“Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end up really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I have the belief I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I don’t have it at the beginning.”
-Mahatma Gandhi
“Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.”
“Be careful what you water your dreams with. Water them with worry and fear and you will produce weeds that choke the life from your dream. Water them with optimism and solutions and you will cultivate success. Always be on the lookout for ways to turn a problem into an opportunity for success. Always be on the lookout for ways to nurture your dream.”
– Lao Tzu
“When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That’s my religion.”
– Abraham Lincoln
Pretty much sums it up, don’t you think?
January has always been a month of disproportionate loss. People who are sick (both physically and emotionally) tend to hold on during the holidays; hoping to spare their loved ones the profundity of grief during a season intended for joy and renewal.
For those who have had loved ones succumb during the month (either naturally or through their own will) I offer one of my favorite e.e. cummings poems as a reminder that the people we love never truly leave us and that love (permanent and resplendent) endures all.
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
“There are no great deeds; there are just small deeds done with great love.”
Wishing you a weekend filled with small pleasures, great kindness and the bountiful gift of love.
In addition to honoring a remarkable man, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day has special meaning for me: It was the day we buried my mother.
For several years following her death, my annual Christmas card included a Martin Luther King, Jr. quote signed with the simple words ‘Peace on Earth and Goodwill to All Men.” Words I felt that we, as a Country, had lost the understanding and compassion for.
I’d like to share an excerpt in remembrance––
Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood.
I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction.
I believe that even amid today’s mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow.
I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies; education and culture for their minds; and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.
I believe that what self-centered men have torn down, men other-centered can build up.
I still believe that we shall overcome.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any–lifted from the no
of all nothing–human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
e. e. cummings
