lighter – Live & Learn

Lightly Child, Lightly

July 18, 2019 by Live & Learn 23 Comments

I’m lighter than anything. I can hear elephant seals head-butting one another on Sand Dollar Beach ten miles away, the whoosh of the brown pelicans way below at Limekiln, gray whales groaning fifty meters off the shore at Kirk Creek; I am IMAX, high-definition Dolby, whatever.

~ A. K. Benjamin, Let Me Not Be Mad: My Story of Unraveling Mind (Dutton, June 11, 2019)

Notes:

Photo: Stephen Cain
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.”

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: A. K. Benjamin, Aldous Huxley, awareness, Inspirational, light, lighter, lightly, Nature, Photography, Quotes, Seals

Lightly Child, Lightly.

January 11, 2018 by Live & Learn 13 Comments

I’m getting somewhere now, I’m feeling lighter. I’m coming unstuck from scrapbooks, from albums, from diaries, and journals, from space, from time. Only a paragraph left, only a sentence or two, only a whisper.

I was born.

I was.

– Margaret Atwood, from “Life Stories,” in The Tent

Notes:

Painting: The Blue Hour by Jon B. Paulsen
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.”

Filed Under: Inspire, Life, Nature, Photography, Quotes Tagged With: Art, Inspirational, light, lighter, Margaret Atwood, Painting, Photography, quiet, Quotes, whisper

For a moment life suddenly feels lighter

July 1, 2014 by Live & Learn 32 Comments

“I firmly believe in small gestures: pay for their coffee, hold the door for strangers, over tip, smile or try to be kind even when you don’t feel like it, pay compliments, chase the kid’s runaway ball down the sidewalk and throw it back to him, try to be larger than you are— particularly when it’s difficult. People do notice, people appreciate. I appreciate it when it’s done to (for) me. Small gestures can be an effort, or actually go against our grain (‘I’m not a big one for paying compliments…’), but the irony is that almost every time you make them, you feel better about yourself. For a moment life suddenly feels lighter, a bit more Gene Kelly dancing in the rain.”