Obviously a chilly start considering the time of year but the rest of the day turned out to be nice and warm.
Back to the Hollies photograph.
Beauty is loving being back at school.
I read this recently and I copied it and put it on my mirror so I would constantly see it and reflect upon it.
The Dalai Lama's Recommendations for You
I N S T R U C T I O N S F O R L I F E
1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
2. When you lose, don't lose the lesson.
3. Follow the three Rs:
Respect for self
Respect for others and
Responsibility for all your actions.
4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.
5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
6. Don't let a little dispute injure a great friendship.
7. When you realise you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
8. Spend some time alone every day.
9. Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values.
10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
11. Live a good, honourable life. Then when you get older and think back, you'll be able to enjoy it a second time.
12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.
13. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don't bring up the past.
14. Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality.
15. Be gentle with the earth.
16. Once a year, go someplace you've never been before.
17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.
18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.
19. Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon
1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
Mmmmm!
Perhaps I am getting cynical with old age but I personally wonder if any love , no matter how great, is worth the effort
Of course I am not taking about the unconditional love we have for our family, especially our children.
The Dalai Lama's Recommendations for You
I N S T R U C T I O N S F O R L I F E
1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
2. When you lose, don't lose the lesson.
3. Follow the three Rs:
Respect for self
Respect for others and
Responsibility for all your actions.
4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.
5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
6. Don't let a little dispute injure a great friendship.
7. When you realise you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
8. Spend some time alone every day.
9. Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values.
10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
11. Live a good, honourable life. Then when you get older and think back, you'll be able to enjoy it a second time.
12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.
13. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don't bring up the past.
14. Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality.
15. Be gentle with the earth.
16. Once a year, go someplace you've never been before.
17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.
18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.
19. Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon
1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
Mmmmm!
Perhaps I am getting cynical with old age but I personally wonder if any love , no matter how great, is worth the effort
Of course I am not taking about the unconditional love we have for our family, especially our children.
However, guess how old I was when I wrote this in one of my journals?
Deep is the stream
Where flows a love
That time will stop
And lie down for.
19......No, just kidding.
The answer is 49.
So do we ever lose that desire?
Probably not, we just store it away and let it collect dust because it is easier.
I think that the problem is that we find it easier to do nothing and let life pass us by.
Where flows a love
That time will stop
And lie down for.
19......No, just kidding.
The answer is 49.
So do we ever lose that desire?
Probably not, we just store it away and let it collect dust because it is easier.
I think that the problem is that we find it easier to do nothing and let life pass us by.
And it is easier not to get your heart broken
So if great love requires great risk then so do great achievements.
But because we think of 'great achievements' as being something that is so unobtainable and 'surely must take a lot of effort' we fail to do anything at all.
I truly believe my greatest achievements in life have nothing to do with any qualifications I may have acquired or any professional distinction I may have achieved.I believe my achievements lie in the ordinary but even the ordinary is not easy but takes super human effort at times.
In the book the Bell family by Noel Streatfeild, Ginnie the daughter of a vicar in the East End of London comes to realise that life is not about performing heroic deeds but about the small achievements that we make daily.
Personally, when I think about great love and great achievements I think of the following poem
Ithaka by Constantine P. Cavafy
As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon-don't be afraid of them:
you'll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon-you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you're seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind-
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you're destined for.
But don't hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you're old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you've gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon-don't be afraid of them:
you'll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon-you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you're seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind-
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you're destined for.
But don't hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you're old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you've gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean
The destination of the journey is Ithaka. Ithaka is the island off the western coast of Greece to which Odysseus returned after the Trojan war. Odysseus’s journey was a long and difficult one. It was ten years before he was able to rejoin his wife Penelope in Ithaka. However, Ithaka in this poem can also be understood as the destination of any journey, and it can be further understood metaphorically as a journey through life.
Is there no greater love than this or no greater achievements?
I think perhaps there is.
The mother who leaves the house at 5am to do a second cleaning job just to pay for food everyday before her fulltime job.
The carerer/nurse who washes patients day in day out and changes their soiled bed linen.
The man who cleans the streets.
The teacher who spends hours teaching children to read and write.
The day in day out essential jobs that others don't always give true recognition to.
My special recognition goes to the RAC man who came out when my tyre exploded in the Civic Centre.He spent the entire time he fixed the car talking and stimming with Beauty.A sight to behold indeed, a 6 foot plus large built guy bouncing up and down stimming next to Beauty!
It seems his son is also AUTISTIC.
My belief is that there is greatness in the little things.
The only true greatness.
The only true greatness.
1 comment:
That Dalai Lama is a very wise old bird and then some...
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