Living Lightly

Recently, I was looking at an old book that I purchased by one of the first equal rights activists in the United States - a man who was born into slavery in the 1850s - Booker T. Washington. The book was published in 1902 and is entitled Character Building. In this book is a series of lectures that Washington gave to his students at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama on Sunday nights. The first one is called "Two Sides of Life."

Washington said to his students, "I want you to go out from this institution so trained and so developed that you will be constantly looking for the bright, encouraging and beautiful things in life." He goes on to say, "The persons who live constantly in a fault-finding atmosphere, who see only the dark side of life, become negative characters. They are people who never go forward."

I like Washington's challenge, because it encourages us to live lightly - to cease striving, to stop being so negative, and especially to stop taking life so seriously. As Proverbs 17:22 says, "A cheerful heart is good medicine." It's time to laugh a whole lot more! And, speaking of proverbs, here is a great one from Keri Jones' little booklet entitled The Bright Side of Life: "We never stop laughing because we are old but we grow old because we stop laughing." Makes sense, doesn't it?