It's truly hard....

....to put someone else's mind at rest whilst your own is in turmoil. Hard, too, to heal another person's wounds while your own ache and weep. Hard, yes. Impossible, no. Life often takes a great deal out of us, but that doesn't mean we haven't still got a lot to give.

  

So we should give it. Share it.   We should summon the hope and the kindness that resides deep in our hearts, and express it to those around us.

Respect for ourselves guides our morals, respect for others guides our manners.  (Laurence Sterne)

When people have....

....a narrow escape, they talk about how they are 'lucky to be alive'. Yet that's true for all of us, regardless of how safe or precarious our situations may be. We are all of us lucky to be alive. We become even luckier if we recognise the fact. A sense of gratitude doesn't just fill us with warmth, it fosters wisdom.

Wisdom allows us to make smart choices - which improve, still further, our ability to feel lucky to be alive

            

I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.  (Mark Twain)

Each has a purpose....

Those who know me well....

......will tell you that I don't involve myself with the baking of cakes.  My part of the bargain is to eat them.  (An equal sharing of duties and responsibilities, don't you think!)  Be that as it may,  I thought I'd have a crack at a recipe.
This is the recipe for the Cake of Complete Contentment. Your every wish will be granted the moment you place a slice in your mouth. OK. Are you ready for the list of ingredients? Don't be fooled if they seem ordinary. The magic is in the way you combine them. Take butter, add flour, eggs, sugar and mix with...   oops, got to go, there's someone at the door.

Never mind. You'll have to find your own secret. Here's a hint. It involves letting go of a resentment.

This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it. (Thomas Carlyle)

At the end of....

....another week I've just learnt something new.  (I'm all for that.)  Apparently, in some cultural traditions, buildings are deliberately left unfinished. Even if the entire structure is an intricate work of art, one little section is kept incomplete. This is a spiritual gesture, an acknowledgement of the idea that there's always room for improvement!

Nothing is ever as good as it can get. When we claim to have it all or pretend that we have solved all our problems, we are kidding ourselves. To be human is to wrestle with incompatible urges.

Something in your world may well be far from complete; but that doesn't mean that it isn't perfect in its own way.

In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. 

For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.   (Kahlil Gibran)

 

Care to debate/argue?.......