"GREATNESS" WAS BURIED TODAY

I went to a funeral today to watch �Greatness� be buried. It was a sad occasion indeed. �Mediocrity� stood up at the podium and read a eulogy about �Greatness.� There wasn�t a dry eye to be found by those who were in attendance. �Mediocrity� said that all of us in this church today could only hope to strive to be like �Greatness� was. When talking about �Greatness� the word ordinary never came up in conversation. All conceded that he was beyond reproach and no one ever questioned his integrity.

There were those that never made it to the funeral today. �Must be right� decided to give her point of view while writing to someone on an e-mail list why the club needed to stay the way it was. �Meekness� could only shake her head in agreement as no one ever listened to what she had to say anyway. When backbones were given out, someone else got hers as well. So �Meekness� just went along with �Must be right� because well, maybe she is right after all!

Then there was �Good Old Sap� who goes along with everything everyone else says because being liked is more important to him then being right. He figures if the majority wants to change the club, well he�s up for anything.

�Old timer� tells everyone to leave everything alone. The club has survived all these years with things the way that it always has been. �Old timer� doesn�t like change. She believes leave things alone and stop trying to change them all the time.

�New beginnings� is bright eyed and hopeful. She wants so much to learn and hopes that she can follow in the footsteps of �Greatness� some day. �Cranky old geezer� has her nose way too high up in the air to take �New beginnings� even remotely serious. She�s of the thought that you start at the bottom, scrap and claw your way to the top like she did. Don�t look for any hand outs from her! Nope �Cranky old geezer� and �New beginnings� don�t even correspond with one another.

And how about �Under the disguise of?� �Under the disguise of� is the guy that aims to please everyone. One day he�s serious and the next day he�s the joker. Most of the time the rest of the crowd enjoys reading his e-mails and laughing at his jokes. But there are those other times that the crowd doesn�t appreciate his brand of humor when they are trying to get something serious done. �Under the disguise of� can be very shrewd while trying to win the popular vote of the day.

�Leader of the Pack� is the one everyone thinks has all the answers to the clubs problems. Sometimes she does and other times, well lets just say, everyone is left to draw their own conclusions. When she has the answers, she�s a saint. When she doesn�t, there are those that wonder why they voted her in to office in the first place.

�Quarrelsome Ed� is the guy that say�s white if you say black. No if you say yes. �Quarrelsome Ed� is the one that is out to prove everything you say is wrong. If someone says the club should stay the way it is, �Quarrelsome Ed� will say, �No it�s time for a change in the club.�

�Don�t give a damn anymore� is tired of all the bickering in the club and feels that nothing ever is accomplished anyway. So he�s moving on and won�t be renewing his membership dues come the end of the year. He feels the money he puts out for his membership dues will find a better purpose.

�Sick and tired� is moving on also. �Sick and tired� is sick and tired of all of the bickering, jealously and back stabbing. Not only is she giving up on renewing her membership to the club, she has chosen to get out of the German Shepherd Dog breed all together and has just bought herself one of those expensive designer dogs where they don�t have any AKC conformation shows anyway���well not yet.

So some remained and some left and some wondered if they should stay or leave. And those that went to the funeral of �Greatness� walked with a heavy heart from the church to his burial plot. Oh �Greatness� would have been so proud of the stone that his loyal friends bought for him. He would have looked at the headstone with pride as he read the words for all those to see that ventured past his grave site. They would read: �Here lies �Greatness� which only few hope to ever achieve; loyal beyond compare. Heaven opens her gates for him because what Heaven sends it calls home again.�

And so the battle rages on about the future of the club. While they continue to �get their points� across, some forget about the real reason they got involved in the German Shepherd Dog breed to begin with�.to promote, to love, to get the word out about the best dog on earth. They forgot today that �Greatness� got buried. They forgot that today they buried the German Shepherd Dog!


From the book: HOW WE CHOOSE TO BE HAPPY: THE 9 CHOICES OF EXTREMELY HAPPY PEOPLE....Foster and Hicks conduct workshops internationally in the development of interpersonal skills. For this book, they interviewed happy people from all walks of life, from the United States to Eastern Europe. The resulting personal stories, writing exercises, and quotes together inform and instruct the reader in the nine principles discovered by the authors in their travels. Foster and Hicks use their nine choices to teach leadership development in the corporate world and also as a diagnostic tool for medical doctors. These choices include the active intention to be happy, accountability, identifying needs and desires, and centralizing goals by creating a dream list. These are followed by recasting (looking at experiences in positive ways), exploring options, appreciating every day, the art of giving, and, finally, exploring truthfulness. Similar to Sarah Ban Breathnach's Simple Abundance (Warner, 1995) and the Chicken Soup for the Soul books, this is recommended for public libraries and consumer health collections.

As one reader wrote: when I stumbled across this book a few years ago, it changed everything. Of course, I still have normal bad days, times when I feel sad or discouraged. But it's different now -- I don't despair -- I know that I'm finally learned how to be truly happy, and nothing can take that away from me now. READ THIS BOOK!!

My rating: The German Shepherd Dog: (4), Club woes and troubles: (1)