I ran across an interesting quote the other day and I thought I'd share it here...

What we must decide is how we are valuable rather than how valuable we are

Edgar Freidenberg said that. I don't know who Edgar is, but he said something that's pretty darn interesting. We, as people, need to determine what contributions we make to humankind that will be valuable to the world community as a whole. What we can do to make even just one life better in some small way.

It's for *other* people to state that we are valuable based on those contributions, speeches, or little things that we do to make someone's life better in some small way. In short, it's someone else's determination which of our achievements are the ones that made us valuable on the landscape of history, or the world, or a small child (in this case, it's the child him/herself that tells us this).

Which leads me to another quote to ponder:

The greatest achievements are those that benefit others. ~Lillian Gilcrest~

The wheel, electricity, the icebox/refridgerator, flight, penicillan, relativity, smallpox vaccines... all these are things that have benefitted many people in the world. These are discoveries that were made by people the world considers among the most valuable contributors ever. But there are others that didn't discover a thing...

Martin Luther King... Mother Teresa... Florence Nightingale... people who had great compassion and wisdom far beyond thier years. They, of course, are considered valuable individuals for the changes they made, the selfless words... the changes that they bestowed upon humanity.

Just a little something to think about in this holiday season, as we're running around trying to find the perfect gift, or stressing out about the dinner we're going to make...

...when one of the biggest differences you could make is a small contribution to a food bank... or a soup kitchen... or a shelter.