“There is a cycle of love and death that shapes the lives of those who choose to travel in the company of animals. It is a cycle unlike any other. To those who have never lived through its turnings and walked its rocky path, our willingness to give our hearts with full knowledge that they will be broken seems incomprehensible. Only we know how small a price we pay for what we receive; our grief, no matter how powerful it may be, is an insufficient measure of the joy we have been given.”
? Suzanne Clothier, Bones Would Rain from the Sky: Deepening Our Relationships with Dogs
Category Archives: Quotations
Quote: All of us, at some point during our lifetime, will need a little help and a little compassion from others
All of us, at some point during our lifetime, will need a little help and a little compassion from others. All of us, due to the nature of our existence, with our need for food, shelter, clothing and medical care; will find ourselves in need. It is human nature to believe that “it” will never happen to us (“it”, of course, being bad luck). But, rest assured, it can, and it will.
Your journey is your journey …
“You cannot see what I see, because you see what you see. You cannot know what I know, because you know what you know. Everything you see, or hear, or experience in anyway at all, is specific to you. You create a universe by perceiving it ,so everything in the universe you perceive, is specific to you.”
– D.N.Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, Quintessential Phrase
Don’t listen to anyone who tells you that you can’t do this or that
Good luck, old lad. Don’t listen to anyone who tells you that you can’t do this or that.That’s nonsense.
Make up your mind, you’ll never use crutches or a stick, then have a go at everything. Go to school, join in all the games you can. Go anywhere you want to. But never, never let them persuade you that things are too difficult or impossible.
– Douglas Bader to a New Zealand school student who had lost his legs (1954).
“There’s nothing special about you”
There’s nothing special about you
Terrible things can happen
And they can happen to anyone
Safety is an illusion. Danger is reality
Jane Caro relating advice she was given
Conversations with Richard Fidler – The making of Jane Caro
When people do good for others …
When people do good for others, good comes back to them when it’s their turn to need it
– Massad Ayoob
I believe do that, admittedly, with my rose coloured glasses
On having a Mind Like Water and STOPing
As part of the Getting Things Done methodology, David Allen talks about the martial arts concept of having a Mind Like Water. I was talking to a friend the other day about it. I mangled the quote at the time Jules, so here is the actual quote:
Imagine throwing a peddle into a still pond. How does the water respond? The answer is, totally appropriately to the force and mass of the input; then it returns to calm. It doesn’t over-react or under-react.
– David Allen
Zendictive has a better version of the parable. And some advice on controlling feelings.
STOPing.
From Zen Psychiatry, the STOP acronym:
Stop when you realise you’re about to get hijacked by your reaction.
Take a Breath
Observe how your body is reacting.
Proceed when you’ve done the first three (STO)
$30 dollars, 3 months.
The Sam Vimes “Boots” Theory of Economic Injustice runs thus:
At the time of Men at Arms, Samuel Vimes earned thirty-eight dollars a month as a Captain of the Watch, plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots, the sort that would last years and years, cost fifty dollars. This was beyond his pocket and the most he could hope for was an affordable pair of boots costing ten dollars, which might with luck last a year or so before he would need to resort to makeshift cardboard insoles so as to prolong the moment of shelling out another ten dollars.
Therefore over a period of ten years, he might have paid out a hundred dollars on boots, twice as much as the man who could afford fifty dollars up front ten years before. And he would still have wet feet.
Without any special rancour, Vimes stretched this theory to explain why Sybil Ramkin lived twice as comfortably as he did by spending about half as much every month.
I had a sister-in-law who shared the same, very sensible, opinion.
(these shoes lasted about 400 kilometres of walking)
Some quotes on grief
“Grief, I think, is not something you get over. I think, instead it’s something you travel through. And now I’ve travelled to the other side, I won’t forget the journey.”
Deborah Gemmill in “The chance to say goodbye”
“Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened”
Anatole Frances
“One thing is certain though, and that is the fact that grief never leaves you – however it changes and evolves. Yor loss stays with you forever. It becomes a part of who you are, forever.”
A. Kellehear in ‘Grief and remembering’
“If man is not to stifle his human feelings, he must practice kindness towards animals, for he who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.”
Emmanuel Kant
“This is what happens around the world; if you love, you grieve, and there are no exceptions.”
Thomas Lynch
“Never let them persuade you that things are too difficult or impossible.”
Good luck, old lad. Don’t listen to anyone who tells you that you can’t do this or that. That’s nonsense.
Make up your mind, you’ll never use crutches or a stick, then have a go at everything. Go to school, join in all the games you can. Go anywhere you want to. But never, never let them persuade you that things are too difficult or impossible.
Douglas Bader’s advice to a New Zealand school student in 1954, who had lost his legs.