One saying that is so real and yet, so rarely put to use is: “Control the controllable.” This post by Ralph Marston covers factors beyond our control and is a recommended read. Partake:

There are many influential factors in our day-to-day lives over which we have no control. These things can serve as very reasonable and acceptable excuses. Take the weather for example. If it’s pouring down rain, that’s an excellent excuse for arriving late to an appointment or not arriving at all. In a big city, traffic conditions offer a similar excuse. During the last few years, one very common excuse has been “the economy.” Because of difficult and uncertain conditions in the overall economy, people and businesses delay or avoid all sorts of activities. This, of course, makes economic conditions even worse. People don’t spend, businesses don’t invest in new ideas, and economic activity contracts even further. And the thing is, it’s all perfectly understandable because of factors beyond our control.

It’s important to keep in mind, though, that there have always been, and will always be, all sorts of factors over which we have little or no control. If we had always waited until things were perfect before moving forward, no one would have ever accomplished anything. Yes, the weather, the traffic, the economy, and a whole lot of other things make great excuses. But excuses accomplish nothing.

Everything that’s ever been accomplished has been done in spite of all the perfectly understandable and valid reasons that argue against moving forward. Instead of blaming factors beyond our control, we always have the option of finding a way to achieve anyway. No matter what things are beyond our control, there are still a lot of powerful, effective factors we can control. We can think, adjust, imagine, respond, learn, act, move, and collaborate, just to name a few. We can look realistically at the situation, including the factors beyond our control, and figure out a way to do it anyway.

From the greatest challenges come the greatest achievements. Even though there will always be factors beyond our control, we can always find a way to successfully deal with them.

“I don’t know if I continue, even today, always liking myself. But what I learned to do many years ago was to forgive myself. It is very important for every human being to forgive herself or himself because if you live, you will make mistakes- it is inevitable. But once you do and you see the mistake, then you forgive yourself and say, ‘well, if I’d known better I’d have done better,’ that’s all. So you say to people who you think you may have injured, ‘I’m sorry,’ and then you say to yourself, ‘I’m sorry.’ If we all hold on to the mistake, we can’t see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we can’t see what we’re capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one’s own self. I think that young men and women are so caught by the way they see themselves. Now mind you. When a larger society sees them as unattractive, as threats, as too black or too white or too poor or too fat or too thin or too sexual or too asexual, that’s rough. But you can overcome that. The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself. If we don’t have that we never grow, we never learn, and sure as hell we should never teach.”

- Maya Angelou, an American Poet

I am fresh off of a conversation focused on if gentlemen still exist and the word chivalry. I wanted to know the history. I wanted to know where the word came from. I know how it is used in daily conversation (basically as a synonym to a gentleman) but I was unsure if it deserved that usage. What follows are the results of that investigation.

Chivalry derives from the medieval institution of knighthood. It is usually associated with ideals of knightly virtues, honor and courtly love. By definition it means, the sum of the ideal qualifications of a knight, including courtesy, generosity, valor, and dexterity in arms.

So how did chivalry become synonymous for gentleman you ask?

In the later Middle Ages, wealthy merchants strove to adopt chivalric attitudes – the sons of the bourgeoisie were educated at aristocratic courts where they were trained in the manners of the knightly class. This was a democratization of chivalry, leading to a new genre called the courtesy book, which were guides to the behavior of “gentlemen”. Thus, the post-medieval gentlemanly code of the value of a man’s honor, respect for women, and a concern for those less fortunate, is directly derived from earlier ideals of chivalry and historical forces which created it. [1]

Love seems so different at this time for some reason
As if somehow it changes from season to season
If we let old habits die and new one’s begin
Relationships will become what we intend
Today, we reflect on how great they have been
Not trying our best to resurrect them
See, being at your finest for twenty four hours
Does not sweeten up that which you have made sour
What is not possessed is a good clear perspective
About the effort and time that you have invested
True love isn’t shown external on just the fourteenth
It’s in the milli of seconds, every day, every week
Today’s not the day to go out of your way
To do something special or have nice words to say
It’s simply to look back on what’s shared between lovers
Cause Valentine’s Day should look no different from any other

For to be possessed of a vigorous mind is not enough; the prime requisite is rightly to apply it. The greastest minds, as they are capable of the highest excellences, are open likewise to the greatest aberrations; and those who travel very slowly may yet make far greater progress, provided they keep always to the straight road, than those who, while they run, forsake it.