Home of the Autographed Cat

Gwnewch y pethau bychain

Tag: wisdom Page 1 of 3

Tiny Beautiful Things

By

On April 6, 2014

In Blog

Every so often, a book comes to my attention that perhaps wouldn’t have normally. I’ll read a review, or hear it recommended, and think “Hey, that sounds interesting”, and I’ll make a note to myself to pick it up if I see it, or sometimes i’ll just grab it off the Amazon Kindle store where it will sit, waiting for me to find a moment to crack it open.

I don’t, at this point, remember who recommended the book “Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar” by Cheryl Strayed. It’s been sitting in my Kindle Library for some time. But a couple of days ago I randomly opened it and began to read. Today I finished it.

I don’t recall the last book that so often made me laugh out loud, so often moved me to tears, so often stopped me dead in my tracks with a perfectly phrased insight or so often made me just stop, walk away from the book because I needed time to think and digest.and reflect on what I had just read.

I’ve read collections of advice columns before, from Dan Savage and Miss Manners and others. This is very likely the first collection of advice columns I will read again and again, because as much as I took from it, there’s more to take and find and connect with.

If you’re a human being who is currently in the process of living a life, I recommend this book.

We Could Steal Time Just For One Day

By

On June 5, 2013

In Blog

I just want to share this as far as wide as I can, because it says everything.

This, i believe…

ROGER EBERT: On kindness

ROGER EBERT: On kindness
Roger Ebert (1942-2013) was the world’s most respected and celebrated film critic. I can’t possibly do justice to his legendary career in the movies. For that, I…

The text, excerpted from Rober Ebert’s memoir reads, for the benefit of those who cannot see the image:

“Kindness’ covers all of my political beliefs. No need to spell them out. I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.”

My pencils are sharp enough. Even the dull ones will leave a mark…

By

On January 4, 2013

In Blog

I was just now linking someone else to the brilliant work of Ze Frank, and it occurred to me:

1) How much I love the first episode of his new web show
2) How much it still affects me
3) How I need to listen to it every day until I internalise it.

QOTD

By

On November 28, 2011

In Blog

Ran across this while looking for something else:

“You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present.”
~Jan Glidewell

Quote of the Year

By

On April 12, 2011

In Blog

“With my depression, there aren’t so many things that give me joy, and I should be able to celebrate the shit out of the things that do. If I hate just about everything in the world, let me love what I do love hard and unrestrainedly. And even when we’re teenagers, and allegedly immature enough to get away with enthusiasm, we start getting pressured to act cool, so we temper that enthusiasm so goddamn early. I’m done with it. No great art ever was made by dampening your love of anything. No great life was lived by pretending you didn’t give a shit.”
—[personal profile] maevele, in a post here

(h/t to firecat for bringing it to my attention)

The Distillation of Wisdom: Forgiveness

By

On November 4, 2010

In Blog

I love a good quotation, because a good quotation is a concentration of thought, whether profound or humorous. I keep an extensive quotes file of things that have struck me as worth reading over from time to time, as many others I know do.

So today, I was over at the excellent Making Light blog. I read ML regularly, but I generally do so via RSS, so I don’t often find myself on their actual webpage. But today, I was, and a quote in the sidebar caught my eye and literally made me catch my breath.

“Forgiveness requires giving up on the possibility of a better past.” (unknown)

Now, this is nothing I didn’t already know, and its even something I’ve tried to express in the past. But I’d never seen it put so elegantly and succinctly.

Thought for Today

By

On October 18, 2010

In Blog

For the sake of a single poem, you must see many cities, many people and Things, you must understand animals, must feel how birds fly, and know the gesture which small flowers make when they open in the morning.

You must be able to think back to streets in unknown neighborhoods, to unexpected encounters, and to partings you had long seen coming; to days of childhood whose mystery is still unexplained, to parents whom you had to hurt when they brought in a joy and you didn’t pick it up (it was a joy meant for somebody else); to childhood illnesses that began so strangely with so many profound and difficult transformations, to days in quiet restrained rooms and to mornings by the sea, to the sea itself, to seas, but it is still not enough to be able to think of all that.

