I will... keep it safe.

Lately I've been thinking about who I want to love, and how I want to love, and why I want to love the way I want to love, and what I need to learn to love that way, and how I need to become the kind of love I want to be.

And when I break it all down, when I whittle it into a single breath, it essentially comes out like this:

before I die, I want to be somebody's favorite hiding place,

the place they can put everything they need to survive,

every secret, every solitude, every nervous prayer, and be absolutely certain I will keep it safe.

I will... keep it safe.

~ Andrea Gibson

[Art: Collette Calascione]

Source: The Cosmic Dancer, Facebook

Life is a short journey, live it!

You work 8 hours to live 4.
You work 6 days to enjoy 1.
You work 8 hours to eat in 15 minutes.
You work 8 hours of sleep 5.
You work all year just to take a week or two vacation.
You work all your life to retire in old age.
And contemplate only your last breaths.
Eventually you realize that life is nothing but a parody of yourself practicing your own oblivion.
We have become so accustomed to material and social slavery that we no longer see the chains..
Life is a short journey, live it!

Source: Daily Dose of Kindness on Facebook

Milan Kundera : Ignorance

The Greek word for 'return' is nostos. Algos means 'suffering'. So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return. To express that fundamental notion most Europeans can utilize their own vernacular. They can say, for instance, 'Sehnsucht' in German, 'nostalgie' in French, and 'nostalgia' in English. And in each language, the word conjures up its own unique array of associations—whole dimensions of emotion, experience, and thought. In the broadest sense, nostalgia is the suffering of the exile, of the person torn away from his homeland and the past.

~Milan Kundera
(Book: Ignorance)
(Art: Photograph by Thomas Goldblum)

Philo Thoughts on Facebook

Kindness

Gillian is a seven-year-old girl who cannot sit in school. She continually gets up, gets distracted, flies with thoughts, and doesn't follow lessons. Her teachers worry about her, punish her, scold her, reward the few times that she is attentive, but nothing. Gillian does not know how to sit and cannot be attentive.

When she comes home, her mother punishes her too. So not only does she Gillian have bad grades and punishment at school, but she also suffers from them at home.

One day, Gillian's mother is called to school. The lady, sad as someone waiting for bad news, takes her hand and goes to the interview room. The teachers speak of illness, of an obvious disorder. Maybe it's hyperactivity or maybe she needs a medication.

During the interview an old teacher arrives who knows the little girl. He asks all the adults, mother and colleagues, to follow him into an adjoining room from where she can still be seen. As he leaves, he tells Gillian that they will be back soon and turns on an old radio with music.

As the girl is alone in the room, she immediately gets up and begins to move up and down chasing the music in the air with her feet and her heart. The teacher smiles as the colleagues and the mother look at him between confusion and compassion, as is often done with the old. So he says:

"See? Gillian is not sick, Gillian is a dancer!"

He recommends that her mother take her to a dance class and that her colleagues make her dance from time to time. She attends her first lesson and when she gets home she tells her mother:

"Everyone is like me, no one can sit there!"

In 1981, after a career as a dancer, opening her own dance academy and receiving international recognition for her art, Gillian Lynne became the choreographer of the musical "Cats."

Hopefully all “different” children find adults capable of welcoming them for who they are and not for what they lack.

Long live the differences, the little black sheep and the misunderstood. They are the ones who create beauty in this world.

Source: Spread Kindness, Facebook

Choose to be positive

Amazing Grace Alan Jackson

Louise Erdrich

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and being alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You have to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes too near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could. ~Louise Erdrich

(Book: The Painted Drum

Source Facebook: Philo Thoughts

Charles Bukowski

nobody can save you but

yourself

and it will be easy enough to fail

so very easily

but don’t, don’t, don’t.

just watch them.

listen to them.

do you want to be like that?

a faceless, mindless, heartless

being?

do you want to experience

death before death?

nobody can save you but

yourself

and you’re worth saving.

it’s a war not easily won

but if anything is worth winning then

this is it. ~Charles Bukowski

Book: Sifting Through the Madness for the Word

Source Facebook: Philo Thoughts

Photo from Google

The fall hurt...

 

Stephanie Bennet-Henry on Facebook

Leave it the fastest way you can...

I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance. The cloud clears as you enter it. I have learned this, but like everyone, I learned it late. ~Beryl Markham

(Book: West with the Night https://amzn.to/3mko98m)

Source: Facebook, Philo Thoughts

Lost love is still love...

