From Uncovering the Real Abe Lincoln in Time magazine, July 4. Specifically, Doris Kearns Goodwin's piece on Lincoln's emotional strengths that made him The Master of the Game.
Empathy
Humor
Magnanimity
Generosity of Spirit
Perspective
Self-Control
Sense of Balance
A Social Conscience
At the lowest point in his life, in a deep depression, Lincoln wrote:
"I am now the most miserable man living," he wrote a friend at the time. "If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth. Whether I shall ever be better I can not tell; I awfully forebode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible; I must die or be better, it appears to me."
His friends were worried that he was suicidal and removed all razors and knives from his room. Throughout the nadir of Lincoln's depression, his best friend, Joshua Speed, stayed by his side. In a conversation both men would remember as long as they lived, Speed warned Lincoln that if he did not rally, he would most certainly die. Lincoln replied that he was more than willing to die, but that he had "done nothing to make any human being remember that he had lived," and that "to link his name with something that would redound to the interest of his fellow man was what he desired to live for."
Even in this moment of despair, the strength of Lincoln's desire to leave "the world a little better for my having lived in it" carried him forward. It became his lodestar, providing a set of principles and standards to guide his everyday actions.
Finding his meaning and purpose saved Lincoln's life. With that lodestar to guide his actions, he went on to leave his Great Legacy.
Posted by Jill Fallon at June 29, 2005 1:54 PM | Permalink