Often chain e-mails are lame and from your mother. Or threatening you with death if you don’t pass them on. Either way, it’s rather hard to take them seriously, and by now you should know you shouldn’t take them seriously. No, you aren’t going to have to start paying for Facebook. No, Tom isn’t writing everyone on MySpace to make sure they’re using their account and, if you don’t forward this message to everyone, he will delete your account. And no, you will not die if you choose not to forward that message in the next eight seconds.
So, except for that chain e-mail with the pictures of the baby deer and bunny, they’ve all been pretty much crap until now. But lucky for us, the Dalai Lama decided to grace us all with a chain e-mail at the beginning of this millennium (that started in the year 2000 for you slow learners). What it says is as follows:
- Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
- When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.
- Follow the three Rs:
- Respect for self
- Respect for others
- Responsibility for all your actions.
- Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.
- Learn the rules, so you know how to break them properly.
- Don’t let a little dispute injure a great friendship.
- When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
- Spend some time alone every day.
- Open your arms to change, but don’t let go of your values.
- Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
- Live a good, honorable life. Then, when you get older and think back, you’ll be able to enjoy it a second time.
- A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.
- In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don’t bring up the past.
- Share your knowledge. It’s a way to achieve immortality.
- Be gentle with the Earth.
- Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.
- Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.
- Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.
The point of all this? Wise words can come from surprising places.
Well, ok, so the chain e-mail says the Dalai Lama wrote that, but we all know he has much more pressing matters than typing out an e-mail to the entire world — that’s why he plagiarized. Just kidding! I have no idea why the e-mail says he wrote it, but I’m pretty sure that the Dalai Lama doesn’t condone plagiarism or lying about the who wrote what. So we can assume someone was either confused or just has some weird thing for the Dalai Lama. According to snopes.com, the investigators of rumors big and small that have filled up your inbox at some time or another, the real authors of this e-mail are Jackson Brown and H. Jackson Brown, Jr. The e-mail is a truncated version of their work “Life’s Little Instruction Book.”
The point of all this? Wise words can come from surprising places sometimes — even in a chain e-mail that lies about who wrote it. And while his honorable Dalai Lama may have not written this advice, it’s still pretty good. With many of us graduating this May and venturing out into the “real” world, it might be comforting to have some rules to live by, since we’re pretty much on our own from here on out, for better or worse. So if these life guidelines strike you as something you might want to adopt for yourself, feel free to thank the Browns. Or the Dalai Lama, but he might not know what you’re talking about.
Reach our editor at lana.burke@asu.edu
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