Tag: center

Lightly child, lightly.

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eric-rose-light-portrait-sun

I stop and close my eyes in order to feel rather than see. I allow the bright sunlight to shine on my face, warming it just enough to make my skin tingle. Then I start to listen. I detect the faint chirping of cardinals outside, barely audible above the clamor of hungry children and cats underfoot. The wind chimes hanging from the redbud tree in front of the house ring out from a gust of wind. They were a wedding gift, one that always touches a tender spot deep within me. It’s as if each note of the pentatonic scale connects with an invisible chamber of my heart, bringing me back to center. Then I start to hear new sounds. They are my own inner whispers, reminding me of what I want in this life. When I open my eyes, the present comes rushing back at me. I’m acutely aware of the sights, sounds, and scents swirling about at that moment yet I don’t feel defeated by them anymore. I was only gone a few seconds, but that brief amount of time gave me just enough pause to view my surroundings from a slightly different perspective. This time, I’m able to detect a blessing behind each of the messes.

~Jennifer DeVille Catalano

Notes:

  • Photo: Eric Rose. Quote: Thank you Make Believe Boutique
  • Prior “Lightly child, lightly” Posts? Connect here.
  • 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.”

 

Soft and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookie

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back-hair-portrait

Practice is not about being perfect.
It’s about being yourself.
It’s about getting past your lines of defense
to find the soft, chewy, sweet center.

~ Jay Fields, Teaching People, Not Poses: 12 Principles for Teaching Yoga With Integrity

Credits: Quote Source: Thank you Make Believe Boutique. Photo: Starwill

 

Lightly child, lightly

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black-and-white-bubbles-light
Under the light of eternity
things,
the daily trivia,
the daily frustrations,
fall away.
It is all a matter of getting to the center of the beam.

~ May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude

Credits:

  • Image Source: Carolyn Cochrane
  • Prior “Lightly child, lightly” Posts? Connect here.
  • 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.”

It’s never too late to be what you might have been. It’s never to early, either.

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being-perfect-Anna-Quindlen

“Someday, sometime, you will be sitting somewhere. A berm overlooking a pond in Vermont. The lip of the Grand Canyon at sunset. A seat on the subway. And something bad will have happened: You will have lost someone you loved, or failed at something at which you badly wanted to succeed. And sitting there, you will fall into the center of yourself. You will look for some core to sustain you. And if you have been perfect all your life and have managed to meet all the expectations of your family, your friends, your community, your society, chances are excellent that there will be a black hole where that core ought to be. I don’t want anyone I know to take that terrible chance. And the only way to avoid it is to listen to that small voice inside you that tells you to make mischief, to have fun, to be contrarian, to go another way. George Eliot wrote, ‘It is never too late to be what you might have been.’ It is never too early, either.”

 – Anna Quindlen, Being Perfect

Source: Thank you WhiskeyRiver from Anna Quindlen’s book: Being Perfect