“The first step in the acquisition of wisdom is silence, the second listening…”
Solomon Ibn Gabriol
Have you ever noticed that the word ‘listen’ contains the same letters as the word ‘silent’? Are you here to listen? Are you open to learning, growing and hearing?
“My dear,
In the midst of hate, I found there was,
within me, an invincible love.
In the midst of tears, I found there was,
within me, an invincible smile.
In the midst of chaos, I found there was,
within me, an invincible calm.
I realized, through it all, that…
In the midst of winter, I found there was,
within me, an invincible summer.
And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.
Truly yours,
Albert Camus”
Never lose that invincible
love and smile…
THE END
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Photo by Prasad Thripunnath on Pexels.com
Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875)
Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
Love is patient with a life
That brings its share of pain.
We know sometime there is an end
To the most stubborn rain.
We know the sun comes out again
On a world that’s fresh and new,
And all the gifts we freely give
Somewhere, sometime accrue.
We know sometimes we have to wait
For life to come around,
And sometimes that it won’t, but still
There’s some good to be found.
And even when things happen that
Your soul can hardly bear,
Know that I’ll be next to you;
My love is always there.
by Nicholas Gordon
(from http://www.poemsforfree.com )
Where is the next disease pandemic lurking? Will it find us … or will we find it? For decades scientists and virologists were posing these questions.
As Bill Gates pointed out in his 2015 TED talk, “If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it’s most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war. Not missiles, but microbes.” And “we are not ready for the next epidemic”, he concluded then.
Are we ready now?
THE END
“Around the corner, I met Anne Braveman, seventy-nine, and Rita Kahn, eighty-six, who told me they had gone to the movies the week before. It wasn’t some official, prearranged group outing. It was just two friends who decided they wanted to go see The King’s Speech on a Thursday night… A nursing assistant had to agree to join them. Braveman was paralyzed from the waist down due to multiple sclerosis and got around by motorized wheelchair; Kahn was prone to falls and needed a walker. They had to pay the $15 fare for a wheelchair-accessible vehicle to take them. But it was possible for them to go. They were looking forward to watching Sex and the City on DVD next.
“Have you read Fifty Shades of Grey yet?” Kahn asked me, impishly.
I allowed, modestly, that I had not.
“I had never heard of chains and that stuff,” she said, marvelling. Had I? she wanted to know.
I really didn’t want to answer that…”
(from Being Mortal by Atul Gawande)
We do not stop having fun when we get old.
We get old when we stop having fun…
THE END
Credits: Image from searchgi.com
It’s time to say goodbye to 2019. Let’s remember all the special moments we had that year, forget all the bad and walk into 2020 with a clear heart and mind…
It’s time to unfold new pages and start a new chapter in our lives because it is a New Year….
Have a very happy New Year full of joy, smiles and laughter…
New year, new life…
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
THE END
