A Room With A View

Essays and Quotes for the Mind and Spirit

"I think maybe needy people are just people who don't feel needed. Well, I say to you: Feel needed. Feel needed because you are." Daniel Quinn

WORDS TO SUCCEED BY:

• "To laugh often and much;
• To win the respect of intelligent peopleand the affection of children;
• to earn the appreciation of honest criticsand endure the betrayal of false friends:
• To appreciate beauty;
• To find the best in others;
• To leave the world a bit better,whether by a healthy child, a garden patchor a redeemed social condition;
• To know even one life has breathed easierbecause you have lived;
• This is to have succeeded."

Written by Ralph Waldo Emerson

TEN LAWS OF WELL-BEING

1. Welcome
2. Engage
3. Learn
4. Laugh
5. Be
6. Express
7. Invent
8. Nurture
9. Give
10. AND LOVE

1.Welcome

Welcome every day that you possibly can as a gift. Take time to appreciate the vast and varied pleasures which make up your life - warm drinks, sunshine, music, the face of a loved one, flowers, inviting scents, a loving touch, a gentle breeze... Take a few moments to breathe deeply and to experience gratitude. Acknowledge the lessons in even painful experiences - for they are often our most powerful teachers.

2. Engage

Engage in activities that foster emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being. Too often we allow ourselves to get so caught up in the details that we fail to provide ourselves with the necessary ingredients that make up a balanced and meaningful life. When we deprive ourselves of what we truly need, it's easy to begin to perceive life as a struggle rather than a precious journey.

Engage in meaningful contact with others, engage in the moment, and engage all your senses. To engage is to promise, promise yourself the gift of your life.

3. Learn

Life consists of one lesson after another. Pay attention to them when they present themselves, even when it hurts. When we learn - we deepen and empower ourselves, and we expand our horizons. Learning diminishes limits and widens our trail. In general, those who live to learn - live longest.

4. Laugh

Laugh often and loudly. Laughter improves the immune system, relieves stress and lightens burdens.

5. Be

Be where you are this minute, not lost in tomorrow or yesterday. While plans and goals can be important; and reflection may offer wisdom, it's the now that guarantees - only the now that pledges itself to you. The past has left you, the future eludes you, yet the now enfolds you. Embrace it. You're already in its arms, allow it to cradle you.

6. Express

Express yourself. You're unique, imperfect, wonderful, complicated, and evolving. Allow yourself to be who you are even as you work to grow and change. Don't hide yourself away. Share your feelings and dreams with those who are trustworthy. There's so much of you - plenty to go around, and like all that exists in abundance, if it's not shared, it wastes away.

7. Invent

Life is perhaps the most magical when we choose to create. Create as many meaningful experiences as possible, look at the world with your own unique eyes, recognize and accept your ability and responsibility to shape moments, days - your life. Invent and reinvent your life story - it belongs solely to you, enliven it with spirit.

8. Nurture

Nurture your body, your mind, and your soul. Don't starve them or pollute them. Acknowledge that inside of you there exists an unimaginable world, filled with mystery and magic, one that's vast and complex, magnificent and yet vulnerable. You are truly a work of art, a miracle, honor the world which is you.

9. Give

Give to those that share your world - both the inner and outer inhabitants. Give your body what it requires, give your emotional life what it needs, give your spiritual self what it must have, and give to others what they too deserve.

Care for and share with all of your brothers and sisters. Remind yourself that just as the earth is round and can't be seen from both sides unless you're standing above it, there's also much about the world of others which eludes you, thus making it difficult for you to completely understand, and impossible to judge.

Give freely. Give without expectations. Give to yourself.

10. Love

Love well and love long. While Love can wound it also heals. Love requires much and offers more.

Written by Tammie Byram Fowles

The Rules for Being Human

"1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it's the only thing you are sure to keep for the rest of your life.

2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called, "Life on Planet Earth."

3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of experimentation. "Failures" are as much a part of the process as "success."

4. A lesson is repeated until learned. It is presented to you in various forms until you learn it -- then you can go on to the next lesson.

