Epicurus~
"Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for."
Silly me... I can't even tell what I have and what I want apart from one another half the time, but I still enjoy soaking it all up
Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.
~Benjamin Franklin
...and undeniably, everyday brings us the blessing of change, although sometimes not the change we expect.
"There is pleasure in the pathless woods, There is society, where none intrude, there is a rapture on the lonely shore... by the deep sea, and music in its roar I love man not the less, but Nature even more..."
-Lord Byron
Sometimes, I like to be all alone down by the river, out in the woods or on the oceans edge...and then I realize I'm not really ever alone...
Artwork by Sweet, Beautiful Sister Sing
"The jewel of the soul is priceless, but it gets squandered, in exchange for a mere shell"
-Sri Guru Granth Sahib
Balance.
If our energy, our spirit, outlives or outreaches our shells then we must feed it properly, while not neglecting the skin we're in...
Artwork Compliments of SisterSing @ JustGiveMePeace
"For whatever we lose, like A You or A Me
it is always ourselves we find at the Sea..."
E.E. Cummings
Okay, so if I leave everything & go become a beach bum...we'll just say that I am finding myself...
"To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour."
-- William Blake
Perspective is everything...
once there is awareness.
"We have learned to fly the air like birds,
swim the seas like fish...
but we have not yet learned the art of living together as brothers and sisters"
-Martin Luther King Jr.
I don't really swim like a fish. I dog-paddle. But I am pretty damn good at it.
Nor do I fly. The closest I have been to flying is Airtran, bridge jumping & sky-diving...
but learning the art of living...
that's what takes me places...
"I walked beside the evening sea And dreamed a dream that could not be; The waves that plunged along the shore Said only: "Dreamer, dream no more!"
-- George William Curtis
hmmm...dreams un-chased might just simply be fantasies
"One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach."
-- Anne Spencer Morrow Lindbergh
...nor do we need to. Not everything beautiful is meant to be a keeper beyond the moment & the memory.
"...where doing nothing was not boring- it was peaceful."
Same thing can be said about camping up by the lake, sitting seaside or floating down the river...
I see the mailman who comes to my work 5 days a week & I rarely ever see the mailman who comes to my house.
But when my work mailman went on vacation, I thought I recognized his replacement...
'Hey! I think I know you.'
He asked me what my address was and I told him.
He knows his route well.
He described my house and I laughed, 'Yup. That's mine!'
He pointed out that he noticed the addition of one more dog & that he knew the house where he had come from.
We chatted about the situation of that house a moment or two. It was as if they had been friends for years.
Then he went on to say 'You know what you do? You always take packages and personal letters in, but you leave the bills and junk mail in the box for days!'
'Yup. Hahaha, I sure do...'
A smirk and a shake of the head...'You'd be surprised at the things a mailman knows.'
Yes, she is crying and no more than an hour old here. Born with a broken collar bone, she enters the world wiser...they say that which doesn't kill us, only makes us stronger and I can tell already this little bundle of love has one strong spirit.
'She looks Asian.'
'She looks Puerto Rican'
'She looks like Buddha.'
'She looks like me'
She is all of these things, and some. We are as one... Love Grows.
Welcome to the World, our latest little link in the circle of love.
Where there is love there is life.
Mohandas Gandhi
A baby is born with a need to be loved - and never outgrows it.
Frank Howard Clark
I just read the 5 rules of happiness...
1 - Free your heart from hatred
2 - Free your mind from worries
3 - Live simply
4 - Give more
5 - Expect less
I try to do all of the above... still, I think I'm happy just being content.
I stumbled, bumbled and mumbled my way through the door dragging with me a small rustic bench for in front of the wood-burning stove and a couple days worth of soggy mail.
I plopped the mail on the entry table and plodded on into the kitchen where I dropped my 13" high bench and I let the dogs in.
I sat on the bench and gave them good lovin' and in between wagging tails and the huffs and puffs of doggie breath, I saw the stack of dishes waiting in the sink, the mound of trash in the can, the wisps of dog hair mounding in the corners on the floor.
Hugging Smokie Boy and patting Vilulah's side, with Bear nudged up between us all, the kitchen lights flickered out.
I buried my face in my doggie-haven.
Finally, I stood up and pulled the string for the kitchen lights. Nothing. So I pulled the string for the fan. Yup, one pull fast, another medium, another slow and yet another, off.
Four bulbs don't burn out at once...this thing is messed up.
So I scooped up the trash and one old quilt and I toted it all out with three dogs trailing behind me.
I left the soggy mail, the dirty dishes, the mounting corners of dog hair and the bummed kitchen light...
and I just floated...
on rope spread by wood, under the falling star sky, canopied by the sounds of a mongolian windchime and into the pandora's box of open air dreams.
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