The Hero's Deed

"Original experience has not been interpreted for you, and so you've got to work out your life for yourself. Either you can take it or you can't. You don't have to go far off the interpreted path to find yourself in very difficult situations. The courage to face the trials and to bring a whole new body of possibilities into the field of interpreted experience for other people to experience -- that is the hero's deed."
-- Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

Thought of the Day

We are not here to fit in, be well balanced, or provide exempla for others. We are here to be eccentric, different, perhaps strange, perhaps merely to add our small piece, our little clunky, chunky selves, to the great mosaic of being. As the gods intended, we are here to become more and more ourselves.
---- James Hollis, What Matters Most: Living a More Considered Life

Thought of the day

“Speed is a defense against depth”

"There is more to life than increasing its speed." -- Ghandi

60

Staying put

Rule a big country
the way you cook a small fish.

If you keep control by following the Way,
troubled spirits won't act up.
They won't lose their immaterial strength,
but they won't harm people with it,
nor will wise souls come to harm.
And so, neither harming the other,
these powers will come together in unity.

24

Proportion

You can't keep standing on tiptoe
or walk in leaps and bounds.
You can't shine by showing off
or get ahead by pushing.
Self-satisfied people do no good,
self-promoters never grow up.

Such stuff is to the Tao
as garbage is to food
or a tumor to the body,
hateful.
The follower of the Way
avoids it.

This morning was filled with a moment sent just to me to make me smile:
We pulled into the gas station and as we walked in, there was a man getting settled on a beautiful blue motorcycle, its engine purring, him trying to get the coffee cup settled between his legs *just so.*  I stopped in front of him and looked again, and then couldn't help it -- I just laughed in delight. His face in the helmet went from puzzled to sheepish and he smiled: "That's not going to work." He said.

I went in and got some decaf and enjoyed the drive back to town over the parkway.
Happy Friday.

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Thought of the Day

True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost.

Arthur Ashe

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