| Who'll Cry At Your Funeral? Our children were young--one preschooler and one elementary age. The business finally started to do reasonably well. People who before wouldn't give me the time of day suddenly acted friendly. The mail started to bring invitations to join organizations and attend functions--community chest groups, societies, dinner parties, service organizations. Money was always involved. I couldn't believe the pressure we felt to join up. How do we pick? On what basis do we prioritize our yeses and nos? For a long time I said yes to just about everything. We were about to buy into a network of shallow relationships built on the sole foundation of commercial gain. Time with our kids, who needed us most and whom we loved most, was about to go into remission. My wife, Patsy, the proverbial woman of intuition, saw what was happening first, but I was blind as a bat, thinking, "We've arrived!" "Yes," Patsy added, "but at the wrong place." One evening, as we reviewed our calendar and a stack of time consuming opportunities, the thought came, "Why not prioritize everything we do on the basis of who's going to be crying at our funeral?" We did it. The results saved our family. This simple question--"Who's going to be crying at our funeral?" --cuts out time wasters with the accuracy of a laser beam. Why should you and I give ourselves to people who don't love us, at the expense of those who do? Oleh (c) Patrick M Morley Edisi Indonesia kisah ini terhimpun bersama 136 kisah lainnya dalam "Embun Bagi Jiwa" Terbit Maret 1999 oleh Yayasan Gloria. |
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