“Lost love is still love, Eddie. It takes a different form, that's all. You can't see their smile or bring them food or tousle their hair or move them around a dance floor. But when those senses weaken, another heightens. Memory. Memory becomes your partner. You nurture it. You hold it. You dance with it. Life has to end," she said. "Love doesn't.”

― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Strive to be happy

 

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,

and remember what peace

there may be in silence.

As far as possible without surrender

be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly

and clearly;

and listen to others,

even the dull and the ignorant;

they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons,

they are vexations to the spirit.

If you compare yourself

with others,

you may become vain and bitter;

for always there will be greater

and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well

as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble;

it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs;

for the world is full of trickery

But let this not blind you to what

virtue there is;

many persons strive for high ideals;

and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.

Especially, do not feign affection.

Neither be cynical about love;

for in the face of all aridity

and disenchantment

it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,

gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.

But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.

Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline,

be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,

whatever you conceive Him to be,

and whatever your labors and aspirations,

in the noisy confusion of life

keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery,

and broken dreams,

it is still a beautiful world.

Be cheerful.

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,

and remember what peace

there may be in silence.

As far as possible without surrender

be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly

and clearly;

and listen to others,

even the dull and the ignorant;

they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons,

they are vexations to the spirit.

If you compare yourself

with others,

you may become vain and bitter;

for always there will be greater

and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well

as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble;

it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs;

for the world is full of trickery

But let this not blind you to what

virtue there is;

many persons strive for high ideals;

and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.

Especially, do not feign affection.

Neither be cynical about love;

for in the face of all aridity

and disenchantment

it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,

gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.

But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.

Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline,

be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,

whatever you conceive Him to be,

and whatever your labors and aspirations,

in the noisy confusion of life

keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery,

and broken dreams,

it is still a beautiful world.

Be cheerful.

Strive to be happy. ~Max Ehrmann

(Book: Desiderata https://amzn.to/3J2fnVr)

(Art: 'Water Lilies and Japanese Bridge' by Claude Monet)~Max Ehrmann

(Book: Desiderata https://amzn.to/3J2fnVr)

(Art: 'Water Lilies and Japanese Bridge' by Claude Monet)

Source: Philo Thoughts on Facebook

My old Kentucky home in Central Appalachia

I recently found a story/remembrance of a stranger on Facebook and it brought back many memories of my childhood. The story could have been about my ancestors that lived in Southeastern Kentucky where I was born and lived the majority of the first decade of my life. I love reading stories like this and the photo of his grandmother he attached to the story reminded me of my Great-grandmother. I didn't include his photo because it didn't feel right to share it, but I added a photo of my old Kentucky home in the Central Appalachian hills of my childhood home. 

My Papa's favorite hymn was In the Garden. I can still hear the old console record player playing the Elvis album that included this hymn as my Grandmother cooked or cleaned house on Saturday.

My grandmother, Grace Caldwell Bayes, was born on May 20, 1910. When I   was a child and needed a home, she took me in. I spent about half of my childhood under her care in the 50s and 60s. She looked after me. She cared about me. Such things were at a premium in my spotty childhood.

She was a walking, breathing stereotype, tough as an old boot with a   heart of gold. She was born on Mud Creek, in eastern Kentucky, 3 miles south of a godforsaken hamlet by the name of Tram. On the 1920 census, she’s listed as Gracie, 10 years old.

By the time I tumbled into her life, she had lived through two world wars and had birthed and raised seven daughters. She had four teeth, untreated diabetes, a bad case of arthritis, and bulging varicose veins.

Despite the aches and pains, I remember her working that old farm in her bare feet, day in, day out, singing songs about Jesus and warning me about the devil. She usually wore a big scarf around her head like a   Russian peasant and looked twenty years older than her actual age.

I traipsed after her, wanting to help. Mostly, however, I was an overeager, inept little companion. But I tried to overcome that with my willingness to risk life and limb to win her approval.

We were partners,  and we were always doing. Sometimes we would wander out into the fields foraging for a mess of greens. Other times we would kill a  chicken. In the evenings we would sit on the porch and break green beans, and we would play word games and, in the fading light, she would tell me stories about the old times. About bad old times.

I  still love words, like she did, and people tell me I’m a story-teller,  like she was. I like to think that, like she was, I’m tough as an old boot, and I  am certain that whatever kindness lies within me, I gained from her for she was the kindest person I have ever known. All of that is my inheritance. From Gracie, born on Mud Creek.

