"…to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is the true meaning of success."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

I believe one of the greatest legacies we leave our friends, children and grandchildren is the vibration of enthusiasm. Learning and knowing how to turn "manure" into fertilizer, or being an optimist vs. a pessimist is an important life skill. I’m sure you’ve heard the expression that failure is simply success turned inside out. Well-known author, Robert Fulgrum, tells an amazing story about John Pierpont. Does his name ring a bell?

Fulgrum shares that John Pierpont appeared to have died a failure. In 1866, at age 81, he came to the end of his days as a government clerk in Washington, D.C., with a long string of personal defeats abrading his spirits. Things began well enough. He graduated from Yale, which his grandfather had helped found, and chose education as his profession with some enthusiasm. He was a failure at school teaching. He was too easy on his students. And so he turned to the legal world for training. He was a failure as a lawyer. He was too generous to his clients and too concerned about justice to take the cases that brought good fees. The next career he took up was that of dry-goods merchant. He was a failure as a businessman. He did not charge enough for his goods to make a profit, and was too liberal with credit. In the meantime, he had been writing poetry, and though it was published, he didn't collect enough royalties to make a living. He was considered a failure as a poet. And so he decided to become a minister, went off to Harvard Divinity School, and was ordained as minister of the Hollis Street Church in Boston. But his position on prohibition and against slavery got him crosswise with the influential members of his congregation and he was forced to resign. He was a failure as a minister. Politics seemed a place where he could make some difference, and he was nominated as the Abolition party candidate for governor of Massachusetts. He lost. Undaunted, he ran for Congress under the banner of the Free Soil party. He lost. He was a failure as a politician.

The Civil War came along, and he volunteered as a chaplain of the 22nd Regiment of the Massachusetts Volunteers. Two weeks later he quit, having found the task too much of a strain on his health. He was 76 years old. He couldn't even make it as a chaplain. Someone found him an obscure job in the back offices of the Treasury Department in Washington, and he finished out the last five years of his life as a menial file clerk. He wasn't very good at that either. His heart was not in it. John Pierpont died as an apparent failure. It appeared he had accomplished nothing he set out to do or be. There is a small memorial stone marking his grave in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The words in the granite read:
POET, PREACHER, PHILOSOPHER, and PHILANTHROPIST.

From this distance now in time, one can insist that he was not, in fact, a failure. His commitments to social justice, his desire to be a loving human being, his active engagement in the great issues of his times, and his faith in the power of the human mind and heart are not traits of a failure. And much of what he thought of as defeat became success. Education was reformed, legal processes were improved, credit laws were changed, and, above all, slavery was abolished once and for all. Why am I telling you this? It's not an uncommon story. Many nineteenth-century reformers had similar lives -- similar failures and successes.

In one very important sense, John Pierpont was not a failure even by society’s standards today. Every year, come December, we celebrate his success! We carry in our hearts and mind a lifelong memorial to him. It's a song! Not about Jesus or angels or even Santa Claus. It's a very simple song about JOY and whizzing through the cold white dark of winters gloom in a sleigh pulled by one horse. And, in a sleigh
in the company of friends, laughing and singing all the way. No more. No less.
"Jingle Bells."

John Pierpont wrote "Jingle Bells!!

As Fulgrum succinctly points out, to write a song that stands for the simplest joys, to write a song that three or four hundred million people around the world know – a song that every one of us, large and small, can hoot out the moment the chord is struck in our spirit -- well, that's not failure, my friends! One snowy afternoon in deep winter, John Pierpont penned the lines as a small gift for his family, friends and congregation. And in doing so he left behind a permanent gift for Christmas -- the best kind-- not the one under the tree, but the invisible, invincible one of heartfelt JOY. I invite you to be thinking about John Pierpont’s legacy during this special season of the heart, and on days you feel overwhelmed in the hustle and bustle of the holidays, belt out singing Jingle Bells!

Sing and shine on as you jing, jing, jingle all the way!

Wishing you all Joyous Holidays & A Happy New Year!




Sharon Warren, M.A. is the author of Magnetizing Your Heart’s Desire, which is a top ranking book in sales worldwide at amazon.com. You can visit her talking web site at: www.amazinggracenow.com and monthly columns are published by Arizona Together newspaper. Sharon’s 2003 online columns are at: www.magnetizingyourheartsdesire.com

She loves to hear from you via e-mail: iam@amazinggracenow.com