Soap Box

*NOTE* Charlie will be back with a new soapbox on Monday, in the meantime, here's a soapbox rewind from 2010. - TeamCDB

We are constantly reminded about how short life is and how quickly time goes by.

Recently somebody asked me how it felt to be in the music business for 50 years. I answered that in one way it seemed that the time had flown by, but if you stopped to pull out and examine all the memories it could have been a hundred years.

All the places I’ve been, the people I’ve met, the situations I’ve been in, the experiences, the highs, the lows, the roads I’ve traveled, the friends I've made, the stages I’ve entertained on around the world, the treasured time I’ve spent with the young men and women in our military in desolate corners of the earth.

Falling in love with Hazel, holding my newborn son, moving to Nashville -- the city of my musical dreams -- my first hit record, my first new bus, the great musicians I’ve worked with.

And on and on it goes.

This is the way I prefer to remember the years God has given me, so far, and I have some very definite conclusions about the ones he gives me from here on out.

Every day is made up of 24 hours, 1440 minutes, 86,400 seconds. Every day is a new chance for us to improve our lives over the days before, to become a better father or mother, to be a better employee or boss, to be a better friend to someone.

To do something rewarding, like be a friend to someone who everybody else thinks is not hip enough or cool enough to associate with, or stand up for something you believe in even if it’s an unpopular position.

Work a little harder at your job no matter how humble it may be, letting your perk be the satisfaction of doing something well.

Follow your own heart and your own drummer. It’s the only way you’ll ever be truly happy. If you do what somebody else wants you to do or simply follow the money and security you’ll probably spend your latter years wondering why you took the wrong fork in the road.

There is an old saying that if you make a living doing something you love you’ll never work another day in your life.

This is both true and untrue in that if you spend your life doing something you truly love you’ll find a great joy, but when you truly love something you’re apt to work twice as hard at it than if you were working at something you didn’t love.

We are blessed just to see the sun come up in the morning, every breath we take, every sight we see, and every step we walk or sound we hear is a blessing from God.

The Bible says that God’s compassions are new every day. So to me, that means that every day is a new beginning, a new chance a new opportunity.

Every minute we spend worrying about something we can’t do anything about, in reality, is wasted; best leave those things up to the Almighty who is totally able to deal with them.

Alcoholics Anonymous has a prayer that goes, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference."
This short paragraph says so much and holds the answer to so many of our problems.

I choose to spend my time in the pursuit of the positive, the improvement of my God-given talents, the never-ending quest of being a better person.

I choose to slow down the passing of each day, not to look at it as a single unit of time but 24 separate hours of opportunity and options.

What it boils down to is that I’m constantly pursuing peace in my life, satisfaction in my work, love in my relationships and a closer walk with my creator.

Do I always succeed? No.

Do I have problems? Yes.

Do I have to fight against negative thoughts? You bet I do.

But remember this, it makes no difference how many times you get knocked down. If you get up one more time than you get knocked down, that makes you a winner.

Life is too precious to squander on trivial things that make no difference in the long run. I choose to live my life chasing my dreams and taking the time to enjoy the ones I catch up with.

One day, one hour, one minute at the time.

Think about it.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops, our police, and the peace of Jerusalem.

God Bless America

— Charlie Daniels

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