As I sat writing my yearly greeting mail I came upon this Xmas gift suggestion from Oren Arnold: To your enemy, forgiveness. To an opponent, tolerance. To a friend, your heart. To a customer, service. To all, charity. To every child, a good example. To yourself, respect.
At first it looked like yet another corny quote that abound on the web but as I read and reread it I realised how relevant it was to the world we live in.
I presume we would all agree to this simplistic list and find it obvious but if we just pondered for a while how many of us actually comply with it. When was the last time we actually truly forgave someone or for that matter practices tolerance? I wonder.
But what really rung true for me was the good example to every child. Just last week we saw the the senseless gunning down of a teenager by his classmate and once again one realised the total absence of role models that children could emulate?
But it is the last word of this quote that should set us thinking. Do we really respect ourselves for if we did the world would be a different place where tolerance, forgiveness, charity, good service and god example would come by naturally.