I’m grown now, grown old now, but I’ll tell you straight out that losing her still cuts through my soul.

Source: Facebook, Leslie Kitchen

Hugs

The average length of a hug between two people is 3 seconds.

But the researchers have discovered something fantastic.

When a hug lasts 20 seconds,

there is a therapeutic effect on the body and mind.

The reason is that a sincere embrace produces a hormone called "oxytocin",

also known as the love hormone.

This substance has many benefits on our physical and mental health,

and helps us,

amongst other things,

to relax,

to feel safe and calm our fears and anxiety.

This wonderful tranquilizer is offered free of charge every time we;

Hold a person in our arms,

cradle a child,

cherish a dog or a cat,

dance with our partner,

or simply hold the shoulders of a friend.

- A Womens Soul

Research Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15206831/

Artist: Stanka Kordic

Facebook: RAWR Women

St. Patrick’s Day

March 17 began as a feast day in observance of St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. Over time, the holiday evolved into a secular celebration of Irish culture, green beer, and anything with a shamrock on it. Irish immigrants to the United States were largely responsible for the transition, and in the 21st century, the holiday was associated more often with pub crawls and parades led by local politicians than with its religious traditions.

St. Patrick’s Day looms largest in the American cultural landscape, and there it takes its place alongside the celebrations of other immigrant communities. In Ireland, the holiday is celebrated primarily as a concession to tourists, although that country’s overwhelmingly Roman Catholic population does preserve its religious traditions.

St. Patrick’s Day, feast day (March 17) of St. Patrick, patron saint of Ireland. Born in Roman Britain in the late 4th century, he was kidnapped at the age of 16 and taken to Ireland as a slave. He escaped but returned about 432 CE to convert the Irish to Christianity. By the time of his death on March 17, 461, he had established monasteries, churches, and schools. Many legends grew up around him—for example, that he drove the snakes out of Ireland and used the shamrock to explain the Trinity. Ireland came to celebrate his day with religious services and feasts.

It was emigrants, particularly to the United States, who transformed St. Patrick’s Day into a largely secular holiday of revelry and celebration of things Irish. Cities with large numbers of Irish immigrants, who often wielded political power, staged the most extensive celebrations, which included elaborate parades. Boston held its first St. Patrick’s Day parade in 1737, followed by New York City in 1762. Since 1962 Chicago has coloured its river green to mark the holiday. (Although blue was the colour traditionally associated with St. Patrick, green is now commonly connected with the day.) Irish and non-Irish alike commonly participate in the “wearing of the green”—sporting an item of green clothing or a shamrock, the Irish national plant, in the lapel. Corned beef and cabbage are associated with the holiday, and even beer is sometimes dyed green to celebrate the day. Although some of these practices eventually were adopted by the Irish themselves, they did so largely for the benefit of tourists.

Source: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Saint-Patricks-Day

If we love, we grieve.

A woman called Cynthia wrote to musician, writer and actor Nick Cave and asked him how he deals with the death of his son, Arthur.

Arthur died in 2015, aged 15, after a fall from a cliff.

This is how Cave replied:

This is a very beautiful question and I am grateful that you have asked it.

It seems to me,

that if we love,

we grieve.

That’s the deal.

That’s the pact.

Grief and love are forever intertwined. Grief is the terrible reminder of the depths of our love and,

like love,

grief is non-negotiable.

There is a vastness to grief that overwhelms our minuscule selves.

We are tiny,

trembling clusters of atoms subsumed within grief’s awesome presence.

It occupies the core of our being and extends through our fingers to the limits of the universe.

Within that whirling gyre all manner of madnesses exist;

ghosts and spirits and dream visitations, and everything else that we,

in our anguish,

will into existence.

These are precious gifts that are as valid and as real as we need them to be.

They are the spirit guides that lead us out of the darkness.

I feel the presence of my son,

all around,

but he may not be there.

I hear him talk to me,

parent me,

guide me,

though he may not be there.

He visits Susie in her sleep regularly, speaks to her,

comforts her,

but he may not be there.

Dread grief trails bright phantoms in its wake.

These spirits are ideas,

essentially.

They are our stunned imaginations reawakening after the calamity.

Like ideas,

these spirits speak of possibility.

Follow your ideas,

because on the other side of the idea is change and growth and redemption. Create your spirits.

Call to them.

Will them alive.

Speak to them.

It is their impossible and ghostly hands that draw us back to the world from which we were jettisoned;

better now and unimaginably changed.

With love, Nick.

