Mino-Kinoomaagewinawaan: Good Teachings

The way I find motivation to keep going, when the road less traveled is rather rocky, is to find inspirational quotes. I look for the most uplifting, awe-inspiring, and incredible quotes. I realize this can be rather cliche at times, but it helps me to gauge if I am really doing the right thing.

‎"Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood." -Helen Keller

"It doesn't matter how many say it cannot be done or how many people have tried it before; it's important to realize that whatever you're doing, it's your first attempt at it." -Wally Amos

‎"It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect It's successful outcome." - William James

‎"The significance of a man is not in what he attains but in what he longs to attain." -Kahlil Gibran

Now that I've exhausted my recent cache of quotes, I think it's important to realize what an impact that each of us could have... it's a really profound and complex train of thoughts (for me at least). When I watch the news, read the paper, or see posts on social networking sites about the sadness, heartache, discrimination, and injustice of society, I begin to grow impatient with the long path ahead of me.... but then I realize that it's simply keeping my fire lit for once I am in the academic and professional world.

Regardless of what field we're going in to, which degree specification we'll attain, or what university we're attending/going to attend; remember that we are all human. We all strive for affirmation, we all look for love, and that we all hunger for hope and knowledge.

"To become truly great, one has to stand with people, not above them." -Charles de Montesquieu

Be kind to one another, and more importantly, love one another. Our paths will be trying at times, but the road less traveled will yield many fruits not simply for you, but your family, community, nation, and indeed the whole world. Your degree represents your knowledge-it's a physical manifestation of it... literally. But how you apply the knowledge is how you will affect hundreds and thousands of others.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference

-Robert Frost