It's been a busy two months: Biking, climbing (for the first time!), so many deadlifts, archery (for the first time!), lots of live music, playing guitar on the deck, playing guitar at a pub in Ireland(?!), good food, gardening, hiking, camping, new friends, old friends, exploring the Wild Atlantic Way. And that's only about half of it ...
DON'T SETTLE
“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.”
Steve Jobs
honor the other
If you know me, you know I am 100% down for a lively debate ... but I'm starting to believe that our political beliefs are ultimately extremely personal. They are an amalgam of socioeconomics, religion, philosophy, education, environment and upbringing. Some of us hang out in the middle and are very confused about the mounting pressure to polarize. Some of us have fully formed ideologies that would take incredible force to change. Most of us are a mix of both.
But, surprise! We can become more open to each other without going anywhere near politics. We can listen and evolve. We can read, travel, think and wonder. We can prove our good character by respecting and caring for all who cross our paths. And we can lovingly and thoughtfully engage with our friends, family, neighbors, coworkers, baristas and bartenders without ever sussing out what side they’re on.
“We are sun and moon, dear friend; we are sea and land. It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is: each the other's opposite and complement.”
Hermann Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund
THIS INFALLIBLE SIGH
"Do not allow yourself to be imprisoned by any affection.
Keep your solitude. The day, if it ever comes, when you are
given true affection, there will be no opposition between
interior solitude and friendship, quite the reverse.
It is even by this infallible sigh that you will recognize it."
Simone Weil
Open window, Nice
What I remember of Nice ... the little art galleries, the flower market, the bench in the Jardin du Monastere above the city where I ate a pissaladière and sketched, drinking bottles of rosé in the dark on the beach and somehow finding the way back to our horrible little hostel more than a little tipsy ...
And me like a broken record saying, "I can see myself here. I can see myself here. I can see myself here."
Another place I've ambled and admired - turned by tragedy to a tableau of a different color.
"The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater."
J.R.R. Tolkien
Raoul Dufy
Open Window, Nice
