Although Yogi Berra was a catcher for the New York Yankees for 19 years – 15 of those as an All Star – most people don’t remember Yogi Berra for what he did on the baseball diamond but for what he said off the diamond.
Here are just a few examples:
“Always go to other people’s funerals, otherwise they won’t come to yours.” I have to admit – it’s hard to argue with that!
When talking about a friend who could use both hands equally well, he said: ““I’d give my right arm to be ambidextrous.”
He once explained his opposition to encyclopedias this way: “I’m not going to buy my kids an encyclopedia. Let them walk to school like I did.”
But when it comes to achieving the life you’ve always wanted and desired, he was spot on: “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.”
That is true.
If you don’t where you are going, if you don’t have a goal in mind, you’ll end up someplace else other than where you really want to be. You’ll end up in an average, ordinary place. Not necessarily a bad place, just not the best place.
Instead of soaring for your dreams, you’ll find yourself sitting on the sidelines, watching the accomplishments of other people.
In the western panhandle of Texas is a small town named Texline. It began in the late 1800’s as a thriving stop along a new railroad line. Before long, it had a post office, a hotel, and several shops catering to the railroad.
Thirty years later, when the railroads shop relocated, the town nearly died.
Within a few years, the population shrunk to about 400 people. Today, it stands a little above 500.
One online description of Texline says that it has “a city limits sign at one end, another at the other end, and not much in between.”
When the story of your life is told, you don’t want it to be said of you: “She lived and died, and not much happened in between.”
Michelangelo, the great painter best known for painting the Sistine Chapel, offered this challenge: “The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.”