Make each day your masterpiece

'Make each day your masterpiece.'

 

'Well thank you, John Wooden. You surely don't mean today? I mean, look at the place. The decorators have just finished my study, the contents of which are all over the dining room chairs and floor, and my filing cabinets and bookshelf are in the sitting room. You couldn't dance if you wanted to. And there's certainly no room to ask a friend in at the moment. So, there is no possibility of today being a masterpiece in any way, shape or form!'

John Wooden, I hasten to say, is not actually here. He was an American basketball player, born on 11th October 1912, and he died on 4th June 2010. All his life he adhered to a Seven Point creed, which was passed to him by his father.  All Seven Points are very good advice, like 

• Be true to yourself,

and

• Make friendship a fine art,

and

• Pray for guidance and give thanks for your blessings every day.

Yes, all Seven Points are very good advice......... mostly. But not today.

Of course John doesn't answer, but I can tell his eyebrows have gone up, his head is slightly  turned, and he's giving me a gentle smile.

'Well,' I say, 'we can't make every day a masterpiece, can we?'

He waits for me to answer my own question.

'I know what you mean,' I mumble. 'Do the best you can. I can’t change anything about yesterday when I wasted a whole hour and nothing seemed to work and inspiration was taking a holiday.' 

He pauses, as he always does when he's about to say something he wouldn't want me to miss. 

'The future depends on how you prepare yourself today.'

He smiles again, knowing he's convinced me that his father was right.

'Everybody makes mistakes,' he says. 'It's what you do with them that counts.'

Many thanks to wikipedia  for introducing me to John Robert Wooden (October 14, 1910 – June 4, 2010). He was an American basketball coach and player. Nicknamed the "Wizard of Westwood", he won ten National Collegiate Athletic Association national championships in a 12-year period as head coach for the UCLA Bruins, including a record seven in a row. No other team has won more than four in a row in Division 1 college men's or women's basketball. Within this period, his teams won an NCAA men's basketball record 88 consecutive games. Wooden won the prestigious Henry Ina Award as national coach of the year a record seven times and won the Associated Press Award five times.

If you're interested in the whole of John Wooden’s Seven Point creed, passed to him by his father, here it is, together with the words of fellow American, Bob Harnois.

• Be true to yourself. If you are true to yourself, you will be true to all others.
• Make each day your masterpiece. Do the best you can. You can’t do anything about yesterday. The future depends on how you prepare yourself today.
• Help others. Do something for another, for which you didn’t expect something in return. There is real joy in helping others.
• Drink deeply from good books, especially the Bible.
• Make friendship a fine art. Work at it, don’t take it for granted. Friendship is like marriage, it’s not a one sider. Make a lasting friendship–you have to work at it.
• Build a shelter against a rainy day. You’re building that shelter by the life you lead–it’s not a material shelter.
• Pray for guidance and give thanks for your blessings every day. Be thankful and especially give thanks to the master.

Photos - RHS Wisley and the Exmoor coast path - are the author's own.

Veronica Bright is a storyteller who has been lucky enough to win prizes for her short fiction and drama. She writes occasional book reviews for Transforming Ministry, which has been a blessing because each book has taught her to think deeply about everything. Veronica has been the ACW short story advisor for several years, and this too has taught her a lot. She and Sally Todd co-ordinate the ACW Writing for Children group, whose members meet on Zoom. And.... for anyone lives near Plymouth, she organises the Plymouth Christian Writers group, who also meet via Zoom. Details may be found in The Christian Writer.