“Profiles in Principles” is a new category of brief articles that highlight individuals whose lives are marked by, at the least, one prominent principle or value. As parents, we’re acutely aware of the importance in clarifying and then modeling our core principles for our children. Simply put, this is our power and our legacy. I hope these stories will lift your spirit and help you remain focused on the health of your family.
I remember watching “Profiles in Courage” in the mid 1960’s. Courage took on a new meaning for me. There has always been such a strong sense of renewal or redemption associated with stories of people who seem ordinary, but whose principled characteristics separated them from the ordinary and catapulted them to the extraordinary.
Billy Williams, Hall of Famer of the Chicago Cubs, was known to say, “The cream always rises.” I learned this first hand when I was a young child visiting my paternal grandparents on their dairy farm. When left alone, milk tends to separate with the cream rising to the top. For short periods of time it was fun to milk cows and churn the cream to produce butter. The more pressure and agitation you put on the cream, the more butter or buttercream you would have. The better part of the milk would rise and as stress was added the very richest part would be left. Try to turn that exciting new activity into a daily routine, as a way of living, and I think most of us want to pass. That’s hard work!
Establishing routines of principled living may seem ordinary, boring, and even hard. But, just like with the milk, there are characteristics or principles of this white stuff that when placed under stress at just the right time and conditions the richest part rises to the top.
Yes chance is surely involved, but the extraordinary is not born of luck. Ordinary preparation and routines of developing our highest principles meets with the right time and conditions and always gives birth to the extraordinary. That’s the rule.
In the near future, I will post the first installment of”Profiles in Principles” about a friend with a fascinating story of “Hope.” Former Ambassador Sichan Siv, author of “Golden Bones” will be profiled and interviewed. His story is about “Hope” and how he escaped the killing fields of Cambodia to a new life in America. Until then, claim Your power and expand Your dreams.
Dr. B
Excellent! I never thought of using this analogy this way. I myself as a very young child during the depression remember loving to try to churn the milk while visiting my maternal grandmother in Arkansas and also for my mother in Beaumont, TX where I was born and raised.