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.
It is the paste that helps you hang in there when the going gets tough. It is the inner voice that whispers, “I can do it!” when others shout, “No, you can’t.”
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.
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.
At 90, cellist Pablo Casals would start his day by playing Bach. As the music flowed through his fingers, his stooped shoulders would straighten and joy would reappear in his eyes.
Poet Samuel Ullman wrote, “Years wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.”
How do you rediscover the enthusiasm of childhood? The answer, I believe, lies in the word itself. “Enthusiasm” comes from the Greek and means “God within.” And what is God within is but an abiding sense of love -- proper love of self (self-acceptance) and, from that, love of others.
Enthusiastic people love what they do, regardless of money or title or power. If we cannot do what we love as a full-time career, we make it a part-time avocation: the head of state who paints, the nun who runs marathons, the executive who handcrafts furniture.
We need to live each moment wholeheartedly, with all our senses -- finding pleasure in a back-yard garden, the crayoned picture of a six-year-old, the beauty of a rainbow. Don't waste tears on “might-have-beens.” Turn tears into sweat by going after “what-can-be.”
Enthusiastic love of life puts a sparkle in our eyes, a lilt in our steps and smooth the wrinkles from our souls.
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