Torna a Scuola! Back to School and Lifelong Learning

“Non puoi insegnare niente a un uomo.
Puoi solo aiutarlo a scoprire ciò che ha dentro di sé.”

(“You cannot teach a man anything,
you can only help him to discover it within himself.”)

~ Galileo Galilei

September: Back to School

Ah… I love September. Remember the excitement of getting ready to go back to school? New school clothes, new crayons, a new school bag, new books, a new supply of your favourite pens and the fun of sharpening that whole box of brand new pencils? I loved returning to school every autumn, so much so that, even though it’s been many years since I finished my formal schooling, I still get a strong desire every September to join the throngs of young and eager minds heading off to a campus somewhere. The smell of cracking open a brand new book is my favourite September scent and setting the point of a newly sharpened pencil to the first clean page of a new notebook still gives me a secret thrill. While today’s students are much more likely to be excited about a new iPad or laptop than they are about their new pens and pencils, just the same, I feel their anticipation and I enjoy tapping into the heightened energy that fills the air this time of year.

Every Rough Patch Contains a Seed of Benefit

 

The Core of the Matter; by madlyinlovewithlife

Looking for Seeds of Benefit

A long time ago, I came across this quote:

“Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it
the seed of an equal or greater benefit.”

~ Napoleon Hill

The words resonated with me so much that I transcribed them into my quote journal. Some years later, when I was going through a really rough patch, I remembered that quote, dug it out of my journal and copied it onto a small piece of paper which I carried around in my pocket. For weeks, I repeated it to myself often—because, for me, just saying those words brought me inner relief.

The Eye: A Poem by Kahlil Gibran

 The Eye

Said the Eye one day, “I see beyond these valleys a mountain veiled with blue mist.
Is it not beautiful?”

The Ear listened, and after listening intently awhile, said, “But where is any mountain?
I do not hear it.”

Then the Hand spoke and said, “I am trying in vain to feel it or touch it, and I can find no mountain.”

And the Nose said, “There is no mountain, I cannot smell it.”

Then the Eye turned the other way, and they all began to talk together about the Eye’s strange delusion. And they said, “Something must be the matter with the Eye.”

~ by Kahlil Gibran
Excerpted from The Madman: His Parables and Poems
(This work is in the Public Domain)

Zentangle: A Fun, Creative, Meditative Art Form

A Zentangle is meant to be a surprise that unfolds before the creator’s eyes, one stroke at a time. Zentangle is one of the few art forms that you intentionally do not plan out. There are no expectations of planned goals of accomplishment to worry about attaining or disappointment stemming from unattainable expectations. There is no plan to follow, there is nothing to detract the stroke being drawn. The lack of planning and the tangles allow the unexpected to occur.

~ Beckah Krahula; One Zentangle a Day

A Meditative Art Form

With the brand New Year in full swing, my partner and I are feeling happy and refreshed from having enjoyed a wonderful holiday season. We planned a quiet, restorative and relaxing holiday and opted not to travel anywhere this year, choosing instead to stay home and enjoy some time together. In the mornings, we slept in and lazed about, reading and relaxing. We cooked together, sipped wine and feasted on simple but delicious food. We laced up our skates and glided around the lagoon at Prince’s Island Park. We took many beautiful walks out in the fresh air and enjoyed the frosted evergreens and snow-covered paths. In the evenings, we snuggled in next to each other to read or watch some of our favourite feel-good movies. We also did something new, something fun I recently discovered, called Zentangling.

A Poem: The Ant and the Pebble

The Ant and the Pebble

 

One day, a young ant sat upon a pebble
taking a short rest from his very busy day,
and the ant and the pebble began to chat:

“I am superior”, said the ant.

“I think not”, said the pebble,
“We are each of us valuable; without me,
you’d have nothing to rest upon.”

“That may be”, replied the ant,
“but I have many legs,
and I can move about freely and build empires,
whereas you, my friend,
are quite stuck here upon the forest floor.”

“Sweet ant,
while you have eyes to see,
you see so little.

Do you not recognize me
in the splendor of pyramids?
Or see me kiss the sky
with the grand towers of great cities?

Do I not clasp my brilliance
around the necks of beautiful women?
Have not thousands climbed my back
to touch the fringed hems of heaven?

Do I not frame every river and ocean
with such breathtaking beauty it causes one to fly?”

“Don’t be silly”, quipped the ant,
“None of that is you!
You are just a pebble on the forest floor,
and, I might add, one
with such delusions of grandeur
as I have never before seen.”

And the little ant took his leave, laughing.

“It’s all a matter of perspective”, said the pebble.

But the little ant could not hear.