You must have memories of many nights of love, each one different from all the others, memories of women screaming in labor, and of light, pale, sleeping girls who have just given birth and are closing again. But you must also have been beside the dying, must have sat beside the dead in the room with the open windows and the scattered noises.

And it is not yet enough to have memories. You must be able to forget them when they are many, and you must have the immense patience to wait until they return. For the memories themselves are not important. Only when they have changed into our very blood, into glance and gesture, and are nameless, no longer to be distinguished from ourselves only then can it happen that in some very rare hour the first word of a poem arises in their midst and goes forth from them.

from The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge by Rainer Maria Rilke.

h/t to Andrew Sullivan for the pointer.

LINK: You just broke your child. Congratulations.

By

On October 5, 2010

In Blog

This was shared to me originally over on Facebook by museinred, but I wanted to spread it to a wider audience.

If you are a parent, you need to read this. If you’re ever thinking of becoming a parent, you need to read this.

Oh, hell, you just need to read this, whoever you are. Something to seriously think about.

Single Dad Laughing: You just broke your child. Congratulations.:

I’m going to be blunt. People see my relationship with Noah, and quite often put me up on a pedestal or sing my praises for loving him more than most dads love their own kids.

Damn it. I don’t understand that, and I’ll never understand that. Loving my son, building my son, touching my son, playing with my son, being with my son… these aren’t tasks that only super dads can perform. These are tasks that every dad should perform. Always. Without fail. There is nothing special about me. I am a dad who loves his son and would literally do anything for his well-being, safety, and health. I would gladly take a rake in the face or a jackhammer to my feet before I cut my own son down or make him feel small.

[sigh] I am far from a perfect dad. And I always will be. But I’m a damn good dad, and my son will always feel bigger than anything life can throw at him. Why? Because I get it. I get the power a dad has in a child’s life, and in a child’s level of self-belief. I get that everything I ever do and ever say to my son will be absorbed, for good or for bad. What I don’t get is how some dads don’t get it.

Pondering the new year

By

On January 4, 2010

In Blog

This was sent to me in the from of a typical “forward this to all your friends for good luck” e-mail. Of course, it was sent to me be someone I love dearly and who is not prone to sending me random forwards, so i took the time ro read it.

As the new year starts, there’s some good stuff here to ponder (and some of it is stuff I’d already learned the long way around), so I’m going to share it with all of you.

1. Give people more than they expect and do it cheerfully.
2. Marry a man/woman you love to talk to. As you get older, their conversational skills will be as important as any other.
3. Don’t believe all you hear, spend all you have or sleep all you want.
4. When you say, ‘I love you,’ mean it.
5. When you say, ‘I’m sorry,’ look the person in the eye.
6. Be engaged at least six months before you get married.
7. Believe in love at first sight.
8. Never laugh at anyone’s dreams. People who don’t have dreams don’t have much.
9. Love deeply and passionately. You might get hurt but it’s the only way to live life completely.
10.. In disagreements, fight fairly. No name calling.
11. Don’t judge people by their relatives.
12. Talk slowly but think quickly.
13. When someone asks you a question you don’t want to answer, smile and ask, ‘Why do you want to know?’
14. Remember that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
15. Say ‘bless you’ when you hear someone sneeze.
16. When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.
17. Remember the three R’s: Respect for self; Respect for others; and Responsibility for all your actions.
18. Don’t let a little dispute injure a great friendship.
19. When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
20. Smile when picking up the phone. The caller will hear it in your voice
21. Spend some time alone.

(source is allegedly the Anthony Robbins Foundation, though the e-mail did not give a specific citation.)

It’s all how you look at it…

By

On October 22, 2008

In Blog

It’s been many years since i read the comic strip Broom Hilda, though I remember having a couple of paperback collections of it when I was a kid. I honestly forget that it’s still around.

Someone on rec.arts.comics.strips linked to this one, though, and I just had to share it.



“Broom Hilda” by Russell Myers

“Sometimes the burdens that we carry
Are the blessings we forgot
And I’ve learned a lot about the difference in the two
It’s in the point of view
That you’ve got”

–Ben Wakeman

Page 1 of 3

Next

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén