SAID THE LITTLE BOY,
“Sometimes I drop my spoon.”
Said the old man,
“I do that too.”
The little boy whispered,
“I wet my pants.”
“I do that too,”
laughed the little old man.
Said the little boy,
“I often cry.”
The old man nodded,
“So do I.”
“But worst of all,” said the boy,
“it seems grown-ups
don’t pay attention to me.”
And he felt the warmth of
a wrinkled old hand.
“I know what you mean,”
said the little old man.
SHEL SILVERSTEIN – ‘WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS’
JUST ANOTHER BOOK?
What an astonishing thing a book is.
It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles.
But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head – directly to you.
Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time.
A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.
CARL SAGAN – ‘COSMOS’
THAT’S A POINT …
You’re not as YOUNG as you used to be.
But you’re not as OLD as you’re going to be.
NOT FOR THE WEAK
Ageing is not for the weak. One day you wake up and realize that your youth is gone, but along with it, so go insecurity, haste, and the need to please. You learn to walk more slowly, but with greater certainty. You say goodbye without fear, and you cherish those who stay. Ageing means letting go, it means accepting, it means discovering that beauty was never in our skin … but in the story we carry inside us.
MERYL STREEP
MOUTHFUL!
The secret of my success is that I bit off more than I could chew – and chewed as fast as I could!
PAUL HOGAN – CROCODILE DUNDEE
SIRENS ON THE INSIDE
The mental load is one of the hardest things about motherhood. Because it’s invisible. Because it’s expected and necessary. Because it’s silent on the outside, and sirens on the inside.
It’s like constant project management. Sometimes menial, largely momentous. Often heavy, mostly hidden. Sorting, arranging, organising, balancing, planning, preparing, anticipating, remembering, remembering, remembering.
It’s like having 200 tabs open in your brain at any given time, and switching off might mean losing them all. It’s like watching a movie play out in front of you with someone talking the whole way through.
Sometimes we just want someone else to make the lists, make the decisions, know what comes next. It’s not the doing that’s exhausting, it’s the thinking for everyone.
It might be invisible, but it leaves visible cracks. It leaves no room for us to be in the moment. It leaves no room for ourselves.
JESSICA URBELS
IN THE BATHROOM
“Help!” is a prayer that’s always answered. It doesn’t matter how you pray – with your head bowed in silence, or crying out in grief, or dancing. Churches are good for prayer, but so are garages and cars and mountains and showers and dance floors. Years ago I wrote an essay that began, “Some people think that God is in the details, but I have come to believe that God is in the bathroom.”
ANNE LAMOTT – ‘FURTHER THOUGHTS ON FAITH’
BELIEVE IT OR NOT …
1 million seconds is
… 11.57 days.
1 billion seconds is
… 31.71 years.
1 trillion seconds is
… 31,709.79 years.
Phew!
KEEP IT GOING …
When I worked at a coffee shop we had someone pay for their own coffee, then anonymously buy another coffee for the next person in line, just saying “Pay it forward …” The next person was amazed to hear that their coffee was covered and said, “Well, I want to buy coffee for the next costumer …”
The pay-it-forward lasted most of the afternoon, with people buying other people’s drinks. My friend at the cash register was nearly in tears by the end of her shift.
I won’t ever forget that day, and I doubt she has either.
JESS
UNRELATED?
Family isn’t aways blood.
It’s the people in your life
who want you in theirs.
The ones who accept you
for who you are.
The ones who would do anything
to see you smile,
and who love you
no matter what!
MAYA ANGELOU
LUCKY-LUCKY-LUCKY
Ageing
is
what
happens
if
we’re
LUCKY!
It
means
we’re
still
ALIVE!
GO FIGURE …
Earth is just 1 of 3.2 trillion planets in our galaxy.
The Sun is just 1 of 200 billion stars in the Milky Way.
The Milky Way is just 1 of 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe.
BACK-TO-FRONT
True friends
stab
you
in
the
front.
OSCAR WILDE
TOGETHER … OR ALONE
Sometimes one small gesture can give us the strength to do enormous things. A little generosity can unleash great tenderness, leading in time to deep real love, and a single conversation can change your mind, a life. The world is no bigger than the people who inhabit it, and together or alone, we are closer than we know.
JENNY – ‘CALL THE MIDWIFE’
