Mantras?

Do you have a mantra, a personal motto or principle by which you live your life, or by which you would live your life if you were more mindful about what you were doing?

I had lunch with a friend today and as we were heading out to our cars, he told me about a program he was part of for training supervisors for various state agencies after he had retired from working for the state himself. The mantra he came up with for the new supervisors was, "Train your children well." The point being that part of being supervisor was preparing the next generation to step up when the time came.

One of the other former supervisors had been head of the state police, and his mantra, which he used to tell the troopers who worked with him, was, "Take your job seriously, but not yourself."

It reminded me of a saying that one of my roommates and I came up with late one Saturday night or early one Sunday morning at Michigan State, after we had consumed a sufficient number of beers and jabbered over the meaning of it all in that way that university students do: 

"It's all very important, but it doesn't really matter."

I may have shared that before, but that's about it.