Why limp through....

....the door to the future, clutching a big bag of clothes that don't suit you, dragging behind you a cart of other people's problems that they have asked you to help carry? The door is only so wide. With all that baggage, you may not pass through.

You may have to wander round in a kind of eternal version of yesterday... until or unless you put down what you no longer need.

Some people will always mistake kindness for weakness.

Who has seen the wind....

....neither you nor I, but when the trees bow down their heads, the wind is passing by.' There are so many invisible forces at work in this world. We detect their presence by the reactions they create or the dramas they give rise to. Just because something is subtle, though, it does not mean that it is not powerful.

A small smile or a gentle gesture of goodwill can have an enormous effect - even if it is not fully acknowledged or appreciated.

There is as much greatness of mind in acknowledging a good turn, as in doing it.  (Seneca)

When things are going the way we want.....

....them to, we get an urge to celebrate. That's natural but it is not always appropriate. Energy directed towards festivity is energy diverted away from efficiency. Also, victory and failure are two sides of one coin. Those who care too much about winning also tend to worry too much about losing.

What we really need to care about is 'learning.' If this is our priority, we can enjoy life regardless of what it seems to be giving (or taking) from us.

Flowers often grow more beautifully on dung-hills than in gardens that look beautifully kept.    
(Saint Francis de Sales)

I have discovered that....

....there's a group of highly paid scientists who have studied the fierce competition between mice.  We now know that they argue about whose whiskers are longest, and whose noses twitch the most. I confess, I'm only kidding.  But even if those little creatures do all of the above, to us they are still just mice.

We humans also spend a lot of time weighing ourselves up against others. We wonder what they've got that we haven't... and vice versa. Yet the only people on this earth who are truly worth looking up to, are the one's who don't look up to (or down on) anyone.

If this was the last day of your life, would you spend it the way you’re spending today?

Many of us....

.....are familiar with Murphy's Law - but you may have given it another name.   Few of us, though, know that Mr Murphy later issued an amendment and an addendum.

'Actually,' he said, 'it is not that anything that can go wrong will, just that it probably will and we had best be prepared.' He then added, 'Anyway, sometimes even when things do go wrong, it turns out to be for the best.'

At this point, the tape recorder he was speaking in to exploded and thus his message never reached the wider world.

Time is equal to life; therefore, waste your time and waste of your life, or master your time

and master your life.   (Alan Lakein)

With the passing of time, I've come to realise....

....that there may be no such thing as true neutrality. No matter how much we may strive for objectivity, detachment and the enlightened wisdom that only impartiality can provide, we soon get edgy when vested interests crop up. How can we swallow back our feelings when a matter that is under discussion involves people we love or principles that we care about?

Yet some ideals, even if they can never be totally attained, are worth striving for nonetheless. The very act of aspiring to a higher plane, will put you on one.

Ultimately the happiest unions have less to do with perfect partners

and more to do with our inner self-worth.

Been a while, hasn't it?....

.....So without any further ado -

Don't you just love it when people talk about 'being in control'.  (My personal, inner, response is usually - not of me you're not - and then allow myself a wry smile.)  It's a strange notion. Very few of us are in control of very much, least of all ourselves! We can't entirely control our own appetites, let alone our thoughts and feelings. If we can't manage that, how can we ever be expected to make anything in the wider world behave according to our wishes?

What are our wishes anyway? What do you want? Are you entirely in agreement with yourself, at the moment? Deal with that first; the rest will come.

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art.  It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.   (C S Lewis)