To be ignorant of the sacrifices of others that yielded the blessings I enjoy leaves me exchanging the reality of 'blessing' for the assumption of 'entitlement.' And once that happens, I will forfeit the reality of the former which will destroy the assumption of the latter. And in what terribly dark place will that now leave me?

Incessantly demanding that I am given some ‘thing’ today may very well destroy the role that it was going to play in my life tomorrow.

To gorge ourselves on everything is to walk away with nothing. And maybe that’s part of the reason why we’re always hungry for something.

At the very point that I’ve taken something for granted, I have at that same moment taken it to its grave. And if I look around, I realize I’ve cultivated quite a cemetery.

As a child, I would sit at the top of the old towering pine and watch the world gloriously spread itself out at my feet. And it wasn’t until I climbed that tree many decades later that it dawned on me how much I have trampled that world under my feet. And so, maybe I need to do a lot more climbing and a lot less walking.

I’m owed nothing, but I’ve been gifted with everything. As such, I owe everything the commitment that I will never find myself treating ‘everything’ as ‘nothing’.

Death reminds us that life is a temporary privilege, not an endless right.

Fairness is not something to which we are entitled. Rather, it is something for which we hope.