With Maturity Comes Despair

“There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense.”

*Jane Austen

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I Wish for A Bit of Adventure

“I wish sometimes that there was still a bit of adventure in the world. That wandering the world and the nations within it was both less dangerous from threat of war or terror and yet risky in that you were facing the unknown and the elements. To step onto a boat knowing that you took your life in your hands just for the chance to see a minaret or the pyramids or the rising temple in the distance. Knowing that you were going where few dared to tred. In a place that would take months to reach. Seeing things that others only dreamed of. To know that you were setting off into a world neither micromanaged nor constantly watched and guarded and known.  To be unknown in a world that was unknown.  Perhaps it is simply the romantic novels speaking or the spirit in me that was raised on stories of the great explorers of old. But it feels as though so much of the world is either politically frightening or simply has been seen a million times by a million eyes and photographs. They say that with globalization, the world continually shrinks. I feel that is true, and tragic in some way. There is something glorious in the idea of a very large world. One that has unknown possibilities and potential and newness to it. One that is too large to lay out on a computer screen and cannot be summarized in a geography book. Yes, although coming together is a wonderful thing and a miracle of our time, I wish sometimes that there was still a bit of adventure in the world.” 

Understanding Goes A Long Way

“I wasn’t offering her pity,” Mrs. Caswell said impatiently. “Tragedies don’t interest me, tragedies and heartbreaks are all alike, what matters is how a person meets them, how they survive them. Given the inevitability of losses and disappointments in life, that’s where the challenge is and the uniqueness. I was offering her sympathy.” 

~~ Dorothy Gilman (Mrs. Pollifax)

Words We Never Said

You never spoke a word,

But I heard words nonetheless.

Worthless

Unwanted

Useless

No Good

Unloved

Go Away

Go Away

GO AWAY!

And so I left.

And I never said a word.

But words you heard nonetheless.

Worthless

Unwanted

Useless

No Good

Unloved

Go Away

Go Away

GO AWAY!

Until, one day, you left.

If only we had said the words. . .

The real words left unsaid.

Precious

Wanted

Needed

Perfect

Loved

Stay

Stay

STAY

So no more excuses. . . .

The Reading Connection. . .

Helping Others, Help Yourself

“Help thy brother’s boat across, and lo! thine own has reached the shore.”

INDIAN PROVERB

When Possibilities Surround You

“It’s in the morning, for most of us. It’s that time, those few seconds when we’re coming out of sleep but we’re not really awake yet. For those few seconds we’re something more primitive than what we are about to become. We have just slept the sleep of our most distant ancestors, and something of them and their world still clings to us. For those few moments we are unformed, uncivilized. We are not the people we know as ourselves, but creatures more in tune with a tree than a keyboard. We are untitled, unnamed, natural, suspended between was and will be, the tadpole before the frog, the worm before the butterfly. We are for a few brief moments, anything and everything we could be. And then…and then — ah — we open our eyes and the day is before us and … we become ourselves.”

** Jerry Spinelli

Wait and Hope

“There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life.

” Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget, that until the day God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words, ‘Wait and Hope.”

~ Alexander Dumas

Mirror Glass

“Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself. Each man as the other person sees him. And Each man as he really is.

~ William James