Lightly Child, Lightly.

Posted on by Live & Learn

One thing is certain, and I have always known it — the joys of my life have nothing to do with age. They do not change. Flowers, the morning and evening light, music, poetry, silence,

— May Sarton, from At Seventy: A Journal

Notes:

  1. DK photo @ 6:13 am, January 10, 2024, Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. 51° F in January! More photos from yesterday morning’s walk here.
  2. Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

32 thoughts on “Lightly Child, Lightly.”

  1. I have realised that ‚after‘ the unbridled joy of being a child, when no questions are asked about joy, it just happens, bursts out of a young soul, joy can be LEARNED also at a later age. My HH is not, by nature, an extremely joyful person, much to my sorrow. But he has literally acquired, over time, that joy can be created by learning, eg. to ‚see‘ reasons to be joyful, to put things back into the intellectual compartment of one‘s brain and push them into the heart and soul chambers…. And hurrah, it works. So, it is, indeed, not a question of age.
    Another fine post, Dave. Many thanks.

    1. Loved this Kiki: “that joy can be created by learning, eg. to ‚see‘ reasons to be joyful, to put things back into the intellectual compartment of one‘s brain and push them into the heart and soul chambers”. Thank you.

    1. Waiting to be discovered. Sort of like:

      One of life’s most fulfilling moments occurs in the split-second when the familiar is suddenly transformed into the dazzling aura of the profoundly new.

      — Edward Lindaman, Thinking in the Future Tense: A Workout for the Mind (Simon & Schuster, 1989)

  3. Joy bursts, demanding a reaction, a need to be seen. Somehow in the midst of this frightening time, it is a gift to feel it, to respond with even greater delight at the wondrous moment being offered…like your pic and quote.

  5. Yes, it is… This is amazing. But your photograph is amazing too, what a miracle moment… I love early hours of a day… Thank you dear David, have a nice day, Love, nia

  8. My very first blog which I launched in March, 2007, was called – Recover Your Joy. I wanted to inspire people to seek the joy in life, every single day. And, I wanted to ensure that I remembered, no matter what was going on in my life on any given day (I began with the committment to write a post every day of the week) to find the value and the joy in whatever was going on. At the time, I was working in an adult emergency homeless shelter and what was so profound about consciously seeking joy in such an environment was that I found it there, every single day.

    As Kiki says, Joy can be learned and making the habit to see and seek and celebrate those precious moments of joy we feel or observe or experience is an important part of building the habit.

    Love the quote and the photo DK. Stunning. All of it.

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