I’d like to take a moment to honor Art Linkletter who died at the age of 97. He lived an incredible life but had many hardships along the way. Even with these hardships: abandoned as a child, one child died of cancer and another committed suicide by jumping out of a window thinking she could fly. Even with those life events; he committed himself to making us think and making us laugh.
Linkletter’s last book is a how-to book titled, How to make the rest of your life the best of your life”. So, instead of it being a book title what if we changed it into a question. How do you make the rest of your life the best of your life? It’s an important question because no matter where you are on the health-challenge continuum, the question is not only pertinent, but vitally important.
It requires you to make a shift in your thinking. This question (which Linkletter seems to answer) requires you to emerge from the sludge that holds many of us back from improving our quality of life following an illness diagnosis. I’ve discussed the difference between curing and healing, and Linkletter’s book title implies a healing world view. It asks you to come up with solutions. We know what the problem is, the illness, so being part of the problem (your attitude) is self-defeating. It’s time to become a part of the solution. I believe that’s what Art Linkletter was striving for when he wrote this book in 2007 at the age of 94.
Collecting the wisdom of those in the world is about allowing the emergence of your personal wisdom culture to come into being. It means that as you move forward on your journey to wellness that you pick up bits and pieces that will improve your physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. Emergence of an internal wisdom culture means giving yourself every opportunity investigate your unlived life. After all Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living”.
I think that Socrates and Art Linkletter may have been cut from the same cloth on this issue of a personal wisdom culture. I know that going this inner deep dive will give you the answer to the question, “How will you make the rest of your life the best of your life?”
Pilgrim Pathway/Surviving Strong 