A Glorious Ending!

There was once a wise old music teacher who taught scores of students over the years. Invariably, when she prepared her pupils for recitals, she would encourage them to practice the endings over-and-over again. And, always, the students would grumble because of the constant repetition of the last few measures of the music. When the complaints came, the teacher would answer, “You can make a mistake in the beginning or the middle or some other place along the way. But all will be forgotten when you manage to make the ending glorious.”

Professor Abraham Maslow, one of the most widely-read social scientists of all time, often challenged his students with questions like this: “Which of you is going to be a great writer? Which of you is going to be a great saint like Francis of Assisi? Which of you is going to be a great humanitarian like Albert Schweitzer?”

Presented with such big ideas, the students would laugh sheepishly. But the famous psychologist…