A good day

Every day above earth is a good day.

        Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

The game is afoot

What people really need and demand from life
        is not wealth, comfort or esteem
                but games worth playing.

                        Robert de Ropp, The Master Game

 

 

 

 

 

 

The unwanting soul

The way you can go
isn't the real way.
The name you can say
isn't the real name.
Heaven and earth
begin in the unnamed:
name's the mother
of the ten thousand things.
So the unwanting soul
sees what's hidden,
and the ever-wanting soul
sees only what it wants.
Two things, one origin,
but different in name,
whose identity is mystery.
Mystery of all mysteries!
The door to the hidden.

        Tao Te Ching, Chapter 1, as interpreted by Ursula K. LeGuin 

 

 

 

 

 

Worries

Worries about disasters which, as later events proved, never happened.
        About 40% of my anxieties.

Worries about decisions I had made in the past,
decisions about which I could now of course do nothing.
        About 30% of my anxieties.

Worries about possible sickness and a possible nervous breakdown,
neither of which materialized.
        About 12% of my worries.

Worries about my children and my friends, worries arising from the fact
I forgot these people have an ordinary amount of common sense.
        About 10% of my worries.

Worries that have a real foundation.
        Possibly 8% of the total.

                    James Gordon Gilkey, How Not To Worry

 

 

 

 

 

Three Discoveries

At one time or another the more fortunate among us make three startling discoveries.

Discovery number one:
    Each one of us has, in varying degree, the power to make others feel better or worse.

Discovery two:
    Making others feel better is much more fun than making them feel worse.

Discovery three:
    Making others feel better generally makes us feel better.

                                                Laura Huxley, You Are Not the Target