I am ill and have been bed bound since boxing day and it looks like I will still be in bed until next year ( just a few days to go thank goodness!). In between my relapses I have taken the opportunity to do things that I would not normally get the time to do, like read this amazing book.
I am looking for inspiration next year and Kahlil Gibran offers a mirror and lens. A mirror to view the past but also a lens through which to view the future. The key decision will be how to live the present!
The book was first published in 1926 and I have posted a few quotations from his writings
Of Work ‘You work so that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth. For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons and to step out of life’s processions that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite…when you work you fulfil a part of earth’s furthest dream assigned to you when that dream was born’
Of Buying and Selling- ‘ To you the earth yields her fruit and you shall not want if you but know how to fill your hands. It is in exchanging gitts of the earth that you shall find abundance and be satisfied. Yet unless the exchange be in love and kindly justice, it will lead to greed and others to hunger’
Of Reason and Passion - ‘ Your reason and your passion are your rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul. If either of your sails or your rudder is broken you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas’
Of Talking - ‘And in much of your talking, thinking is murdered…for thought is a bird of space that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly’
I have chosen the first three quotes because in some way they are all relevant to Planet Positive - Our work constantly reminds us of our connectedness to the planet, it is our destiny(?). We believe in the just distribution of its resources;what we do is is our passion and reason.
The fourth I offer as a dilemma. Is it better to find time and space to think without boundaries or is it sometimes necessary to take action and in doing so accept that there are limits in what you can do? How can we translate this freedom of thought into freedom of action?
GB
30th December 2008
Tags: Kahlil Gibran, passion and reason, Planet Positive
Eckhart Tolle in his wonderfully inspiring book ‘The Power of Now’ says;
“Nothing ever happened in the past; it happened in the Now.
Nothing will ever happen in the future; it will happen in the Now.
What you think of as the past is a memory trace, stored in the mind, of a former Now.
What you think about the future, you do it now.”
All we have is Now, so I’m with Tolle on this one…. a well lived Now will produce a well lived future…..
Happy New Year and get well soon.
Caite