Source: spin.com

Facebook: RAWR Women

Iris Murdoch

 

I hate solitude, but I'm afraid of intimacy. The substance of my life is a private conversation with myself which to turn into a dialogue would be equivalent to self-destruction. The company which I need is the company which a pub or a cafe will provide. I have never wanted a communion of souls. It's already hard enough to tell the truth to oneself. ~Iris Murdoch

(Book: Under the Net)

Facebook: Philo Thoughts

Hunter Thompson

 

We shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don't see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness. ~Hunter Thompson

(Book: The Proud Highway)

Facebook: Philo Thoughts

Frida Kahlo

 “I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it's true I'm here, and I'm just as strange as you.”

Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo - Xochimilco,Mexico City (1936)

Facebook: Ravenous Butterflies

Tony Rice & Ricky Skaggs: "The Soul of Man Never Dies"

Franz Kafka

At 40, Franz Kafka (1883-1924), who never married and had no children, walked through the park in Berlin when he met a girl who was crying because she had lost her favourite doll. She and Kafka searched for the doll unsuccessfully.

Kafka told her to meet him there the next day and they would come back to look for her.

The next day, when they had not yet found the doll, Kafka gave the girl a letter "written" by the doll saying "please don't cry. I took a trip to see the world. I will write to you about my adventures."

Thus began a story which continued until the end of Kafka's life

During their meetings, Kafka read the letters of the doll carefully written with adventures and conversations that the girl found adorable.

Finally, Kafka brought back the doll (he bought one) that had returned to Berlin.

"It doesn't look like my doll at all," said the girl.

Kafka handed her another letter in which the doll wrote: "my travels have changed me." the little girl hugged the new doll and brought her happy home.

A year later Kafka died.

Many years later, the now-adult girl found a letter inside the doll. In the tiny letter signed by Kafka it was written:

"Everything you love will probably be lost, but in the end, love will return in another way."

Attribution unknown 

Art by Frida Hoeck Rusti: Astrid

Frida Hoeck Rusti was a Norwegian artist who was born in 1861.

Facebook: Ravenous Butterflies

Albert Camus

Find meaning. Distinguish melancholy from sadness. Go out for a walk. It doesn’t have to be a romantic walk in the park, spring at its most spectacular moment, flowers and smells and outstanding poetical imagery smoothly transferring you into another world. It doesn’t have to be a walk during which you’ll have multiple life epiphanies and discover meanings no other brain ever managed to encounter. Do not be afraid of spending quality time by yourself. Find meaning or don’t find meaning but 'steal' some time and give it freely and exclusively to your own self. Opt for privacy and solitude. That doesn’t make you antisocial or cause you to reject the rest of the world. But you need to breathe. And you need to be.

~ Albert Camus

(Book: Notebooks 1951-1959 https://amzn.to/3XLXEpo)

(Art: Photograph by Yousuf Karsh)

Facebook: Philo Thoughts

It took me so long...

 

I Think I Like When It Rains

Searching

I know you are still searching

for reason, digging at your own

heart for answers to justify the

pain and make sense of why.

But the thing is, even if you had

the answers, the reason, the rhyme,

it would not change the way it

turned out. Take the ending, babe.

It is what it is and even if you

rewrite it a thousand times,

it's still over. It's okay to let go

without knowing all the answers.

Stephanie Bennett-Henry

Stephanie Bennett-Henry on Facebook

Time

How to stop time: kiss.

How to travel in time: read.

How to escape time: music.

How to feel time: write.

How to release time: breathe. ~Matt Haig

Book: Reasons to Stay Alive https://amzn.to/3Xz8XkM

(Art: Photograph by Édouard Boubat)

Philo Thoughts on Facebook

Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris & Linda Ronstadt - Farther Along

Tempted and tried we're oft made to wonder why it should be thus all the day long
While there are others living about us, never molested, though in the wrong
When death has come and taken our loved ones, it leaves our home so lonely and dreary
Then do we wonder why others prosper living so wicked year after year
Farther along we'll know all about it; farther along we'll understand why
Cheer up, my brother; live in the sunshine, we'll understand it all by and by
Faithful till death said our loving master; a few more days to labor and wait
Toils of the road will then seem as nothing as we sweep through the beautiful gates
Farther along we'll know all about it...
Yes, we'll understand it all by and by

Congratulations, by the way: Some Thoughts on Kindness

 

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering and I responded sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly. ~George Saunders

(Book: Congratulations, by the way: Some Thoughts on Kindness https://amzn.to/3IguWZ7)

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