Topic: A Thought

There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself.  It is the only true guide you will ever have.  And if you cannot hear it, you will, all of your life, spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls."

Howard Thurman (1900-1981)

Love is a temporary madness.  It erupts like an earthquake and it then subsides.  And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being "in love" which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.

“My lifetime achievement in my opinion is really the slow acquisition of the ability to be vulnerable and needy, and to be able to accept love as well as give.”

William Shatner,
TV and movie actor
on accepting a Lifetime Achievement Award
at the Banff World Television Festival,
June 2010.

Shatner went on to add:

“My lifetime achievement is being married to ...[my wife, Elizabeth], and every day reminding myself that sustaining a marriage is in itself the achievement of a lifetime.

This was part of a larger journey he had:

“My life was a series of pools of loneliness [from] which every so often I was able to emerge with some companionship, and subdue that dreadful feeling that had dogged me for much of my life,” he said. “And frequently even with the kudos I was receiving, I was not happy with the private part of my existence. But slowly I changed. The drill that life puts you through can make you or break you, and fortunately I became more comfortable with relationships and slowly evolved in reaching out to friends and family.”

From The Globe and Mail

"When two people are at one in their inmost hearts, they shatter even the strength of iron or bronze; and when two people understand each other in their inmost hearts, their words are sweet and strong like the fragrance of orchids".  

I Ching

Hope begins in the dark,

the stubborn hope

        that if you just show up and try to do the right thing,

the dawn will come.

You wait and watch and work: You don't give up.

 Anne Lamott

"How bold one gets when one is sure of being loved."

When we are motivated
    by goals that have deep meaning,
    by dreams that need completion
    by pure love that needs expressing
then we truly live life.

Greg Anderson

Be motivated by that which is deliberately and consciously chosen...and rechosen daily.  Choose what pulls you towards your dreams, your aspirations, closer to the ones  you love.
Love the day that happens when you are motivated by that which is chosen well...and little by little, the days will pile up into a life that is rich and worthwhile.

"Loving can cost a lot but not loving always costs more,

and those who fear to love often find that

want of love is an emptiness that robs the joy from life."

  Merle Shan

“To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order;

to put the nation in order, we must put the family in order;

to put the family in order, we must cultivate our personal life; and

to cultivate our personal life, we must first set our hearts right.”