Just journalling today. I'm sitting here at my dining room table working from home. It's a beautiful autumn day outside, the windows are wide open, and the sun is pouring in. Every now and then I get distracted looking around my lovely home and the little personal touches I've added since XH moved out. Artwork, plants, photographs. I love the written word and have several framed quotes hung on the walls:
"Children are not a distraction from more important work; they are the most important work." "If you want to change the world, go home and love your family." "To the world, you are a mother; to your family, you are the world." "And remember, the truth that once was spoken: to love another person is to see the face of God."
In the front hallway, I have some watercolour prints of native plants, a sign which says "Welcome to Scout and S2's home" and another set of quotes from four of my favourite authors:
"Isn't it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?" "When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don't seem to matter very much." "The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honourable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well." "It is the small everyday deed of ordinary folks that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love."
Finally, I have Rudyard Kipling's "If" - my favourite poem - framed in my bedroom. I think it applies to all of us.
If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master; If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
