Quote of the Week...from Max Ehrmann

Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.                                            --Max Ehrmann, Desiderata

I first heard the prose poem Desiderata, composed nearly a century ago by writer Max Ehrmann, on the radio in 1972.  Disc jockey Les Crane, with a instrumental and choral background, recorded and released then a popular single (which I own) on which he recited the entire piece...it made a deep impression on me then and throughout the subsequent years.  The above excerpt is perhaps the most powerful part of Desiderata as it gives very practical advice for dealing with potentially adversarial and destructive relationships...both to see trouble coming and to avoid becoming complicit in it.  As for the first part about loud and aggressive persons, I tend to avoid them like the plague, recognizing in the process that perhaps there is a useful place in the world for this personality type...but not around me.  If you're pushing a point for me to consider and being forceful about it, you've lost the argument before you've even made it...maybe that's not one of my "good" points, but there you are.  As for comparing myself with others, I've found that my problem hasn't been so much me doing the comparing about them but rather them doing the comparing about me...and then letting me know (sometimes in a loud and/or aggressive manner) their "verdicts".  As I tend to be singular and task-oriented about how I structure my activities, work, and goals and am not excessively concerned about how I stack up about what I do (or am) in others' estimations, I'm sure that quite a few folks come to the conclusion that I don't care about their opinions of me.  But like just about everyone else on this planet, I want to be accepted and esteemed by others...but only up to a point.  Spending my time obsessing on how I stand in someone else's evaluation of me seems like a monumental waste of a perfectly good life, and I've seen enough in the media over the years of great achievers, be it in entertainment, government, the intellect, adventures, athletics, amassing wealth, or any other area our society places value on, whose lives apart from their area of accomplishment are complete shambles...I'm content with being the person I am, thank you...