About Thoughts on Life and Living:
Is the world really what you think it is? It is not. I will explain.
While working and travelling throughout the international community, I encountered a wide variety of cultures and beliefs that produced a similarly wide variety of conflicting ethical standards and behaviours. I was determined to understand, reconcile, and deal with these diverse standards in a way that would most benefit a flourishing life.
The world is full of educated derelicts, and a scholarly education and lengthy pedigree do not necessarily validate one’s beliefs or opinions; only the quality of the logic behind them can determine their value. The reasoning should be robust; it should not be based on trite, commonly accepted clichés that merely happen to be popular.
In addition, consider whether an opinion is based on a morality of life that promotes living well, or on a morality of death that promotes self-sacrifice, deprivation, and suffering. The accomplishments of the Universe are great and wondrous for us to appreciate, marvel at, and enjoy. Each of us is a rare and unique human being who should be able to flourish as a proud, independent, sovereign individual with inalienable rights. I challenge you to weigh my opinions according to these criteria.
My journey continues, but I am comfortable sharing some experiences and observations in these eclectic articles. Mr. E. B. White, the author of the well-known book “Elements of Style”, instructs writers not to inject opinions into their writing. To do so is to imply that the demand for them is brisk. I am certain the demand for my opinions is not brisk; however, we all live in a storm of opinions, most of which are way off the mark for successful living. Therefore, I freely express myself, thinking, naively perhaps, that they might provide guidance and provoke thought in making better choices for better living.
My treatment of the topics is not comprehensive, and I do not presume my views will be widely accepted. Many of them are also dated and may not be entirely timeless. However, I share them with you, hoping they might provoke thought and help clarify your own views on the topics.
Life is a continuous series of choices, and everyone must make them. We live the life we choose. The ability to think, to evaluate, and to choose is the supreme characteristic that makes us human. Every choice leads inexorably to right or wrong, good or bad, success or failure, according to how one defines those terms. Every choice is a building block of the structure of one’s life, and every choice counts, whether large or small. We have the free will to either create destructive social environments through ignorance and maliciousness or, through enlightened self-interest, to create a free and civilized society in which we can achieve our values and flourish.
My choices were not always rational or based on the best information available at the time, and in those cases, they inevitably turned out to be the wrong choices. However, at a young age, I knew instinctively that life was for living and therefore tried to make conscious, deliberate choices that enabled me to achieve my values and enjoy life—in other words, to live.
Hope you can do the same … preferably, better.
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Author Bio:
Maurice E. Marwood grew up after the Second World War as the son of a struggling, part-time farmer in eastern Canada. He eventually earned a BSc and an MSc in engineering from the University of Guelph and an MBA from the University of Chicago. During his early career, he spent 20 years in increasingly responsible international positions with Caterpillar and, later, an additional 10 years managing two Caterpillar dealer organizations—first, as President of the dealership in the Bahamas, and most recently as Managing Director for the dealership in Taiwan.
An expert in corporate turnarounds, he spent several years restructuring and renewing various business organizations struggling for growth and profitability; his executive-level leadership has spanned manufacturing, distribution logistics, marketing, and international sales of industrial equipment and packaged consumer products.
Marwood has served as a Rotarian, Director of the Nassau Institute, Governor/Director of Chambers of Commerce, advisor to the University of Calgary Faculty of Management, and to the Conference Board of Canada’s Operating Council for Business Excellence. For a time, he served as a sessional instructor in International Business Marketing at St. Clair College. He has been a frequent presenter and panel participant at university and industry association gatherings and published articles on business management, leadership, and social issues in magazines, newspapers, and websites. In 2007, he was the first “foreigner” to receive a special annual award from the Council of Labor Affairs of the government of Taiwan, for innovation in the development of Human Resources.
From a young age, Marwood instinctively knew that life was for living and discovered an insatiable appetite for experiences and ideas. He worked hard to maintain a balance between life’s critical success factors—the material and the spiritual—making time to raise a family and pursue such adventures as climbing the Matterhorn, trekking Nepal, marathoning, skiing, snowboarding, scuba diving, and cruising eastern North America and the Bahamas. Firsthand involvement in a wide variety of events and situations shaped his values, opinions, and philosophy of living which he shares with honesty and passion.