What I really would like to blog about today is Jesus Christ’s take on “success” and “goals,” as revealed in the things he both said and did. But to do justice to a topic like that requires a lot more time and energy, study and thought incubation, than I have handy right now. Perhaps the weekend will offer enough time and rest. I hope so. It’s most often from such wellsprings that the best products arise. So hopefully I say that in the coming final week of February (and a bit into March) such pieces may appear here.

For now, instead, I share two entries I journaled prompted by quotes in this journaling book—because they address “achievement,” which is the topic this meandering month has focused on a lot.

The first is commentary on this Theodore Roosevelt quote:

“Believe you can and you’re halfway there.”

I immediately found myself responding thus:

“Desire it enough to aim toward it even if you don’t know whether you can.”

But then I went on addressing the second half that is needed for any accomplishment:

“Many have never achieved what they firmly believed they could, simply because they never put in the grueling effort necessary.  Many live in a fantasy world of what they believe they could achieve rather than working toward the goal. I’ve done that myself.

You must feel that the effort is worth it, whether you ever reach the desired objective or not. A thing worth doing is worth trying to do. And the belief that God can do all things, and do them well, holds the key to perseverance and success for me. I stand back afterwards, many times, astounded by what He enabled me to achieve. Truly in many cases, I still do not think I had it in myself. But God…”

The second is my response to this quote from Leonardo da Vinci:

“I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough: we must apply. Being willing is not enough. We must do.”

I wrote,

“Well, this man certainly was a doer—although doing, even accomplishing, is not so much a measure of one’s goodness, of whether the his doings were ethical, kind, and right in the eyes of God, etc—and old Leonardo evidently used questionable methods sometimes. He also started a lot of things he never finished. [But how dare I ever criticize anyone for that?]

“There’s another point here to analyze: the idea of the urgency of doing being more important than anything else. Driven type A people sometimes, wittingly or unwittingly, leave a trail of collateral damage behind them. A balance of love and concern for others and for how your doing, doing, doing might affect them is imperative.”

There you have some grist for your weekend thought mill, while I take my weekend break. Please feel free to leave comments with your own thoughts on these subjects.

***

For a set of links to all the other posts in this “Meandering Forward” series, go to this page, which will be updated daily as new posts appear in the blog content.