

 

1) "I know that our bodies were made to thrive only in pure air, and the scenes in which pure air is found.  If the death exhalations that brood the broad towns in which we so fondly compact ourselves were made visible, we should flee as from a plague."  John Muir

Bonnie Berns

2) "The bad news: there is no key to the universe.  The good news: it was never locked."

(Swami Beyondananda)

Jimmy DeMesa

 

3) When you do all the talking you only learn what you already know

Lori Antoniou

4) I can only contribute something from my country: Here in America would be, “Never Look Back or else..” For us folks in Venezuela we would say: “Goat that turns around breaks his neck”…Get it? 

Luisa Bustamante

 

5) One thing to bear in mind: no one can teach you when to close. You learn when to close only by closing too early and too often. You will never learn to close if you continue to close too seldom and too late.                      Karl Bach/Selling Is Simple

 

Like love, courage is no joking matter. If it yields once, it will have to yield again, and again. The same difficulty will have to be conquered later on, and it would have been better to get it over with.                              Baltasar Gracian.

 

People may doubt what you say, but they will believe what you do.     In other words, What you do speaks so loudly, I can't hear what you say.      

Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Neil J. Cantor

6) "Anger hurts no one but he/she who contains it."

Maria Elena Buria

7) "The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny ...'"Isaac Asimov
US science fiction novelist & scholar (1920 - 1992)

George Kaufman

The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages are perpetuated by quotations. - Benjamin D'Israeli

Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right
Henry Ford

Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest
Mark Twain

"While one person hesitates because he feels inferior, the other is busy making mistakes and becoming superior
Henry C. Link

Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.
Napoleon Bonaparte

"Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. William Faulkner

"Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, so everything must be said again."
Andre Gide

"Misdirected life force is the activity in disease process. Disease has no energy save what it borrows from the life of the organism. It is by adjusting the life force that healing must be brought about, and it is the sun as transformer and distributor of primal spiritual energy that must be utilized in this process, for life and the sun are so intimately connected."
Kabbalah

"If you spend as much time in thinking through your actions before the fact as you do in justifying your actions after the fact, you would be light years ahead."
Sol Mahr - paraphrased by fsm

"The definition of insanity is doing the same things and expecting a different outcome.”
-Albert Einstein

Note: This requires an explanation
When I was recovering from my illness a few years ago, my brother in law Abe Altschule, now deceased, and even though at that time divorced from my sister, sent me an e-mail of encouragement and support emphasizing the importance of attitude in transcending an illness or adversity.
He had recently had a kidney transplant, which later unfortunately proved fatal.
He wrote to me among other things, "just always remember, don't let the bastards get you down"
His thoughtful intended motivation and support was of course appreciated even though in a style I thought to be different than I was used to
Recently my friend Neil Cantor during a discussion we were having shared with me a statement he has used in his life as a motivater
"Illigetimi non carbordundum"
which he explained to me means....
"Don't let the bastards grind you down"
It was only the second time I had ever heard it used, and both times sourced by people I respect. So I am including it as this Thought For the Day