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Today's
Quotation:
I love best to have each thing in its
season, doing without it
at all other times. I have never gotten over my surprise that I
should
have been born into the most estimable place in all
the
world, and in the very nick of time, too.
Henry David Thoreau
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Today's
Meditation:
I
often marvel at how intolerant we often are of not having
things at certain times. Marketers constantly try to
reinforce this idea in our minds-- we have to have something,
and we have to have it now. I remember an ad campaign
for Kellogg's Corn Pops, a series of commercials in which
kids find out that they're out of Corn Pops and basically
freak out, repeating over and over "Gotta have my
Pops." What a horrible model of intolerance and
unwillingness to compromise!
One
of my favorite things in the world is pumpkin pie.
When I think about it, I easily could make them all year
long, but for some reason, they taste much better in the
fall. We may have one or two in the winter, too, but
for the most part the pumpkin pie has its season.
If
we try to have something all the time, it loses its newness
and its specialness. Life is about seasons and cycles
and moving from one thing to another, and much of our
discontent arises from not recognizing this fact. When
something goes away, we often think we've lost it for good,
and we mourn that loss or feel a great deal of frustration,
rather than seeing the new opportunities that have come into
our lives, the opportunity to try something new and
different, and possibly discover something else that we like
a lot.
Allowing
things to be part of our lives for their seasons makes them
much more special and much more enjoyable, for we know that
they'll be gone soon, and we'll get all we can from them
while we have them. Life is what it is, and we can't
have it all, all the time. Let's enjoy what we have
while we have it, then bid it a fond farewell when it leaves
us, either for a time or for good.
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