QotD: Making a Living vs a Life

[liveonearth]

You make a living
by what you earn;
you make a life
by what you give.
--Winston Churchill

Comments

[madman101.livejournal.com]

compassion is the forgotten foundation of economy

[ford-prefect42.livejournal.com]

True in essence, and there's no way to sound-byte-iffy what it takes to make a life.

I recently realized that I am a chump. I give everyone everything they ask for, and I rarely ask for anything in return. That does not work for building a good life, because doing that surrounds you with takers. People that do that deal with it by withdrawing in order to preserve any part of themselves. That is not a prescription for a happy life.

So I am working on how to *not* give that which I don't feel really honestly good about giving. To not give to those that aren't worth giving to, to do more for those that return a favor than for those that just don't show.

In my recent post here,
http://ford-prefect42.livejournal.com/25702.html
I brushed across the whole hitting friends up for return favors. If I have a friend where I have given much, much being... days of labor, and thousands of dollars worth of services, then refusing to return a morning when asked needs a *good* reason. Otherwise, I am not contributing to a relationship, but getting used. In order to learn that, I have to *ask* for something back. That's *way* harder than it sounds. But I have discovered that I really do have some genuinely worthwhile friends.