 

~ madlyinlovewithlife
From my collection of poetry, Blowing Rings Around the Moon
© madlyinlovewithlife 2010

 

Image Credit:

Beach Pebbles, by madlyinlovewithlife; © 2012 madlyinlovewithlife

Unsung Hero: A Little Something to Warm Your Heart

 

“Kindness is ever the begetter of kindness.”

~ Sophocles

Deliberate Acts of Kindness

Many of us have heard the phrase “Random Acts of Kindness”. Well, this beautifully filmed, inspiring Thai commercial is about “Deliberate Acts of Kindness”.

I love it when a YouTube video with a great message goes viral (it currently has 14.5 million hits), so I thought I’d keep on spreading the joy. Unsung Hero is a beautiful short film with a beautiful message. It is exquisitely filmed, so I recommend watching it in full-screen mode in high definition (HD).

I truly believe that inside each of us lives a heart of goodness. Not that I think it is humanly possible to always stay completely connected to this wise, beautiful and good aspect of ourselves, but if we choose to, I believe that all of us can connect with it more frequently than we often allow ourselves to.

Thanks to my wonderful mother-in-law for passing this video along.

 

Expect to be Surprised and Delighted

“I know it is wet and the sun is not sunny,
but we can have lots of fun that is funny.”

~ Dr. Seuss, The Cat in the Hat

Woohoo! Ready for Sun, Sand and Surf…

One winter several years ago, my partner and I took a fabulously fun road trip from Calgary (Alberta, Canada) all the way down to Los Angeles, California. The Greater Los Angeles area is such an exciting place to explore—there are oodles of interesting things to see, tons of great food to sample and a myriad of beautiful sights to take in. We only had a few days to explore and one thing high on our list was to spend an afternoon at one of the many magnificent beaches.

It’s Never Too Late: Go For It!

The Resonance of Strings:  A Late Bloomer

I took up the violin when I turned 33. To this day, I’m not sure what possessed me. One day, the idea just popped into my head—it didn’t matter how old I was, I could learn the violin if I wanted to. A week later, I owned a good quality used violin, a lovingly worn second-hand violin case, an inexpensive bow, a small cake of amber rosin and the phone number of a violin teacher who accepted adult students (apparently, there’s a special knack to teaching violin to the less pliable adult mind).

I’d wanted to play the violin since I fell in love with fiddle music in my early twenties. But I scoffed at the thought of picking it up back then, pinned down by my own limiting belief that it was an instrument one could only learn in childhood. But, for some unknown reason that day, the powerful thought, an epiphany, really—that it’s never too late to learn—struck a deep chord in me and kept resonating until I finally acted on it. I had no goal in mind other than to play the violin simply for the joy of learning and, possibly, hopefully, one day, to be able to play well enough to strike up a few fiddle tunes as my partner strummed his guitar. I reasoned that if I only practiced fifteen minutes every day, in time I’d be somewhere—I didn’t know where exactly, but no matter how bad I was, in five or ten years I’d be someplace farther up the road. Since I was starting from point zero, there was no way I couldn’t improve.

Rabindranath Tagore: The Stream of Life

The Stream of Life

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day
runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.

It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth
in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves
of leaves and flowers.

It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth and of death,
in ebb and in flow.

I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life.
And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood
this moment.

~ Rabindranath Tagore; from Gitanjali (Song Offerings)
Nobel Prize for Literature 1913*

The Transformative Power of Failure

“We seem to gain wisdom more readily through our failures than through our successes. We always think of failure as the antithesis of success, but it isn’t. Success often lies just the other side of failure.”

~ Leo F. Buscaglia

A New Way to Look at Failure

When something seemingly goes wrong, I don’t use the word “failure” anymore. Instead, I like to call it what I’ve come to see it as: a honing or tempering experience. I believe that the specific language we use creates an internal framework which influences how we perceive and experience our world. Therefore, I try to eliminate words such as “mistake”, “failure” and “wrong” from my vocabulary, replacing them with phrases such as “a learning experience”, “just one step along my journey” or “a clarifying experience”. For me, this kind of mental shift and self-soothing increases the probability that I’ll be able to see the benefit of an experience. Whenever I blame myself (or anyone else), not only does it feel bad, it keeps me from being able to see the value of my experience.

Tulips on My Windowsill

“Just living is not enough. One must have sunshine,
freedom, and a little flower.

~Hans Christian Andersen

The Joy of Tulips

It’s an utterly amazing thing to me that I can watch brightly coloured orange and yellow tulips (most likely from Holland), unfurling perfectly on my dining room table and my windowsill while we still have snow, or when the snow has finally all melted and we have entered “The Brown Season” of early spring. I often keep tulips around while we await signs of the first dabs of green to appear around the edge of Winter’s sometimes slow retreat. Each year, I marvel that these gorgeous tulips come to me so easily, cheerily gracing my home with their joy and beauty.