Tag Archives: lifestyle

Golden Moments

“Time is the school in which we learn, Time is the fire in which we burn.” are the profound last lines of the poem, Calmly We Walk through This April’s Day, by Delmore Schwartz. It’s a beautiful philosophical contemplation of the passage of time, with a particularly great wrap-up last stanza.

The seconds, minutes, hours tick away relentlessly. Our lives are busy, and inundated with many distractions and responsibilities. Lately I’m looking at my age and thinking, “Wow! It’s going faster than I ever imagined at age 18.”

Realistically, we don’t have time to sit around and endlessly ponder about the value of time and our lives. But, it’s useful to carve out a little time (from time to time) for such introspection. Because your life IS precious, and the clock IS ticking. Ask yourself in this moment, are you spending it the way you would really like to?

The new year 2021 will soon be upon us. In retrospect, too many precious moments fell through the cracks in the turmoil of 2020, never to be lived. It is a good time now to think about how we will spend 2021. Because indeed, these are our lives, and it is OUR time.

It is crucially important (now more than ever) to have vision and intention for our lives. Otherwise, we will just end up with someone else’s idea of how life should be.

Photo courtesy Amit Pal and John, Pexels

Joy! (and more)

Leave a reply

Christmas close approaches, and with it a myriad of memories, feelings, and images. 2020 has magnified the importance of the people in our lives, and also our connection to our greater humanity. I started thinking yesterday of words that are most evocative of Christmas for me. The word that tops my list is: JOY

There is definitely a heightened feeling of love and goodwill around me at this time of year. This feeling gives me great joy as people take a little rest from the regular routines, worries, and burdens of every day life. I love to see joy expressed on the faces of people around me.

I think of joy is a life keyword, an evaluator of the world around me. I’m feeling that if our world was better balanced and society fairer, we’d be seeing a lot more joy on an every day basis. This is something for all of us to contemplate for the new year 2021 just ahead. How will we claim and live our joy? And not just our joy, but all of the positive aspects of life that we deserve. These are, after all, our lives. They are precious and they come around only once.

I realize that many people reading this do not celebrate Christmas. But in your own culture, you have celebrations that are sacred, important, beautiful. My partner and I lived in Thailand for some years, and I loved getting to know and taking part in the important traditions there. Loy Krathong (Festival of Light) was my favorite.

So, take a moment to think of your own culture’s sacred traditions and celebrations. What one word is evocative of how you feel as you share those celebrations with family and friends? If you would like to share in the comments, I would love to hear from you.

I send you best wishes for all the joy and blessing your hearts can hold (and more) in 2021.

Your Smile, Your Gift

Leave it Richer

2 Replies

“Leave the world richer.” These wise words are just a small snippet of the Eleanor Roosevelt quote below. Reading only the snippet, one might think she meant leave the world having accumulated the maximum financial wealth we can. Service to self. Who can blame us, really? That’s how our society has trained us to think about success.

But no, take a moment to scroll and read the entire quote. Mrs. Roosevelt meant we should aspire to leave this world knowing we contributed something positive to it, that it’s a better place because we visited here for awhile.

Think of the world we would create if we all embraced that thought….

More Inspirational Quotes:

“Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.”
~ Socrates

“The greatness of a man is not in how much wealth he acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively”
~ Bob Marley

“Don’t Gain The World & Lose Your Soul, Wisdom Is Better Than Silver Or Gold.”
~ Bob Marley

“Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and a richness to life that nothing else can bring.”
~ Oscar Wilde

“Human greatness does not lie in wealth or power, but in character and goodness. People are just people, and all people have faults and shortcomings, but all of us are born with a basic goodness.”
~ Anne Frank

Susan L Hart / Author