Living a Life That Matters

I just finished reading a book called Living a Life That Matters by Rabbi Harold S. Kushner. Some things I underlined follow here. Integrity means being whole, unbroken, undivided. It describes a persone who has united the different parts of his or her personality, so that there is no longer a split in the soul.When your sould is divided, part of you wants to do one thing while part wants to do something else. For the person of integrity, life may not be easy but it is simple. Figure out what is right and do it. All other considerations come in second. What characterizes the man or woman whom others are eager to follow? "A sense of wholeness", the feeling that the person is all of one piece, that there is a consistency to him, that he will be the same person tomorrow that he is today and will apply the same value system to one question that he does to all questions. Part of the quest for integrity includes integrating God's will into our conscience, making it the unifying principle of our no-longer-divided soul.
We all long to live a life that matters. Each person who chooses to be generous rather than selfish, to be truthful rather than deceptive, represents a vote for a world of generosity and truth rather than selfishness and deception. If enough people vote that way, we will end up with a more generous, more truthful community, and we will all benefit. Good people may not generate headlines for their good behavior, but every vote for a decent society counts. Everyone who puts in an honest day's work, everyone who goes out of his orher way to help a neighbor, everyone who makes a child laugh, changes the world for the better. We don't vote only in elections. The small choices and decisions we make a hundred times a day add up to determining the kind of world we live in. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition, to know that even one life has breathed easier because you lived--that is to have succeeded."