Category Archives: Philosophy

Philosophy

Choose your rocks carefully

I’m not much for making big, dramatic new year’s resolutions, but this does seem to be a good time of year to reflect on how I operate in this world and what I can do to improve.

Bob Fox was in town over the holiday weekend. Over coffee and muffins at the Downer’s Mill Deli, he gave me an interesting way to think about my priorities. Let’s say your life is a jar. How you fill it is up to you. It might seem that there isn’t a lot of room in that jar. Who doesn’t feel like they don’t have enough time to do everything they have to do?

If you start by filling the jar with water, you’re going to find you have no room for anything else. But if you start with rocks, you can fill in the spaces around the rocks with pebbles. Then you can pour some sand in there and it will fill in the spaces around the pebbles. And then, finally, you can put in the water and you have room enough. But you have to start with the important things—the rocks. This week I’m thinking about what the rocks are in my life.

Family, Philosophy

Giving Thanks

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It is a week past Thanksgiving and I’m finally getting around to posting something about it. Most of my family was here. We had a good time, ate a lot of good food, and had at least one hysterical laughing jag. We have much to be thankful for.

It’s easy to be thankful for one day. It’s much harder to maintain a consistent attitude of grace. Yes, it’s lovely to have a four-day weekend, but then too soon it is Monday morning and the furnace is busted, the coffee machine spewed hot coffee and grounds all over the counter, the email has piled up, and the phone starts to ring. Suddenly that glass is half empty again and it’s hard to remember how good we have it.

So we muddle through and think sullen thoughts about how short that weekend really was. Until something brings it back into perspective — a beautiful choral concert or a visit with a friend calmly facing the start of chemotherapy next month.

I’m jolted back to the realization that I can get that damn furnace fixed or even replaced if I have to, the coffee is all cleaned up now, and I’ve managed to wade through those emails and phone calls. They don’t count. All that counts is the quality of this moment. Right now.

Books, Philosophy, Quotes

Il faut cultiver notre jardin

I haven’t been up to posting much lately — such a busy weekend with the Revels yard sale, a Saturday night cook-out with friends, choir and a Revels troupe appearance at Billings Farm on Sunday. And surprise! We forgot we scheduled a renaissance choral practice on Monday. Oh, and I bought a new old violin — but that’s for another day.

Then Dave’s sister arrived for a short visit and I landed flat on my back with a cold and (oh, the indignity!) conjunctivitis. I’m getting better. I can open my eyes again, but now I have a lingering cough. Woe is me and all that. Dave and Cherie had a great visit. They talked, canoed and kayaked. I slept.

Today was a disappointment. Dave saw his daughters for the first time in over a year. His report of the meeting wasn’t encouraging. I haven’t written about the situation before now because it is heartbreaking. It’s pretty hard to discuss without starting to analyze and explain, and sometimes that just doesn’t help. It all degenerates into “she said, he said” stuff that won’t resolve anything. Right now it feels like all the moves available to us are wrong ones and we can’t ever make it right.

So … that leaves me with the title of this post, a quote from Voltaire’s “Candide”:

We must each cultivate our own garden.

I can’t do anything to fix this situation right now. All I can do is take care of my own little patch, tend to those I love, take care of myself, and look for where I can be of use in the world. As my former yoga teacher, Stephanie, used to say “All you have to do is show up, be yourself, and share your gifts.”