Passage 73 Wake up Your Life

Years ago, when I started looking for my first job, wise advisers urged,

“Barbara, be enthusiastic! Enthusiasm will take you further than any amount of experience.”

How right they were! Enthusiastic people can turn a boring drive into an adventure,

extra work into opportunity and strangers into friends.

“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson.

An enthusiastic attitude enables us to hang in there when the going gets tough.

It's the inner drive that whispers, “I can do it!” when others believe it can't be done.

We are all born with wide-eyed, enthusiastic wonder

—as anyone knows who has ever seen an infant’s delight at the jingle of keys

or the scurrying of a beetle.

It is this childlike wonder that gives enthusiastic people such a youthful air, whatever their age.

As poet and author Samuel Ullman once wrote,

“Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.”

We need to live each moment wholeheartedly, with all our senses

—finding pleasure in the fragrance of a back-yard garden,

the crayoned picture of a six-year-old, the enchanting beauty of a rainbow.

It is such an enthusiastic love of life that puts a sparkle in our eyes.