Tag: Gratitude

Lightly Child, Lightly.

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I loved weather, all weather, not just the good kind. I loved balmy days, fearsome storms, blizzards, and spring showers. And the colors! Everyday brought something to be admired: the soft feathery patterns of cirrus clouds, the deep, dark grays of thunderheads, the lacy gold and peach of the early morning sunrise. The sky and its moods called to me.
 
— L. Jagi Lamplighter, Prospero Lost (Tor Books; August 4, 2009)

Notes:

  • Photo: Daybreak. 41° F, feels like 36° F.  6:00 to 6:56 am. March 26, 2023. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. More photos from this morning’s walk here.
  • Quote via Exhaled Spirals
  • 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.

 

 

 

 

 

Lightly Child, Lightly

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Finally day breaks over things that I can’t predict, as I cannot predict myself. Only a stone, a celestial body, a fool can, sometimes, be predictable. Finally day breaks over a circumstantial, differentiated, risky, improbable world, as concrete, multicolored, unexpected, and, yes, beautiful as the one I see, feel, touch, admire.

— Michel Serres, in Italo Calvino’s from “Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers, La Nouvelle Alliance” in “The Written World and the Unwritten World: Essays. Translated by Ann Goldstein. (Mariner Books Classics, January 17, 2023) 

Notes:

  • Photo: Daybreak. 29° F, feels like 21° F.  6:00 to 7:00 am. March 16, 2023. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. See more photos from yesterday’s daybreak walk 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.

the little things were everything

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But after a couple of weeks of listing things I was grateful for, I came to see that the little things were everything. The little things were what I held on to at the end of the day. Single jokes that gave me the giggles. A beautiful flower arrangement, viewed through the window of a café. The fact that my cat came to cuddle me when she saw I was sad. These things gave me hope, pleasure, solace. Together, they added up to a fulfilling life. If a simple flower arrangement could make this world just a little more bearable, then perhaps my own small actions meant more than I was giving them credit for. Maybe when I made dinner, or listened to a friend rant, or complimented a woman on her incredible garden, I was helping make this world survivable for others. Perhaps that evening, when tallying up their own wins and losses for the day, someone would think of something I’d done and smile.

— Stephanie Foo, What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma (Ballantine Books, February 22, 2022)

Notes:

Lightly Child, Lightly.

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Come back to earth…

dwell on the shortness of life.

Lift up your dark heart and sing a song about

how time drifts past you like the gentlest, almost imperceptible breeze.

— Jim Harrison, from “Cold Poem” in “Saving Daylight.”

Note:

  • Photo: DK @ Daybreak. January 26, 2023. 6:35 a.m.
  • Poem: Thank you Whiskey River
  • 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.”

Lightly Child, Lightly.

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Here is an amazement –– once I was twenty years old and in
every motion of my body there was a delicious ease,
and in every motion of the green earth there was
a hint of paradise,
and now I am sixty years old, and it is the same.

—  Mary Oliver, from “Am I Not Among The Early Risers” in West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems (Mariner Books, April 7, 1998)

Notes:

  • Image Credit. Andreas Kuehn.
  • 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.”