We shall not cease from exploration,

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive from where we started

And know the place for the first time.

-- T. S. Eliot

Inspirational Short Story, Female Fantasy Art, Relaxing Music

We spend much of our lives looking forward to milestones we hope will mark our passage into wisdom -- that time and place when once and for all we will know all there is to know.

When I am thirteen, I'll be grown up, we say. When I am sixteen, eighteen, 21, drive a car, graduate, marry, write a book, own a house, find a job, or retire; then I'll be grown up.

When we seek complete transformation, mere insight is disappointing.

We find we don't know all there is to know -- not at thirteen or 35 or 80. We are still growing up.

The baby, the child, the younger person each of us was yesterday is still with us; we continue to love, hate, hurt, grieve, startle, delight, feel.

There is no magic moment of lasting enlightenment, simply a series of fleeting moments lived one at a time each day.

They bring us home to who we've always been.

No life is so hard that you can't make it

easier by the way you take it.

-- Ellen Glasgow

Jimmy and Karen were out catching insects for their science class. Jimmy had caught a gray moth and Karen a monarch butterfly.

"My moth sure isn't very pretty," Jimmy said as he looked at the two insects. "Now I'll have to catch something else."

"Oh, but it is," said Karen. "See what a fat body your moth has compared to my butterfly, and it's got fuzzies on its wings."

"You're right," said Jimmy, beginning to smile at his moth. "I was almost going to let him go."

How many times in the past have we taken just a quick look at something before rejecting it?

Often, simply because a thing isn't quite what we expected, we don't give ourselves a chance to discover what it is that makes that thing beautiful.

There is a secret beauty in everything, even ourselves.

When we take the time to seek it out in other people and things, especially those that have disappointed us, that beauty is reflected in us, too.

Go rich in poverty. Go rich in poetry.

-- May Sarton

Poetry lets us put the beauty of nature -- the clouds, the flowers, the waterfall -- into words.

Poetry lets us see that things which appear to be opposites may just be different ways of looking at the same thing.

How can we be rich in poverty?

Wealth in poverty means finding pleasure in simplicity, finding the core of what's important, and saying it in the fewest possible words.

We are so often caught up in the pursuit of more -- more money, more toys, more prestige, that we forget how satisfying the simple things can be.

Think of the beauty of a sunset or a walk by the river, the fun of playing in a sandbox or swinging on the swings in the park, or in simply taking time to get something done the right way, without hurry.

_______________

03/08/2014

Dividers from Gran Gran's Graphics (dead link 07/04/2011)

Top of Page