The lesson here is to do as Mark Twain suggested: ‘Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So, throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour.’
We drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived when they were newlyweds. She had me pull up in front of a furniture warehouse that had once been a ballroom where she had gone dancing as a girl. Sometimes she’d ask me to slow in front of a particular building or corner and would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing.
‘Well,’ the woman says, not looking up from her garden. ‘This morning I got a phone call from my husband. I thought he was on a business trip in Florida, but it seems he has run off to Hawaii with his secretary and doesn’t intend to come back.’
‘Every day I tried to do something nice for someone. It made me so happy to see them happy. Today I don’t know of anybody who sleeps better than I do. I have found happiness by giving it to others.’
The painting depicts an exhausted German soldier returning from war, resting his weary head in the lap of a young woman. She is portrayed as young, beautiful, and pure, symbolizing the personification of Germany.
Or are you simply in the process of resting and recovering from all that you have been through? Are you truly procrastinating? Or are you simply prioritizing what your soul finds more valuable, enriching and uplifting? Are you truly sad? Or are you simply purging and releasing your […]
‘The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.’ (L. P Hartley: The Go-Between) A generation that walked to school every day and we walked back home just as easily. We were a generation that did our homework by ourselves, eager to finish and rush outside […]
Stacy has opened my eyes to the fact that marijuana doesn’t really hurt anyone. We’ll be growing it for ourselves and trading it with the other people in the commune for all the cocaine and ecstasy we want. In the meantime, we’ll pray that science will find a cure for AIDS so that Stacy can get better. She sure deserves it!
MAKE READING COMPASSIONATE AGAIN My dear girl, the day you see I’m getting old, I ask you to please be patient, but most of all, try to understand what I’m going through. If I repeat the same thing a thousand times when we talk, don’t interrupt to say: […]
The men who show up without being asked, who stay up even when they’re exhausted. The men who have fierce respect for their mothers, and wouldn’t be caught dead having her do their laundry – or paying their bills. This is for the men who know that choosing […]
Michael Walsh Stories and Books 
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