"What's the No.1 thing that I need to know about going away to college?" Shaun Galanos asked his store manager.
"Do smaller loads of laundry." said the manager. "Your clothes will come out cleaner."
--Shaun Galanos is a relationship coach and host of The Love Drive podcast
Ha ha.
How do we advise life anyway?
The picture doesn’t match the title does it? Hold on I’m getting to it.
First, Do smaller loads of laundry could be interpreted as doing tasks in smaller amounts. We’ll l have more fun doing them without the stress of keeping five plates spinning on five poles.
I’ve done that.
Second: The Beautiful world part:
In a conversation with Daughter dear, I said I thought an old friend was acting the way he was because he was trying to come to terms with death.
She said, “Everybody is. But isn’t death a way to tell us we ought to get busy?”
“I’m working, trying to complete whatever I need to do in this lifetime,” I said.
“What’s your mission?” she asked.
Well, I guess Mary Oliver said it the best:
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”
― Mary Oliver
Yes, I’m repeating myself, using a quote I used earlier. Still, I really want to get it, and that’s my mission, to encourage people to enjoy and appreciate life. And to do the thing they were placed here to do.
I don’t need all people to frolic around for me to be happy, but somehow, I believe the earth ought to be appreciated. Living on this planet is a gift. (We could have been born on Mars and spent our life being sand blasted.)
We live in this lovely place—right now, it is snowing big sloppy snowflakes. I think it’s trying to decide whether to snow or rain. The temperature is right on the edge of the two. Daughter #1 lives on forested land at a higher elevation than here where we live. This morning her husband and son had to walk down the hill to the truck they left parked at the gate last night. They anticipated a road full of snow come morning. Car up the hill, truck at the bottom. It works. They accept the weather as part of winter in Oregon. And daughter dear said that now her son can tell his grandchildren that he had to trudge through the snow down a steep hill to go to school.
It stopped snowing here—that was fast.
I know that many people spend days with the television tuned into whatever is is filling their room with noise. If they are happy, bless them. Happiness is a relative term, of course. I don’t mean ha ha happy. I should say having joy in their hearts and appreciation in their souls.
Happy, joyful, peaceful, appreciative people raise the world’s consciousness. The people, animals, and even the little plants raise their heads when appreciated.
Aren’t we the carriers of the light?
Too woo-woo for you?
Well, think of that washing machine stuffed to overfull, and the plates that will crash if we don’t keep running up and down the row to keep them spinning. Think of the days watching television when you end up feeling rotten, ugly, and depressed. Think about how worked-up we get when we become involved in politics and how we want to beat up the other party.
And then there is my friend, who says she loves walking in the rain or snow. It is beautiful and invigorating, she says.
“You do
not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
it calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”
― Mary Oliver
