What she has learned

I’ve learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow. I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights. I’ve learned that making a “living” is not the same thing as making a “life.” I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back. I’ve learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision. I’ve learned that even when I have pains, I don’t have to be one. I’ve learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back. I’ve learned that I still have a lot to learn. I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.    

Maya Angelou 

Sunday Quote: Change is a constant

I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be

Joan Didion

Out of the depths

The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross,  Death: The Final Stage of Growth,

Our surroundings

As David Whyte says, we have many allies as we make our way through each day and each week – the blue sky, the wind on our face, the yellow daffodils blooming early because of the mild early Spring. If we can notice them we get some space from the worrying thoughts that accompany us 

To feel abandoned is to deny the intimacy of your surroundings

David Whyte

True freedom

When you fall in love with the unknown,

you are free.

Byron Katie

Herding thoughts and emotions

When I am not present to myself, then I am only aware of that half of me, that mode of my being which turns outward to created things. And then it is possible for me to lose myself among them. Then I no longer feel the deep secret pull of the gravitation of love which draws my inward self. My will and my intelligence lose their command of the other faculties. My senses, my imagination, my emotions, scatter to pursue their various quarries all over the face of the earth. Recollection brings them home. It brings the outward self in line with the inward spirit, and makes my whole being answer the deep pull of love that reaches down into the mystery of God.

Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island