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I want,
by understanding myself,
to
understand others.
-- Katherine
Mansfield
Growing up
to be the best people we can be is a lifelong
process. 
As
teenagers, we may have thought that twenty-one
would be a magic year for us because then we would
become adults.
We'd be
grown up and able to handle any problems that came
along, if any did.
But the
older we get, the more we realize that growing up
is a process that never ends.
We are
always becoming the people we are capable of
being.
We're
always learning new things about ourselves, and in
that process, we're always coming to new
understandings about other people and how we can
get along with them.
How
wonderful that life always offers us room to
grow!
It makes
new discoveries possible all through our lives,
and ensures us that we will always have something
to offer.
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Humpty Dumpty sat on
a wall,
Humpty Dumpty
had a great fall.
-- Mother Goose
Poor
Humpty ended up such a scrambled egg.
Maybe
that's what comes from sitting too long in one
place, choosing neither this way nor that, playing
both sides against the middle.
Maybe he
played too much politics, got too much advice, had
too much to think about.
When the
centipede was asked which leg he first moved when
setting out on a stroll, he got those legs all
tangled in his mind and couldn't walk at
all.
It is
better to be simply moved by those around us, or
by our Higher Power, with faith and love. When our
thoughts fail, their hearts, hands, and eyes will
show the way.
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There is a proper
balance between not asking enough of oneself
and
asking or expecting too much.
-- May Sarton
The boy's
mother baked pies that morning before he was up.  She
left them on the back porch to cool, their warm
aroma curling up through his bedroom window.
His mouth
was full of the smell when he woke.
Before she
left for work, she said, "You may do anything you
want today, anything at all. Except for one thing
-- don't step in those pies."
All day
the boy could not get the pies out of his mind;
his feet itched just thinking about them.
Don't step
in those pies. He heard her voice inside his head.
By late
afternoon he could control it no longer.
One,
two, three, four, five, six -- his foot fell
squarely into the middle of each pie.
When we
expect the worst from others, we often get just
that. The same goes for our expectations of
ourselves.
And when
we trust others, it too is returned.
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_______________
Copyright ©
2024 Hazelden Betty
Ford Foundation. All rights reserved. from the
book Today's Gift
Stardust Reverie
image Copyright © Sonia
Verdu
Most dividers from Hobo's
Country Graphics (dead link 10/2002)
Weaver of Dreams
image Copyright © Kirk
Reinert
Mirror and Portrait With a Rose
images Copyright © Alexey
Oglushevich
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