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| Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash |
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| Photo by Igor Rodrigues on Unsplash |
—Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
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| Photo by Joanna Swan on Unsplash |
“Both abundance and lack exist simultaneously in our lives, as parallel realities. It is always our conscious choice which secret garden we shall tend. The invisible underbrush holding us back is our own thoughts. When we choose not to focus on what is missing from our lives but on the abundance that’s present—love, health, family, friends, work, and personal pursuits that bring us pleasure—the wasteland falls away and we experience more joy in the real lives we live each day.”
—Sarah Ban Breathnach, Simple Abundance
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| Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash |
—Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain
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| Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash |
“I like spring, but it is too young. I like summer, but it is too proud. So I like best of all autumn, because its leaves are a little yellow, its tone mellower, its colours richer, and it is tinged a little with sorrow and a premonition of death. Its golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring, nor of the power of summer, but of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age. It knows the limitations of life and is content. From a knowledge of those limitations and its richness of experience emerges a symphony of colours, richer than all, its green speaking of life and strength, its orange speaking of golden content and its purple of resignation and death.”
—Lin Yutang
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| Photo by Sandy Millar on Unsplash |
“Our choice of where to direct our attention also affects our emotions and moods. If you habitually direct your attention toward things that upset you—alarmist news headlines, for example, or social media screeds—then you will experience the world as alarming and upsetting. If you choose instead to pay attention to things that uplift you, or that offer opportunities for playfulness, connection, and flow, you will experience the world in a completely different, more positive light.”
—Catherine Price, The
Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again
One of the best ways to make ourselves happy in the present is to recall happy times from the past. Photos are a great memory-prompt, and because we tend to take photos of happy occasions, they weight our memories to the good.
—Gretchen Rubin
I’m sifting through happy memories for a soon-to-come
Field Trip Friday post. Have a great weekend!
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| But Men Must Work and Women Must Weep, 1883 by Walter Langley, Photo by Birmingham Museums Trust on Unsplash |
“‘Art is the highest form of hope,’ said painter Gerhard Richter. But hope is not about knowing how things will turn out—it is moving forward in the face of uncertainty. It’s a way of dealing with uncertainty. ‘Hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable,’ writes Rebecca Solnit. To have hope, you must acknowledge that you don’t know everything and you don’t know what’s going to happen. That’s the only way to keep going and the only way to keep making art: to be open to possibility and allow yourself to be changed.”
—Austin
Kleon, Keep Going
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| Photo by Denny Müller on Unsplash |
“This minute decide to never again beg anyone for the love, respect, and attention you should be showing yourself. Today, look at yourself in the mirror and say, ‘I love you, and from now on I’m going to prove it!’ When you practice self-love and self-care, you give yourself the opportunity to be happy. And when you are happy, you become a better friend, a better lover, a better family member, and a better you.”
—Marc and Angel Chernoff,
Getting Back to Happy
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Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash |
“Hope isn’t the same thing as happiness. You don’t need to be happy to be hopeful. You need instead to accept the unknowability of the future, and that there are versions of that future that could be better than the current one. Hope, in its simplest form, is the acceptance of possibility.
“The acceptance that if we are suddenly lost in a forest, there will be a way through.”
—Matt Haig, The Comfort Book
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| Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash |
Well, folks, we
made it. 2021 is winding down. I hope you have a happy, peaceful, and safe New
Year’s Eve. Here are a few words of wisdom to see the old year out and welcome
in the new:
“No matter how hard the past, you can always begin again.”
—Buddha
“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language. And next year’s words await another voice.”
—T.S. Eliot
“An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves.”
—William E. Vaughan
“What the new year brings to you will depend a great deal on what you bring to the new year.”
—Vern McClellan
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| Photo by krakenimages on Unsplash |
“When you drive past other people’s houses, all the windows look brightly lit and all the faces look happy. But of course that happens when anybody drives past the houses of the Holiday Impaired, too; almost everybody looks good from far away when surrounded by a warm light within a frame of darkness. Let’s face it: we—the best and the worst of us—all tango through all these times as well as we can manage. Some years will be better than others, but all such days deserve recognition and, yes, celebration.
—Gina Barreca, “The Holiday Impaired,” collected in Too Much of a Good Thing Is Wonderful
Wishing everyone a happy holiday season, and merry Christmas
to all who celebrate!