5. If you don't learn easy lessons, they get harder. External problems are a precise reflection of your internal state. When you clear inner obstructions, your outside world changes. Pain is how the universe gets your attention.

6. You will know you've learned a lesson when your actions change. Wisdom is practice. A little of something is better than a lot of nothing.

7. "There" is no better "here." When your "there" becomes a "here" you will simply obtain another "there" that again looks better than "here."

8. Others are only mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another unless it reflects something you love or hate in yourself.

9. Your life is up to you. Life provides the canvas; you do the painting. Take charge of your life -- or someone else will.

10. You always get what you want. Your subconscious rightfully determines what energies, experiences, and people you attract -- therefore, the only foolproof way to know what you want is to see what you have...

11. There is no right or wrong, but there are consequences. Moralizing doesn't help. Judgements only hold the patterns in place. Just do your best.

12. Your answers lie inside you. Children need guidance from others; as we mature, we trust our hearts, where the Laws of Spirit are written. You know more than you have heard or read or been told. All you need to do is to look, listen, and trust.

13. You will forget all this.

14. You can remember any time you wish."

author unknown

The True Joy of Life:

"This is the true joy of life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailment and grievance complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it what I can. I want to be used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live, and I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no "brief candle" to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before passing it on to future generations."

Written by George Bernard Shaw

On Hope...

Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Either we have hope or we don't; it is a dimension of the soul, and it's not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, and orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons ...Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more propitious the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper the hope is. Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

Written by Vaclav Havel

ON GIVING

Then said a rich man, Speak to us of Giving.
And he answered:

You give but little when you give of your
possessions.
It is when you give of yourself that you
truly give.

For what are your possessions but things
you keep and guard
for fear you may need them tomorrow?
And tomorrow, what shall tomorrow
bring to the over prudent dog
burying bones in the trackless sand as he follows the
to the holy city?
And what if fear of need but need itself?
Is not dread of thirst when your well is full,
the thirst that is unquenchable?

There are those who give little
of the much which they have-
and they give it
for recognition and their hidden desire
makes their gifts unwholesome.
And there are those who have little and give it all.
These are the believers in life and the bounty of life,
and their coffer is never empty.
There are those who give with joy,
and their joy is their reward.
And there are those who give with pain,
and that pain is their baptism.
And there are those who give and know not
pain in giving, nor so they seek joy,
nor give with mindfulness of virtue:
They give as in yonder valley the myrtle
breathes its fragrance into space.
Through the hands of such as these God
speaks, and from behind their eyes
He smiles upon the earth.

It is well to give when when asked, but it is
better to give unasked, through understanding:
And to the open-handed the search for
one who shall receive is joy greater than giving.
And is there ought you would withhold?
All you have shall some day be given:
Therefore give now, that the season of
giving may be yours and not your inheritors`.

You often say, "I would give, but only to the deserving."
The trees in your orchard say not so,
nor the flocks in your pasture.
They give that they may live,
for to with-hold is to perish.
Surely he who is worthy to receive his
days and nights, is worthy of all else from you.
And he who has deserved to drink from
the ocean of life deserves to fill his cup from your little stream.
And what desert greater shall there be,
than that, which lies in the courage and the
confidence, nay the charity, of receiving?
And who are you that men should rend
their bosom and unveil their pride,
that you may see their worth naked and their pride unabashed?
See first that you yourself deserve to be
a giver, and an instrument of giving.

For in truth it is life that gives unto life-
while you, who deem yourself a giver are but a witness.

And you receivers- and you are all
receivers- assume no weight of gratitude,
lest you lay a yoke upon
yourself and upon he who gives.
Rather rise together with the giver on his gifts as on wings:
For to be over mindful of your debt, is
to doubt his generosity who has the
free-hearted earth for mother, and God for father

Written by Kahil Gibran

No one person has to do it all but if each one of us follow our heart and our own inclinations we will find the small things that we can do to create a sustainable future and a healthy environment.

John Denver

next:Patiently Wild