1st paragraph - Quote my friend, Deb Booth, who shared these words to her Facebook...
A superb bit of writing, filled with wonderful reminders - by Dean Koontz ~ if you take nothing more from it than this, that's fine, too:
"Brighten the corner where you are, and you can light the world."
**************************************************************
"Not one day in anyone's life, so her father taught, is an uneventful day, no day without profound meaning, no matter how dull and boring it might seem, no matter whether you are a seamstress or a queen, a shoeshine boy or a movie star, a renowned philosopher or a Down's-syndrome child.
Because in every day of your life, there are opportunities to perform little kindnesses for others, both by conscious acts of will and unconscious example. Each smallest act of kindness - even just words of hope when they are needed, the remembrance of a birthday, a compliment that engenders a smile - reverberates across great distances and spans of time, affecting lives unknown to the one whose generous spirit was the source of this good echo, because kindness is passed on and grows each time it's passed, until a simple courtesy becomes an act of selfless courage years later and far away.
Likewise, each small meanness, each thoughtless expression of hatred, each envious and bitter act, regardless of how petty, can inspire others and is therefore the seed that ultimately produces evil fruit, poisoning people you have never met, and whom you never will.
All human lives are so profoundly and intimately entwined - those dead, those living, those generations yet to come - that the fate of all is the fate of each, and the hope of humanity rests in every heart and in every pair of hands. Therefore, after every failure we are obliged to strive again for success, and when faced with the end of one thing, we must build something new and better in the ashes, just as from pain and grief we must weave hope, for each of us is a thread critical to the strength - to the very survival - of the human tapestry. Every hour in every life contains such unrecognized potential to affect the world that the great days for which we, in our great dissatisfaction yearn, are already with us; all great days and thrilling possibilities are combined always in this momentous day.
Brighten the corner where you are, and you will light the world."
(From "From the Corner of His Eye" by Dean Koontz)
