So, I’m down visiting my parents who are ailing a little bit, and helping out by doing a bunch of house cleaning. In addition to the usual cleaning tasks, this also includes rummaging through some old piles of books that need to be put up. If you know me, you know that’s my kind of cleaning 8).

Digging through the piles and run across an old leather-bound book from 1926 called “As A Man Doeth”, that belonged to my grandfather. It’s the collected Monday morning motivational writings of William Danforth, the founder and president of Ralston Purina, of animal feed fame. I open the book to the first page, sneeze a few times from the dust, and encounter this:

Oh Texas!

“One Deputy Sheriff trailing you,

and another hid in the bushes in front of you,

Say! That’s Living!”

This was an exclamation of Texas, a bootlegger in Alice Brady’s play, “Zander the Great”. Texas was a bootlegger, but it wasn’t the profits that attracted him; it was the game.

Is business to you an adventure and a game? If not, check up; you are slipping. Our business, with its problems and its responsibilities, is to me the greatest game in the world. I wonder if in your week’s work there aren’t dangers trailing you, and obstacles hidden in the bushes at every turn. Lack of initiative, lack of self confidence, laziness, or inattention – sly, insidious foes ready to arrest your progress and deter you. But, in overcoming your obstacles, remember what Texas said,

“ Say! That’s Living!”.

 

If the man making dog food can feel this way about his work, I bet you can too. Life’s too short not to love what you do. If you don’t love what you’re doing, do something else.