Look no further

Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story.

            John Barth, The End of the Road

 

 

 

 

 

Tend to your corner

I've had to learn, time and again,
that faithfulness isn’t always about taking big leaps,
but also walking with small steps,
and that it’s possible to make a lasting difference in the world
by tending to one small corner of it.

        Mariann Edgar Budde, How We Learn to Be Brave

 

 

 

 

Poem: Dawn

5am: the frogs
ask what is it, what is it?
It is what it is.

         Campbell McGrath

 

 

 

 

 

Power

Power, used well, should be empowering, contagious, and creative.
It should be collaborative, enabling, and protective.
It should be self-critical, curious, and brave.
It should know its own limits and be prepared to risk its own reputation.
This kind of power asks questions to which it does not know the answers
and listens because in listening is learning, and in learning is life.

        Padraig O'Tuama, In the Shelter: Finding a Home in the World 

 

 

 

 

 

Take it as you find it

When I eat my dinner I don’t do it to the greater glory of God; I do it because I enjoy it.
The world’s full of amusing things—books, wine, travel, friends—everything.
I’ve never seen any meaning in it all, and I don’t want to see one.
Why not take life as you find it?

                George Orwell, A Clergyman’s Daughter

 

 

 

 

 

 

Exceptional

Carlyle remarked: “The population of England is twenty millions, mostly fools.”
Everybody who read this considered himself one of the exceptions, and therefore enjoyed the remark.

Bertrand Russell, How to Become a Man of Genius

 

 

 

 

 

Walk on the west side

The Upper West Side is the part of Manhattan I like best;
it has the excitement and pace of the city,
but with the feel of a real neighborhood.
Just by walking on the street you know that real life is being lived there.

        David Rosenfelt, New Tricks