Last Wednesday Wisdom for October 2017

This month's collection of wisdom is a mixed bag, a reflection of what I've been thinking and doing since we returned from vacation. First came the obsessing over all the things I needed and wanted to catch up on, then the realization that I didn't need to do them all at once. When I settled down enough to set priorities, it was with a renewed commitment to my creative projects, both ongoing and new. 

I also spent some time reflecting on our travels and on the benefits of travel in general. And then, because my daily at-home routine involves at least a little attention to the news of the day, I sought guidance to help me keep distressing events in perspective.

Finally, travels over and routine restored, I found comfort in being right where I am, right now.

We have to fight them daily, like fleas, those many small worries about the morrow, for they sap our energies.
​-- Etty Hillesum

I believe that if you do not answer the noise and urgency of your gifts, they will turn on you. Or drag you down with their immense sadness at being abandoned.
-- Joy Harjo, ​Crazy Brave

Work is love made visible.
​-- Ama Ata Aidoo

We see achievement as purposeful and monolithic, like the sculpting of a massive tree trunk that has first to be brought from the forest and then shaped by long labor to assert the artist's vision, rather than something crafted from odds and ends, like a patchwork quilt, and lovingly used to warm different nights and bodies.
-- Mary Catherine Bateson

You throw an anchor into the future you want to build, and you pull yourself along by the chain.
​-- John O'Neal

The more I traveled, the more I realized that fear makes strangers of people who should be friends.
​-- Shirley MacLaine

We say, "Seeing is believing," but actually . . . we are all much better at believing than at seeing. In fact, we are seeing what we believe nearly all the time and only occasionally seeing what we can't believe.
​-- Robert Anton Wilson

I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.
-- Baruch Spinoza

Perhaps the most radical thing we can do is stay home, so we can learn the names of the plants and animals around us; so that we can begin to know what tradition we're part of.
​-- Terry Tempest Williams

The little things? The little moments? They aren't little.
​-- Jon Kabat-Zinn

What's on your mind as this month draws to an end?