“Living well and beautifully and justly are all one thing.”
~ Socrates
I was just thinking about that this week.
Category: FEATURED REGULARLY
Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday features.
Friday! Play Day! “What do you love most about the fall?”
Hi, it’s Friday, the play and ask questions day.
What are your favorite things about the fall?!?!?
Some of mine:
* The smell of leaves
* The COLOR of leaves
* Ice cream – I know it’s possible at any time of year, but now there are these flavors: pumpkin, chestnut, later eggnog. :)
* THE WIND!!!! Great wind in the fall, and usually not too cool yet.
* Good time to get together with friends … going inside into cozy places.
…. and your favorite things about the fall?
Always Doing
“I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”
~ Pablo Picasso
On Habits
“As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a
single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep
physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path,
we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to
dominate our lives.”
~ Henry David Thoreau
Past the Persona
“When I speak with someone, I like to get past his persona
and speak to the person behind it.”
~ a friend of mine said this this week
ps This is becoming quote week!
“The Gift of Insults”
This site, that I think of as “zen stories,” has been a wonderful site that I come back to again and again. I also like the comments of people below the stories. Look around, see which stories here you like. Here’s one of them:
The Gift of Insults
There once lived a great warrior. Though quite old, he still was able to defeat any challenger. His reputation extended far and wide throughout the land and many students gathered to study under him.
One day an infamous young warrior arrived at the village. He was determined to be the first man to defeat the great master. Along with his strength, he had an uncanny ability to spot and exploit any weakness in an opponent. He would wait for his opponent to make the first move, thus revealing a weakness, and then would strike with merciless force and lightning speed. No one had ever lasted with him in a match beyond the first move.
Much against the advice of his concerned students, the old master gladly accepted the young warrior’s challenge. As the two squared off for battle, the young warrior began to hurl insults at the old master. He threw dirt and spit in his face. For hours he verbally assaulted him with every curse and insult known to mankind. But the old warrior merely stood there motionless and calm. Finally, the young warrior exhausted himself. Knowing he was defeated, he left feeling shamed.
Somewhat disappointed that he did not fight the insolent youth, the students gathered around the old master and questioned him. “How could you endure such an indignity? How did you drive him away?”
“If someone comes to give you a gift and you do not receive it,” the master replied, “to whom does the gift belong?”
Simplicity, Complexity
The art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity.
~ Douglas Horton
Potentially Quote Thursdays may be moving to Mondays. We’ll see.
What’s your favorite flower?
Q: What’s your favorite flower?
* Daisy.
* Today, gladiolus!
And why?
* Daisies are so bright, they totally make me happy. Life is simple. Daisies are simple. They are proponents of the idea that life is good. Sunflowers are awesome too!
* Gladiolus is a neat, neat flower – tall, majestic, and lively – many blossoms on its stem.
—
Today is Question Friday, please add your answers! :)
Sleep
All men whilst they are awake are in one common world: but each of them, when he is asleep, is in a world of his own.
~ Plutarch
Without enough sleep, we all become tall two-year-olds.
~ JoJo Jensen, Dirt Farmer Wisdom, 2002
Sleep – those little slices of death, how I loathe them.
~ Edgar Allen Poe
If people were meant to pop out of bed, we’d all sleep in toasters.
~ Author unknown, attributed to Jim Davis
People who say they sleep like a baby usually don’t have one.
~ Leo J. Burke
A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor’s book.
~ Irish Proverb
“But You Remember the Blue”
A little girl liked a little boy very much because he was round and smiley and he crawled everywhere. This little boy was much smaller than the little girl.
He always came to the park with his mother when the little girl came to the park with her mother. But while the little girl walked to the park like a big person, like her mother and like the other mother, the little boy sat in his carriage and he smiled a lot, but he never walked because he was still too small to walk. In fact, he was too small to walk, and too small to talk, but the little girl liked to talk to him anyway.
Sometimes the little boy’s mother would take him out of the carriage and put him on the grass and the little boy would crawl and fall onto his stomach, then lift himself up, smile, crawl some more, and fall onto his stomach again. And all this time the little girl’s mother and the little boy’s mother would be speaking to each other. And at the same time, the little girl would be speaking to the little boy.
The little girl told the little boy while he was crawling about how one day he would be big like her, and he would be able to walk like her, and he would be able to eat food with his hands, and even with a spoon and a fork, and he would be able to sit with the big people at the big table. And the little boy crawled.
The little girl told him how one day he would be able to look at her with his eyes and say something to her and how she would understand him and she would say something back to him. And the little boy crawled.
One day, the little girl told him how in the future when he grew up very big that she would be very big also and that then they could be married because he would be a daddy and she would be a mommy and they could have little boys and little girls who would crawl all the time and the girls could wear pink dresses and the boys could wear blue overalls. But while she was telling him this, the little boy fell onto his stomach, and he said “agg! garrr!†And the little girl smiled and said to him again, in case he didn’t hear, “That’s right, blue overalls.†Then she went back to her mother, and she took her mother’s hand and they walked home.
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Another day, she came to the park with her mother, and the little boy was there with his mother. The little boy was sitting in his carriage. The little boy’s mother said to the little girl, “It rained last night, so I don’t want to put him on the wet grass.â€
So the little girl knew why the boy was still sitting in the carriage. The little boy smiled when he saw the little girl, and he moved his arms, and he looked like he wanted to crawl on the ground. And the little girl came up close to him, and she said to him in a whispering tone, “But you can’t go on the ground today. Remember what I told you when I am very big and you are very big and we are married and we have a little boy who wears blue overalls – remember the blue overalls? Well, you wouldn’t want our little boy to get his blue overalls wet because it rained last night, would you? Well that’s why,†she whispered, “that’s why you shouldn’t crawl on the grass today.†|