Today’s food for thought

Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.

—Lao-Tze

Things to Think

Think in ways you’ve never thought before.
If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message
Larger than anything you’ve ever heard,
Vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.

Think that someone may bring a bear to your door,
Maybe wounded and deranged; or think that a moose
Has risen out of the lake, and he’s carrying on his antlers
A child of your own whom you’ve never seen.

When someone knocks on the door, think that he’s about
To give you something large: tell you you’re forgiven,
Or that it’s not necessary to work all the time, or that it’s
Been decided that if you lie down no one will die.

From Morning Poems by Robert Bly (© 1998 Robert Bly)

 

Sometimes you get a wonderful surprise, a gift, that reminds you how we are all bound together in this thing called life. A surprise like getting up in the morning and finding a bird in your living room. The bird in this photo somehow flew down the chimney vent and ended up in the house. A few minutes after opening the back door for it the bird flew off to freedom, leaving behind the gift of its’ presence.

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