Category: Make the most of life

Focusing on what matters

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Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,
 
which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium. The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,
 
which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

from Mary Oliver,  Messenger

Sunday Quote: How to feel full

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Wear gratitude like a cloak

and it will feed every corner of your life.

Rumi

Attaching happiness to experiences

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Discarded: Christmas trees are often left in the street once the holiday season is over

When the underlying causes that produced and perpetuated an experience of happiness change, most people end up blaming either external conditions or themselves. However, because it reflects a loss of confidence in oneself, or in the things we’re taught to believe should bring us happiness, blame only makes the search for happiness more difficult.

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche.

Storms of life

Karl Duffy2 Comments

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Strong weather systems here in Ireland, the UK, and in the US,  dominate the news headlines. A reminder that a lot of things are outside our control and an insight into the fact that impermanence is a part of life:  calm and storm, darkness and light, cold and warmth.

The capacity to suffer wounding and learn to adapt to it is crucial to the development of self. . . We have wounds, and the clusters of energy that accompany them, because we have a life history. The deeper question is whether we have the wounds or they have us.

James Hollis, The Eden Project.

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…and trusting despite change

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sailboat

Passengers on the cosmic sea
We know not whence nor whither, –
‘Tis happiness enough to be
Complete with wind and weather.

Liberty Hyde Bailey

Becoming the ground

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boltonSummer was like your house: you know where each thing stood.
Now you must go out into your heart  as onto a vast plain. Now
the immense loneliness begins.

The days go numb, the wind  sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves.

Through the empty branches the sky remains.  It is what you have.
Be earth now, and evensong.
Be the ground lying under that sky.
Be modest now, like a thing ripened until it is real,
so that he who began it all
can feel you when he reaches for you.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Trees at Bolton Abbey, Moone. Co Kildare