Having a happy life

The trick to having a happy life is to remember that it all comes down to what we ourselves make of the life we have. 

The sun shines and warms and lights us and we have no curiosity to know why this is so, Ralph Waldo Emerson says, ” but we ask the reason of all evil, of pain, and hunger and mosquitoes and silly people.”

Joan Chittister, The Monastic Way, June 2022

The only day we have

It’s only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth – and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up, we will then begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

A new rhythm

Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;

Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

John O’Donohue, For a New Beginning [extract]

Take the step

Let me fall if I must.

The one I will become will catch me

Baal Shem Tov, 1698 – 1760, Jewish mystic, regarded as the founder of Hasidic Judaism

A new resolution

Many of us have been running all our lives

Practice stopping

Thich Nhat Hanh

Just be ready

“You don’t have to

prove anything” my mother said. “Just be ready

for what God sends

Poet William Stafford died of a heart attack in August 1993, having written a poem that morning with these words…