Your greatest role model is the person you were yesterday.
From The Anticipation of Loss, one of 296 sayings written by John Sarris over thirty years.
From Alfred’s journal
A man came to the field below the oak this morning with a stopwatch and ran the same loop eleven times, and each time he looked at his wrist and said something to himself I could not hear. For years I thought the way to get anywhere was to pick someone far ahead and fly at them, which is how I spent a bad decade admiring a hawk. The trouble with a hawk is that he was never a sparrow first, so there is nothing in him to copy, only something to resent. Your greatest role model is the person you were yesterday. On the eleventh loop the man slowed down and walked the last stretch, and he did not look at his wrist at all. I do not know whether that was defeat or the only honest measurement he took.
He reads what you tell him and writes a page of his journal back, with a few of these chosen for you. It costs nothing and asks for nothing.
Have it on something
More like it
- You can fly with the wind or be carried away by it.
- The early bird gets a moment to itself.
- It's hard to say thank you when thank you means goodbye.
- Many things are given away, but nothing real is ever lost.
- A strawberry uneaten will not long remain a strawberry.
- A life with endless sunshine would be a life without starry nights.